SENIOR DIRECTOR, MARKET RESEARCH, ANALYTICS AND INSIGHT

As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem solving skills and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world.

UW faculty and staff also enjoy outstanding benefits, professional growth opportunities and unique resources in an environment noted for diversity, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits and natural beauty. 

UW Advancement has an outstanding opportunity for a Senior Director, Market Research, Analytics  and Insight

Reporting to the Associate Vice President, Operating and Budget Officer and the Assistant Vice President of Brand Strategy, the Senior Director leads a talented Market Research, Analytics and Insights (MRAI) team in revolutionizing the use of data in University Advancement (UA), creating a best-in-class insights and analytical enterprise. Working closely with UA leadership, this position plays a critical role within University Advancement, providing expertise and leadership that informs strategy and decision making across the organization in collaboration with University Marketing & Communications, Development, Alumni & Stakeholder Engagement, Advancement Operations, constituency units (colleges, schools, campuses), and other UW administrative units.

By collecting business intelligence and conducting advanced analytics, the MRAI team will build actionable, transformational, and predictive insights to drive UA strategy, supporting profound engagement through better understanding of our prospective and current students, alumni, donors, volunteers, and other stakeholders. This team will provide analytics, survey research, market research, forecasting, modeling, segmentation, recommendations, personas, and dashboards.

The Senior Director exemplifies collaborative leadership by building trust, working across siloes, eliciting a range of inputs and feedback, cooperating and partnering, focusing on UA’s collective success, and providing results through transparent decisions and outputs that benefit the UW. The position forms strong working relationships across UA and the UW, plans and executes analytical roadmaps, formulates analytical strategies for solving problems, defines and prioritizes key business questions, and develops strategies to scale the impact of data on decision making.

This position will lead and grow a team to develop new approaches to understanding prospective and current student, alumni, donor, volunteer, and other stakeholder behavior to foster long-term relationships at scale; oversee the modeling of high volume of constituent data from multiple internal and external sources; advocate and educate on the value of data-driven decision making across University Advancement; offer solutions and guidance to central- and unit-based colleagues that rely on the insights drawn from a rich reservoir of data.

This position demands critical and creative thinking, forward-facing relationships with colleagues who will benefit the most from analytics, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a strong desire to support public higher education.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Leadership and Strategy Development

• Serve as a key business partner and advisor to UA leadership as it relates to the strategic application, usage, and presentation of market insights and analytics.
• Drive the vision for Advancement market insights and analytics, develop and implement a comprehensive program that provides data-driven intelligence to aid University-wide and unit development, engagement, and marketing functions; facilitate profound engagement with stakeholders across their journey and relationship to the UW, and support institutional priorities.
• Develop, manage, lead, and implement major, cross-functional efforts with a clear focus on providing actionable constituent insights that drive marketing, engagement, and fundraising strategies.
• Understanding our donors, volunteers, and students and their experience, making strategic recommendations to leadership, and collaborating on tools that engage with stakeholders.
• Strong listener to translate what constituents are saying into research priorities that will support the UA’s priorities.
• An ability to communicate up, down, and across the organization. Create an open, transparent, and ongoing dialogue that will engender cooperation, trust, and confidence.
• Present findings and strategic recommendations with clarity and concision to Advancement business partners having varying degrees of data science fluency.
• Identify, prioritize, plan and execute the research and data analysis required for making complex decisions.
• Manage and prioritize requests from business partners and set realistic expectations.
• Serve as a data-driven culture evangelist, a senior expert on analytics issues, and grow analytics capacity and standards within the organization.
• Provide guidance and thought leadership on analytical best practices to team members and business partners.
• Identify growth opportunities
• Conduct special projects, develop strategic analysis, and create ad-hoc reports for UA leadership.
• Other duties as assigned.

Program Development and Management

• Supervise and mentor a talented team of data scientists, analysts, data engineers, and other positions, providing opportunities for professional growth.
• Work extensively with units to leverage data to inform local decision making on marketing, development, and engagement issues.
• Oversee machine learning techniques and the building of predictive, descriptive, and behavioral models that are used to increase revenue, deliver time savings, increase engagement, increase student enrollment, and improve ROI.
• Develop a strong, collaborative relationship with the Information Management data and reporting teams.
• Adhere to reporting and definitional standards and policies devised by the UW’s and UA’s Data Governance Committees.
• In collaboration with the IM Reporting team, track key performance indicators and metrics related to engagement, acquisition, and retention initiatives.
• Manage budget.
• Responsible for vetting vendors and consultants when appropriate.
• Other duties as assigned.
KEY COMPETENCIES

Core

Effective communications: Expresses oneself clearly and empathetically in interactions with others and prioritizes an accessible and transparent style in all forms of communication, i.e., verbal and written, one-on-one and group, etc.
Interpersonal Awareness:   Builds and maintains positive and productive relationships and actively contributes as a member of working teams to achieve results.
Professional Credibility:   Takes responsibility for meeting goals, objectives, obligations, and solving problems while representing the mission, vision and values of the organization.
Critical Thinking:   Obtains, analyzes and evaluates information effectively in the face of ambiguity.  Makes appropriate decisions based on relevant information and experience.
Ethics and Trust:   Models and upholds the values of candor, openness, inclusiveness and honesty despite internal and external pressures.  Acts consistently with Washington State ethical guidelines and organizational core values and beliefs.
Valuing Diversity & Inclusiveness:   Respects, values and contributes to the UW’s commitment to inclusiveness and diversity.

