Guild is building out a Strategic Brand Partner Engagement function within our brand and marketing organization, this role will drive the strategy and team’s mission to build differentiated partnerships that unlock the potential of Guild’s strategic relationships to drive growth and innovation for our brand. The role is aimed at developing and leading a coalition of partners in the Guild ecosystem to support our go-to-market strategies and member / learner growth initiatives. We believe as a key first step in building outsized reach with our new brand, we will be focused on building differentiated partnerships that unlock brand opportunities - these opportunities include organizations that will expand our story telling opportunities and combine new channels for b2b GTM partnerships and/ or net new channels for member & learner activation.Guild is a partnerships-led company and one that often excels at bringing together employers and academic partners to solve critical challenges for the workforce. In this role, we’ll be extending that partnership and convening power to build out and nurture our broader community of innovators who help us unlock opportunities for the American workforce. 

Creating a community of innovators and partners is an important part of Guild’s brand and long-term vision. In many ways, Guild’s commitment to investing in brand partners, national nonprofits, and thought leadership associations will be key drivers of delivering our long-term vision by elevating and advancing our work and providing opportunities for Guild to thrive as an iconic social impact company.  This person will work alongside the leaders of our employer, academic, member / learner teams – to build our strategy and identify our most impactful partnerships and opportunities. 

As a Senior Community & Brand Partnerships Director, you will:

• Serve as founding team lead: Serve as a founding team member, in building our overall partner engagement strategy - for brand, thought leader partners and select impact organizations. 
• Take over and manage existing relationships to align on value: This will include taking over existing initiatives and relationships, but more importantly building the strategic vision, framework, and priority set, for this year and going forward.  
• Build new relationships & define partnership model: Initiate, build and manage robust, innovative and impactful brand partnerships for priority and developing strategic initiatives. This includes supporting the team to identify, vet, and engage brand, impact and some GTM partners that could serve as good organizations for expanding Guild’s reach - whether it be through increasing awareness for members / learners, or creating deeper connections & opportunities for corporate partnership. 
• Identify and manage cross-functional initiatives: As a Partnerships leader, you’ll be asked with finding the value alignment points of partnership opportunities, this will likely include managing cross-functional initiatives and ensuring strategic direction and clarity on other team members work
• Serve as key point of contact (SME) for external partnerships with private sector organizations, national foundations and nonprofits, large associations and other stakeholders, to also drive those overall partnership strategies
• Begin building our strategic plan for investing in social impact initiatives and provide a recommendation on an overall operating model, begin initial engagement and pilots with 1-2 impact partners in fiscal year
• Lead internal work on impact reporting - Lead cross-functional work with Analytics, Policy, and Finance (investor relations) teams to determine outcomes and impact strategy, including where and who we want to partner with on refining mobility and ESG related metrics as well as partnering with our People Organization to align outcomes for our partners with Guild outcomes

You are a strong fit for this role if you have:

• Expertise and/or excitement about Guild’s position at the intersection of education, economic mobility, career advancement, the future of work and the future of workers.
• The organizational skills to harness opportunities and drive results through creative and engaging experiences - while also being able to work autonomously across partners
• Significant experience managing external relationships and partnerships with executives at F500 companies, universities, governments and/or similar organizations 
• A reputation as a highly cross-functional, low ego partner inside and outside of organizations
• The ability to spark magic when you bring people together - a love of creating moments of creativity, joy and alignment through community
• An empath’s ability to create connections – a love of connecting dots between people, ecosystems, and opportunities
• Demonstrated experience working with or in the CSR space, either in house at a corporation, or through an external organization/non profit
• Proven ability to design scalable operations and processes 
• For Internal Hires - understanding of Guild’s solution and interdependencies is a major plus

Additional pluses for this role include:

• Demonstrated experience in partnership development and implementation of philanthropic initiatives across and within multiple sectors (public, private and nonprofit)
• Understanding of larger education and workforce development trends - strong market intelligence 
• Deep knowledge and passion for education equity and opportunity creation 
• Effective verbal communications skills and strong writing skills
• Ability to build from 0-1, and imagine opportunities that haven’t existed before - while building the internal and external business case for why they should!

We feel passionately about equal pay for equal work, and transparency in compensation is one vehicle to achieve that. Total compensation for this role is market competitive, including a base salary range of $160,000- $220,000 as well as company stock options. 

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