Vice President - Customer Experience + Innovation

JOB SUMMARY 

The Vice President, Customer Experience Design + Innovation leads Marriott’s enterprise experience design, customer journey management, and innovation agenda. As a senior advisor and champion across the organization, this role is responsible for identifying future opportunity spaces that fuel growth, loyalty, and brand differentiation and solving big challenges by designing innovative solutions to test and learn against based on customer needs. 

In addition to leading experience design and innovation delivery, the Vice President is accountable the overall health, impact, and return on Marriott’s innovation portfolio. This role ensures Marriott is focused on solving the biggest customer and business problems and translating them into scalable concepts, pilots, and experiences. 

The Vice President establishes the culture, capabilities, systems, and partnerships required to design and innovate at enterprise scale, working closely with leaders across the organization.  

CANDIDATE PROFILE 

Education and Experience Required 

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university required  

• 12+ years of progressive professional experience across experience design, innovation, strategy, research, consulting, or related fields. 

• Demonstrated success leading insight‑led experience design and innovation efforts, translating research, trends, and analytics into actionable strategies and concepts. 

• Experience working across physical, digital, and service environments with strong service design orientation. 

• Proven ability to lead teams and senior stakeholders through ambiguity; strong change leadership and influence capability. 

• Exceptional cross‑functional leadership, executive communication, and stakeholder management skills. 

• Experience operating effectively in a large, matrixed, global organization. 

Education and Experience Preferred 

• MBA or equivalent advanced degree  

CORE WORK ACTIVITIES 

Lead Innovation Insights, Foresight & Opportunity Framing 

• Establish and lead Marriott’s innovation capability for customer research, observational insights, trend and foresight analysis, and signal spotting. 

• Conduct competitive and analogous industry scans and explore emerging technologies to identify disruption risks and growth opportunities. 

• Synthesize insights into clear problem statements and whitespace opportunity areas that inform experience design, innovation priorities, and investment decisions. 

• Serve as a trusted thought partner to executive leadership on emerging customer needs, industry shifts, and future‑back opportunities. 

Lead Customer Experience Design & Journey Management 

• Serve as the primary advocate for the customer experience, balancing customer needs with business objectives. 

• Translate insights and opportunity areas into experience strategies, service models, and design concepts across physical, digital, and experiential touchpoints. 

• Lead enterprise journey mapping, service design, and experience definition efforts. 

• Oversee concept ideation, synthesis, and visualization, ensuring experiences reflect Marriott’s brand promise and differentiation. 

• Guide concept validation across desirability, feasibility, and viability. 

• Partner with Brand, Digital, Operations, Technology and other disciplines to integrate experience improvements at scale. 

Orchestrate Enterprise Innovation Initiatives 

• Lead end-to-end enterprise innovation from portfolio prioritization to experimentation to pilot to scale.   

• Orchestrate Marriott’s product innovation agenda, ensuring innovation efforts across functions are aligned, prioritized, and focused on the highest‑value opportunities. 

• Lead the Innovation Lab as an enterprise experimentation and learning platform, enabling rapid prototyping, testing, and validation. 

• Define and oversee structured approaches to: 

• Prototyping and testing 

• Pilot design and in‑market experimentation 

• Learning agendas and performance measurement 

• Partner with business and functional leaders to transition validated concepts into pilots, rollout plans, and commercialization. 

Build and Manage External Ecosystems & Partnerships 

• Lead the development of Marriott’s external innovation ecosystem, including startups, technology partners, academic institutions, and strategic collaborators. 

• Develop, structure and manage strategic partnerships that accelerate learning, experimentation, and scale. 

• Represent Marriott externally as a leader in experience design and innovation. 

• Leverage startup scouting and vetting aligned to defined opportunity spaces. 

Enable Innovation Capability Across the Enterprise 

• Lead innovation workshops, design sprints, and structured problem‑framing sessions for senior teams. 

• Build innovation and design thinking capability through training, tools, and shared frameworks. 

• Establish common language, methodologies, and standards that enable consistent innovation practices across the organization. 

• Contribute to internal and external innovation thought leadership. 

Leadership Development, Culture & Team Excellence  

• Inspire and lead a high-performing, globally connected team that embodies Marriott’s values and champions cross-continent collaboration.  

• Provide day-to-day oversight for shared product teams and cross-functional working groups to deliver global priorities.  

• Develop and mentor brand leaders, building a world-class organization recognized for creativity, commercial impact, and strategic excellence.  

• Foster an inclusive, empowering culture that rewards innovation, agility, and accountability.  

• Shape the next chapter of Select & Midscale brand leadership at Marriott through vision, influence, and enterprise partnership.