Management

People Builder:   Committed to developing others to become leaders.
Driving Results:   Effectively communicates objectives and guides direct reports and team members to make decisions and achieve goals.
Organizational Planning:   Develops and manages comprehensive team goals and measures team progress while balancing short-term and long-term priorities that are consistent with the organization’s mission, priorities and goals.
Managing Conflict:   Recognizes and addresses conflicts and disagreements in a safe and respectful environment, manages conflicts collaboratively, and builds consensus with the best interests of the organization in mind.

Functional Expertise

Innovation Management:     Able to anticipate market trends and be effective in facilitating and managing creative processes to achieve results in self and others.
Organizational Agility:    Knowledgeable of the organization, able to balance reason and the interest of various parties, and act in an appropriate manner that is congruent with the organization’s values, goals and mission to achieve success.
Technical Agility:    Ability to quickly learn and apply new technologies, skills and concepts into existing systems and protocols while continuously seeking improvements.

Strategic
Visioning: Anticipates emerging trends and issues and develops a clear sense of purpose and goals that focus and drive the creative energy of the organization in alignment with the organization’s mission, vision, and values.
Organizational acumen:   Analyzes a situation, balances reason and the interest of others, and acts in a decisive, timely and appropriate manner that is congruent with the organization's values, goals and mission to achieve success.
Selflessness:   Demonstrates ambition first and foremost for the organization and concern for its success rather than for one’s own personal gain.
Professional will/fearlessness:   Displays an inner intensity and dedication to making everything the best that it can be. Shows resolve and determination to make the organization great.
Focused on organizational sustainability:   Communicates uncompromising desire to make the organization even more successful in the next generation.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:

Bachelor's degree and eight years of progressive experience with demonstrated competencies in data science, predictive modeling, fundraising analysis, applied marketing research, social science research, and/or related field.

Equivalent education/experience will substitute for all minimum qualifications except when there are legal requirements, such as a license/certification/registration.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Experience developing, coaching, and leading analytics teams and providing strategic guidance and decision support to decision makers, in both established and new areas.
• Have a customer-centric analytics toolbox, including customer segmentation, cohort analysis, and time-series analysis. Some fluency with causal uplift analysis also a plus. A sound grasp of user/identity tracking, front-end tagging, and clickstream data.
• Experience in an organization with long, multi-step customer journeys, with both online and offline elements. Experience with full-funnel measurement and analysis, encompassing all of the stages of the customer journey from awareness, to acquisition, engagement, consideration, trial, and finally conversion.
• Demonstrated analytical, project design/management, and creative problem-solving skills.
• Seasoned leadership skills and presence, with the ability to collaborate and influence people at various levels/areas of the organization (e.g., programmers, fundraisers, senior leadership).
• Proven research and analytical techniques, emphasizing the ability to gather, evaluate and synthesize complex and large sets of data from various sources.
• Use of data visualization to present information in a way that is clear and concise.
• Ability to impart understanding of complicated ideas and statistics in a clear and simple manner to a wide variety of stakeholders, from frontline staff to executive leadership.
• Direct experience using advanced statistical software/programming tools and languages (e.g., SAS, Python, R, SQL, ETL, Airflow, and Spark), as well as Tableau or other business intelligence or visualization software is required.
• Ability to think organizationally, conceptually, and strategically.
• Ability to maintain confidentiality.
• Ability to deal with ambiguity.
• Values the UW’s commitment to inclusiveness. Demonstrates respect and commitment to diversity.
• Demonstrated strong computer skills, including proficiency with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for correspondence, special reports, spreadsheets, databases, forms, etc.
• Experience working in a complex data environment.

DESIRED:

• Master’s Degree in Economics, Statistics, Data Science, Mathematics, Computer Science, or another quantitative field or additional certification.
• Familiarity with academic advancement in a large university setting.
• Demonstrated experience developing and executing digital engagement strategies, targeting highly segmented audiences.
• Experience with complex market segmentation strategies and execution across a variety of channels.
• Experience developing and leading a comprehensive change management plan.

WORKING CONDITIONS:

• Cubicle/open workspace environment which may result in additional or higher levels of noise and visual distractions.
• Ability to work evening and weekend hours, as necessary, on short or limited notice.
• Must have regular and reliable transportation for local travel and willing to travel when necessary.
• Frequent local travel expected.

Application Process:
The application process for UW positions may include completion of a variety of online assessments to obtain additional information that will be used in the evaluation process.  These assessments may include Work Authorization, Cover Letter and/or others.  Any assessments that you need to complete will appear on your screen as soon as you select “Apply to this position”. Once you begin an assessment, it must be completed at that time; if you do not complete the assessment you will be prompted to do so the next time you access your “My Jobs” page. If you select to take it later, it will appear on your "My Jobs" page to take when you are ready. Please note that your application will not be reviewed, and you will not be considered for this position until all required assessments have been completed.