Senior Director

About the Role

A critical member of the Athleta Marketing Leadership Team, the Senior Director of Partnerships leads wholistic partnership strategies, relationships and implementation for the brand. You will be charged with authoring a partnership strategy, taking into consideration athlete partners, brand partners, collaborators and influencers to grow brand awareness, credibility, and emotional connections among our customers. You will drive the strategic framework, deployment and scaling of our brand partnerships through key initiatives and milestones. You will advance Athleta’s mission, priorities and growth strategies through this lens, leading the team positioned to support these responsibilities and reporting to the Head of Marketing.

What You’ll Do

• Build a holistic brand partnership strategy inclusive of key partners, athletes, collaborators and influencers to drive overall brand mission and vision.

• Conduct regular market scans to identify new business development opportunities and partnerships to support Athleta’s future growth/vision, with concerted focus on building a pipeline.

• Evaluate, structure and execute potential partnerships and business development prospects; build business cases for recommended opportunities that drive brand awareness, provide access to new customer acquisition opportunities and accelerate current capabilities around community and experience.

• Oversee all aspects of existing and future brand partnerships including planning, negotiating/overseeing contracts and contract renewals, ongoing relationship building and management.

• Manage operational implementation of all facets of the partnership/sponsorship, including securing creative/program assets, developing schedules and deadlines, leading and influencing cross-functional teams required for execution, etc.

• Provide end-to-end account management of subset of key partnership opportunities as well as collaboration with cross-functional leaders where partnership opportunities intersect

• Create processes by leveraging data, insights and measurement tools to measure the success of individual partnerships and the partnership program, tracking towards Athleta’s long range plan

• Create more frequent executive-level partnership marketing metrics (i.e. “dashboard”) updates.

• Collaborate with key cross functional partners to drive, inform and communicate seasonal plans to ensure partnerships are integrated into the greater business and brand plans.  

Who You Are

• Able to influence using a broad range of styles to drive desired result, especially with cross-functional business partners who are not direct line reports
• Ability to work in the details without losing sight of the big picture and understand the importance of reflecting Athleta’s mission and values into new and existing opportunities
• Highly strategic approach to selecting and executing partnerships
• Excellent interpersonal and people leadership skills; strong executive presence
• Demonstrated ability to deliver results through coaching, innovation and accountability
• Knowledge of and enthusiasm for the Fashion/Sports/Fitness industries
• 12-15 + years of brand partnership experience, with a proven track record of identifying and executing mutually beneficial partnerships
• Ability to travel
• Agile, proactive, can work in fast-paced environment and able to prioritize effectively
• Strong verbal and written communication and presentation skills
• Outstanding collaboration and project management skills, including demonstrated track record in managing complex projects across functional lines and through creative problem-solving
• Inspirational leader of small and scrappy teams
• Experience in budget planning and management
• Ability to travel