Associate Vice President, Strategy

Highlights

This is an Associate Vice President-level leadership role for the Strategy discipline. We are looking for someone with at least 10 years of experience leading strategy engagements that include research, analysis, insight development, and strategic direction. Experience within a brand or creative agency environment is strongly preferred, along with demonstrated success developing strategists, evolving methodologies, and guiding complex Partner engagements.

At Parisleaf, we expect someone in this role to:

• Lead the Strategy discipline, establishing clear standards, methodologies, and best practices that strengthen the quality and consistency of our work.
• Provide strategic oversight across engagements, ensuring insights are meaningful, recommendations are actionable, and deliverables support each Partner's goals.
• Coach, develop, and manage Strategy team members, providing the clarity, feedback, and support they need to grow and deliver excellent work.
• Serve as a trusted senior advisor and lead facilitator in Partner interactions, navigating complex stakeholders and guiding teams toward alignment and confident decisions.
• Collaborate with leaders across disciplines to strengthen integrated delivery, proactively identify risks, and ensure strategy effectively informs creative outcomes.
• Contribute to company growth by supporting business development, identifying opportunities to expand Partner relationships, and advancing company-wide priorities.

About Parisleaf

We are a brand & digital agency specializing in partnering with Nonprofits. Most of our work helps support fundraising efforts by building brands for major fundraising campaigns. As we often say, money is mission fuel in the right hands.

We're seeking people who share our values of gratitude, responsibility, integrity, candor, and empathy. Curious people who believe good strategy and good design can drive fundraising. We love making things for a living and are in it for the long haul. For us at Parisleaf, that means designing an agency culture built on love and grounded in integrity. Whether the role is in creative, operations, or business development, everyone at Parisleaf is dedicated to helping partners (or Partners, as we refer to them) find and show their purpose.

Our partners want to leave their corner of the world a little better than they found it. They seek creative partners who will advocate for their audience. They want substance and style. They hire us for who we are as much or more than what we do.

About You

You are a strategic leader who thrives at the intersection of people, ideas, and impact. Equal parts coach, practitioner, and partner, you'll lead our Strategy discipline while continuing to guide some of our most important partner engagements. You're energized by developing others just as much as you are by solving complex strategic challenges, and you find fulfillment in helping both teammates and partners grow.

You believe great strategy isn't just about delivering recommendations—it's about creating clarity, building alignment, and empowering organizations to move confidently toward their vision. You're comfortable leading executive-level conversations, facilitating workshops with diverse stakeholders, and navigating ambiguity with confidence and empathy. You know how to ask the questions others haven't considered, uncover meaningful insights, and guide teams toward thoughtful, actionable solutions.

You have a deep appreciation for branding and the many ways it comes to life—from messaging and visual identity to digital experiences, campaigns, and activation. You think holistically, ensuring strategic insights translate into work that is both creatively compelling and organizationally meaningful.

You're an exceptional relationship builder. You earn trust quickly, cultivate long-term partnerships, and naturally identify opportunities to deepen relationships over time. While traditional sales may not be your passion, you're energized by stewarding partner relationships, supporting renewals, identifying opportunities for expanded engagement, and helping prospective partners understand the value Parisleaf can bring to their mission.

As a leader, you love helping others succeed. You enjoy coaching strategists, elevating the quality of their thinking, and creating the systems, methodologies, and feedback that strengthen an entire discipline. You're excited to shape how strategy is practiced at Parisleaf—not just by doing exceptional work yourself, but by building a team capable of delivering it consistently.

You are curious, organized, proactive, and deeply collaborative. You create clarity from complexity, communicate with confidence and humility, and know when to lead, when to listen, and when to challenge assumptions. You think on your feet, read the room well, and bring both rigor and warmth to every interaction. You can confidently defend your recommendations with wisdom, research, and sound judgment, while always setting your ego aside in service of the best outcome for our partners and teammates.

Your experience in the nonprofit and fundraising sector is highly valued. You understand the unique opportunities and challenges mission-driven organizations face and are passionate about helping them build brands and campaigns that inspire generosity and advance their missions.

The Role

The Associate Vice President of Strategy is responsible for leading and developing the Strategy discipline at Parisleaf. This role oversees the quality, consistency, and evolution of our strategic work while managing and mentoring the Strategy team. As a senior strategic leader, the Associate Vice President serves as a trusted advisor to partners, guides complex engagements, and helps shape the agency's strategic point of view.

The Associate Vice President of Strategy works closely with Creative, Operations, Business Development, and Leadership to ensure strategic excellence across all partner engagements and to continuously strengthen Parisleaf's methodologies, processes, and offerings.

Team Leadership & Development

• Directly manage, coach, and develop members of the Strategy team.
• Conduct regular one-on-ones, performance reviews, development planning, and internal meetings, as appropriate. .
• Establish clear expectations and accountability for strategic excellence.
• Support hiring, onboarding, and career pathing for Strategy team members.
• Foster a culture of curiosity, collaboration, candor, and continuous learning.
• Identify growth opportunities and help team members expand their skills and strategic capabilities.
• Serve as the primary leader and advocate for the Strategy discipline within the agency.

