Contract

Freelance Associate Director

Project Manager

Posted on 8/15/2025

VSA Partners

VSA Partners

51-200 employees

Strategy and creative agency delivering outcomes

No salary listed

San Francisco, CA, USA + 2 more

More locations: Chicago, IL, USA | New York, NY, USA

In Person

Category
Business & Strategy (1)
Required Skills
JIRA
Marketing
Excel/Numbers/Sheets
Requirements
  • 7+ or more years of experience leading marketing, design, or digital projects throughout the full life cycle, preferably in a consulting or agency environment.
  • Bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in project management, marketing, or related field.
  • Extensive expertise in the use of project management methodologies and tools.
  • Consistent track record of leading small-/medium-scale clients, including budgets, scheduling, and resource planning.
  • Strong analytical, process flow, problem-solving, communication, customer relationship, organization, project management, system thinking, and conflict resolution skills.
  • Has a deep understanding of the client’s business, needs, expectations, and requirements.
  • Extensive understanding of project management methodologies, including the ability to identify and resolve issues, mitigate risk, develop detailed project plans and specifications, develop and oversee staffing plans, and lead the team to successful completion.
  • Skills in complex problem solving, judgment, critical thinking, creative solution development, and decision making.
  • Strong digital literacy in MS Office/Google Suite (particularly Excel/Sheets), email, project and team communication software (e.g., Smartsheet, Jira, Slack, DoneDone).
  • Ability to interact at all levels of the company and with external parties in a professional manner, maintaining effective communication—both written and spoken.
  • Ability to manage staff members is a plus.
  • Ability to be highly organized, accurate, and timely; able to prioritize.
  • Adaptability, flexibility, persistence, versatility, and the ability to handle multiple projects and changing priorities.
  • Ability to organize information, pay attention to detail, accurately follow procedures, take detailed notes, maintain confidential information, and remember important pieces of information.
  • Ability to maintain self-motivation and to work independently and in collaborative environments.
Responsibilities
  • Manage projects up to $1M+ in revenue.
  • Interface heavily with senior marketing, technical, and executive management at the client to ensure the solution is understood and address the customer’s business requirements.
  • Deliver accurate financial management of assigned clients and improved client margins.
  • Contribute to all client SOWs to ensure deliverable and financial accuracy.
  • Raise and maintain awareness to identify and drive solutions to issues and risks across projects and clients.
  • Optimize team utilization, working with leads across all disciplines at the assigned clients.
  • Ensure the project managers are handling essential functions, including but not limited to scheduling and facilitating project-related team meetings (kickoffs, status, internal/client reviews, and project sunset reviews, etc.), communicating action steps to the team, and driving the project to successful completion.
  • Contribute content and presentation of key client deliverables as needed to ensure relevancy, strategy, quality, and timeliness.
  • Establish relationships with key client team members within projects; act as a secondary client point of contact (EL is primary).
  • Interface heavily with senior marketing, technical, and executive management at the client to ensure the solution is understood and address the customer’s business requirements.
  • Additional responsibilities as assigned.
Desired Qualifications
  • Ability to manage staff members is a plus.

VSA Partners is a strategy and creative agency that blends consumer insights and data with human-centered design to create measurable brand experiences. It combines strategy, branding, advertising, data science, and technology, delivering tailored programs through project-based engagements or long-term partnerships. By integrating these capabilities under one roof and collaborating through the Meet The People network, it offers customized solutions aimed at delivering clear business outcomes for global brands. Its goal is to help clients grow their business and strengthen creative leadership through accountable, data-driven programs.

Company Size

51-200

Company Stage

Acquired

Total Funding

N/A

Headquarters

Chicago, Illinois

Founded

1982

Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Susan Pfeifer's Head of Operations appointment strengthens multi-market complexity management.
  • Claudia Gorelick's associate partner role elevates experience strategy to partner-level demand.
  • DetecTogether 'Response Time Matters' campaign expands into healthcare and nonprofit sectors.

What critics are saying

  • AI tools like Adobe Firefly commoditize VSA's brand strategy in 12-24 months.
  • Google, Nike in-house teams reduce VSA dependency in 18-24 months.
  • Talent attrition hits VSA's 188-person headcount in 6-12 months.

What makes VSA Partners unique

  • VSA blends consumer insights, data science, and human-centered design for measurable experiences.
  • VSA serves global brands like Google, Nike, IBM with integrated branding and technology services.
  • As Meet The People member, VSA accesses international independent agency network.

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Benefits

Health Insurance

Dental Insurance

401(k) Retirement Plan

Professional Development Budget

Performance Bonus

Company News

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VSA Partners, a strategy and creative agency, recently announced the launch of new brand identity work for client EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure.

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Early cancer detection for firefighters is focus of new campaign

DetecTogether has joined forces with the Chicago-based creative and strategy agency, VSA Partners, to launch its "Response Time Matters" campaign aimed at a high-risk demographic - firefighters.

Ethical Marketing News
Apr 2nd, 2023
VSA Honored by 2nd Annual Anthem Awards for Inspiring Racial Justice Work – Ethical Marketing News

VSA developed “Until Justice Just Is” in collaboration with the YWCA, a group famous for its advocacy and support for women.

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