VP, Media

AARP • Washington, DC

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

AARP is the nation's largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering people 50 and older to choose how they live as they age. With a nationwide presence, AARP strengthens communities and advocates for what matters most to the more than 100 million Americans 50-plus and their families: health and financial security, and personal fulfillment. AARP also works for individuals in the marketplace by sparking new solutions and allowing carefully chosen, high-quality products and services to carry the AARP name. As a trusted source for news and information, AARP produces the nation's largest-circulation publications, AARP The Magazine and the AARP Bulletin.
The Vice President, Media leads the enterprise media strategy across paid, owned, and earned channels to drive reach, relevance, performance, and trust. This role sets the vision and governance for media investment, including advertising, and emerging media approaches, while ensuring alignment with brand standards, audience strategy, and enterprise priorities. The VP, Media balances performance optimization with stewardship, establishing clear advertising policies, ethical standards, and measurement discipline across a complex, multi-channel ecosystem.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Communications, Business Administration, Advertising, or a related field; Master's degree preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in media strategy, advertising, marketing, or integrated communications, including significant leadership experience in complex, multi-channel environments.
• Proven expertise in enterprise media planning, investment allocation, channel mix optimization, and media governance across paid, owned, earned, and emerging channels.
• Demonstrated success leading media buying, agency management, strategic partnerships, and media performance optimization to achieve business objectives.
• Strong knowledge of advertising compliance, privacy regulations, brand safety standards, governance frameworks, and ethical media practices.
• Deep experience leveraging advanced marketing analytics, including multi-touch attribution, marketing mix modeling, incrementality testing, and other measurement frameworks to drive investment decisions.
• Expertise in marketing technology, first-party data strategies, audience targeting, personalization, automation, and AI-enabled media optimization.
• Exceptional leadership, stakeholder management, and strategic planning skills, with a proven ability to collaborate across cross-functional teams and drive enterprise-wide media initiatives.
• Regular and reliable job attendance
• Effective verbal and written communication skills
• Exhibit respect and understanding of others to maintain professional relationships
• Independent judgement in evaluation options to make sound decisions

Nice To Haves

• AARP will not sponsor an employment visa for this position at this time.

Responsibilities

• Leads media planning, investment allocation, channel mix optimization, and develops guardrails for consistent, responsible media activation. Creates standard operation models that help deploy media efficiently and effectively.
• Defines and leads an integrated media strategy spanning paid, organic, owned, and emerging channels. Oversees media buying, partnership and agency management.
• Sets standards for targeting, frequency, creative testing, and performance optimization.
• Establishes and enforces enterprise advertising policies and guidelines to ensure compliance with privacy and governance standards, brand safety, and ethical media practices.
• Leverages advanced analytics (e.g., multi-touch attribution, marketing mix modeling, incrementality testing) to inform media plans.
• Develops future-ready media capabilities, including experimentation, automation, and AI-enabled optimization. Advances target markets and demographics, personalization and use of first-party data and marketing and advertising technology capabilities.
• Partners with cross-functional teams to drive integrated planning and execution.

Benefits

• 401(k)
• 100% company-funded pension plan
• health, dental, and vision plans
• life insurance
• paid time off to include company and individual holidays, vacation, sick, caregiving, and parental leave
• performance-based and peer-based recognition
• tuition reimbursement

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive