Director, Advancement

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2868 - Director, Advancement (Strategic Operations) - UK

The ideal candidate is a strategic thinker with a passion for innovation and a proven ability to manage ambiguous, forward-looking projects from concept to completion.
Conceptual Thinker: The ability to take a broad, visionary idea and break it down into a testable hypothesis, a structured project plan, and clear success metrics.
Analytical Mindset: Strong analytical skills to design pilot programs with robust measurement frameworks and to analyze the results to determine business impact, ROI, and scalability.
Market Curiosity: A genuine passion for staying ahead of industry trends, with a deep interest in emerging technologies like AI and their practical application in a business context.
Ambiguity Navigation: The ability to manage innovation projects from start to finish, creating structure, clear plans, and milestones where none existed before.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: A talent for building coalitions and working with diverse teams (e.g., Technology, Finance, People) to get pilot projects off the ground and secure their expert contribution.
Influential Communication: The ability to articulate the goals, progress, and outcomes of innovation projects to a wide range of stakeholders, including senior leadership, building excitement and buy-in along the way.
8-10+ years of experience in a role focused on innovation, business transformation, strategy, or internal consulting.
Proven experience taking conceptual ideas and turning them into tangible projects, pilot programs, or new business capabilities.
Strong project management skills, with experience managing complex, ambiguous projects in an innovation or R&D context.
Excellent business analysis and financial modeling skills, with experience building business cases and measuring the impact of new initiatives.
Familiarity with emerging technologies like AI/automation and a deep understanding of how they can be applied to drive business value.
Within 6 Months: You will have taken ownership of one or two key innovation initiatives from the Advancement roadmap. You will have designed and launched a structured pilot program for your primary initiative, complete with clear goals, metrics, a project plan, and strong engagement from supporting teams.
Within 12 Months: You will have completed your first major pilot program, delivering a comprehensive analysis of the results to senior leadership. This will include a clear recommendation on the initiative's potential for wider rollout and a refined business case based on real-world data. You will be recognized as a key leader in driving the innovation agenda, successfully translating vision into proven concepts.

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