Strategy Methodology & Process

• Own and evolve Parisleaf's strategic methodologies, frameworks, tools, and best practices.
• Ensure strategic processes are documented, scalable, and consistently applied across engagements.
• Identify opportunities to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of strategic work, especially within existing and emerging service lines.
• Develop training, resources, and guidance that elevate the capabilities of the Strategy team and agency.
• Partner with the Leadership Team to continuously refine how strategy integrates into the broader partner experience.
• Help shape and improve agency offerings, services, and strategic deliverables.

Strategic Oversight

• Maintain quality standards and strategic consistency across the agency's portfolio of work.
• Serve as a senior reviewer for key strategic recommendations, presentations, and deliverables.
• Provide guidance and support to strategists navigating complex partner situations or strategic challenges.
• Ensure strategic recommendations align with partner goals, fundraising objectives, organizational realities, and agency standards.
• Identify emerging trends, opportunities, and innovations that strengthen Parisleaf's strategic offerings.
• Ensure strategic recommendations are grounded in research, informed by stakeholder insights, and aligned with partner goals.
• Help teams identify opportunities, risks, and areas requiring deeper strategic exploration.
• Maintain a high standard of thinking, problem-solving, facilitation, and storytelling across all strategic work.
• Ensure strategic insights are effectively translated into compelling creative and activation outcomes.

Partner Delivery

• Maintain a pulse on all Partner accounts, providing strategic oversight, identifying risks and opportunities, and supporting teams when senior-level guidance is needed.
• Lead complex, high-profile engagements from discovery through activation.
• Serve as a senior advisor to Partner leadership teams, helping navigate organizational challenges, stakeholder dynamics, and critical decisions.
• Facilitate executive-level workshops, strategic planning sessions, and alignment conversations.
• Ensure strategic thinking remains consistent, actionable, and effective throughout every phase of an engagement.
• Partner with Creative and Operations leaders to align strategic direction, execution, and Partner experience.
• Guide recommendations across positioning, messaging, naming, campaign strategy, donor engagement, and activation.
• Identify opportunities to deepen relationships, create additional value, and maintain momentum as Partner priorities evolve.

Business Development

• Partner with Leadership and Business Development teams to pursue new partnership opportunities.
• Participate in discovery conversations, proposal development, and partner pitches.
• Contribute strategic thinking and fundraising expertise throughout the sales process.
• Help shape solutions that align partner needs with Parisleaf's capabilities and approach.
• Support the development of case studies, presentations, and strategic narratives that demonstrate agency impact.
• Build relationships that contribute to agency growth and long-term partner success.

Agency Leadership

• Serve as a leader within the agency, helping shape priorities, initiatives, and culture.
• Contribute to annual planning, departmental goal setting, and strategic initiatives.
• Champion strategic thinking across all departments and areas of the business.
• Partner with Leadership to identify opportunities for agency growth, innovation, and improvement.
• Contribute to thought leadership through speaking, writing, training, and knowledge sharing.
• Support cross-functional collaboration and alignment across teams.
• Act as a steward of Parisleaf's values, standards, and commitment to excellence.

Professional Expectations

• Demonstrate exceptional communication skills in both written and verbal formats.
• Exercise sound judgment and decision-making in complex situations.
• Balance strategic thinking with practical execution and partner needs.
• Effectively manage time, priorities, budgets, and scope across multiple engagements.
• Build trust with partners, teammates, and stakeholders through integrity, candor, empathy, and accountability.
• Remain curious, adaptable, and committed to continuous learning and improvement.

This is a full-time, remote, salaried position commensurate with experience. We are a fully distributed team. Travel is required.

The Opportunity

At Parisleaf, we write and design all kinds of things, but they always revolve around the brand. And we're on a mission to help our partners fundraise to help fuel their mission. You will work with our multidisciplinary team on projects ranging from competitive analysis and stakeholder interviews to verbal and visual identity. You'll devise strategies to ignite, support, and guide the team to build campaign brands, brand guides, print collateral, web, video, and environmental design.

You'll spend a lot of time on Zoom and onsite with our partners. And while you'll spend a lot of your time conducting and synthesizing research and developing a strategy for partners, you'll also be responsible for helping us grow. We are looking for someone who enjoys developing ideas with partners and colleagues and can then hunker down and truly communicate and sell the power of that strategy.

While this is a new role at Parisleaf, we've been doing it all along. We've developed a proven research process, but we're looking for someone who lives and breathes strategy and can make their mark on our work and help us continue to refine this department. 

Background/Requirements

This is a full-time, remote salaried position commensurate with experience. We are a fully distributed team. Travel is required. We only accept applications from candidates currently residing in the continental United States. We are committed to building a diverse and passionate team. Women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals are encouraged to apply.

Parisleaf provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, genetics, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or veteran status. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.