Director – Brand Partnerships

Your role in one sentence

You'll own the growth strategy for a portfolio of Ripple Street's most valuable CPG relationships, and turn first programs into partnerships that compound for years.

Who you are

• You see the whole shape of a relationship. Where it stands today, where it could be in three years, and the two or three moves that get it there. You have done this before, and you can name the accounts that prove it.

• You do not sell to one person. You know the champion who loves you often cannot fund you, and the person who can fund you may never take your call. You map the whole group. You know who outlasts the rotation, which door procurement is standing in front of, and when the agency is the room you actually have to win.

• You are genuinely curious about people. Not as a technique. You want to know how a category leader thinks, what a brand team is being measured on this year, how an agency lead is judged by their client, who actually controls the money and why. That curiosity is what gets you into rooms other people do not get into.

• You work their calendar, not yours. You know that in CPG the plan gets written months before the money moves, and that being early is the whole game. You have lost a year to bad timing once, and you did not let it happen again.

• You would rather build than defend. Protecting a renewal is not the job you want. You want to walk into an account doing one thing and leave it doing five.

• You make the people around you better. You share what is working before anyone asks. You would rather the whole team hit than be the only one who does.

Why this role exists

Ripple Street is built on something brands cannot manufacture: real people, using real products, telling real people about it. The brands that understand it, and the agencies that bring us to them, have been with us for years.

But most of those relationships still start the way they always have. One program. One brand team. One line in one budget. In CPG that is a fragile place to sit. Budgets move, teams rotate, and plans get written long before money does.

That is why this role exists. You will take a portfolio of our most valuable relationships and own the growth arc of each one: where it expands, who you need to know to get there, and what it takes to close it. You will be the person a brand team or their agency calls when they are writing next year's plan, not the one calling after it is written. And you will set the standard the rest of the partnerships team runs on.

This is a role for someone who wants the account strategy, the relationship, and the close. Not one of the three.

What you'll actually do

Own the growth strategy for your portfolio

• Decide where each account grows next, guided by where the opportunity and the relationship actually point

• Lead accounts through the full arc, from a first program into a partnership that spans brand, shopper, digital, and trade

• Work each account against the client's planning calendar, so we are inside the plan before budgets lock rather than pitching after

• Build account plans clear enough that the rest of the team can learn from them

Build relationships that outlast the people in them

• Hold the senior relationships that unlock multi-year work: brand and category leadership, VPs of Marketing, the people who survive a reorg

• Build wide as well as deep, across shopper, e-commerce, trade, procurement, finance, and the agencies that shape the shortlist

• Be a genuinely useful advisor on brand and category strategy, not a vendor with good rapport

Close the highest-value work

• Lead negotiation and close on your portfolio's flagship opportunities, with a Solutions Architect alongside you on solution design

• Arm your champion with proof they can use in the rooms you are not in

• Navigate procurement, legal, and multi-stakeholder sign-off without spending the relationship to get there

Raise the bench

• Coach Partnership Managers building toward portfolio ownership, using your live accounts as the teaching material

• Turn what you learn into playbooks the whole team runs on

What you'll need to do this job well

• Eight to twelve years in CPG, brand-side marketing, agency, or commerce partnerships, with real ownership of growth strategy on major accounts. What matters is that you grew something, not that you managed it.

• A buying group you can actually describe. Not a decision maker. The group. Who wanted it, who funded it, who could have stopped it, and what you did about each of them.

• Relationships at the VP and category level that turned into something. Anyone can get a meeting. We want to hear about the one that became a three-year partnership.

• Confidence in the hard commercial conversations. Scope, pricing, terms, procurement. On the largest deals, with the most stakeholders in the room.

• Comfort selling as a team. Our best work has a Solutions Architect, a strategist, and operations in it. If you have only ever won alone, this will feel different.

• Experience developing other commercial people, formally or not.

Logistics

• Location: 500 7th Ave, NYC (Garment District). In-office 2 to 3 days a week. Anticipate 10-20% travel.

• Reports to: Stephanie McHale, SVP, Partnerships & Solutions