Pop-Up Event Director

Pop-Up Event Director — Awkward Portrait Studio (Seasonal, Holiday 2026)A variety of soft skills and experience may be required for the following role Please ensure you check the overview below carefully.Awkward Family Photos is bringing its portrait studio into shopping malls for the holidays. Guests step into a set built like Grandma's living room, put on the silliest outfitswe could find, and take the most over-serious family portrait of their lives. It's a comedy brand with a lot of heart, and as it turns out people love it.We're hiring a Pop-Up Event Director to run one location for the season.The JobLocations:Capital Mall — Olympia, WABroward Mall — Plantation, FLFranklin Park Mall — Toledo, OHSouthlake Mall — Merrillville, INYorktown Center — Lombard, ILSeason: November 6th, 2026 through December 24th, 2026, plus training beforehandSchedule: Full-time seasonal, including weekends and eveningsWhat You'll Actually DoYou are the person who makes the location work. On any given day, that means:Opening and closing the booth, and owning the standard of everything in betweenLeading a small crew — booth attendants and photographers — including assisting in training any new team members over the seasonBeing the mall's point of contact: their management, their security team, their rulesReceiving the supplies, checking every item against the packing list, and getting it all packed and shipped back at the end of the seasonHandling the things nobody else should have to: an unhappy guest, an equipment failureReporting daily numbers and flagging problems early enough that we can fix themYou will not handle cash or card payments — guests pay on their own phones —but you will manage the inventory of the location.What We're Looking ForSupervisory experience in retail, events, hospitality, or anything else where you ran a floor and a team at paceGenuinely calm when it gets busy. Holiday mall traffic is relentless, and the job is mostly about keeping a small team steady through itComfortable being the adult in the room on safety and consent matters, including saying no to a paying customerAvailable across the whole season, weekends and holidays included — this is the one period we cannot flexReliable communicator. If something breaks at 6 pm on a Saturday, we need to hear it from you at 6 pm on a SaturdayNice to have, not required: experience with pop-up retail or seasonal photo operations, a driver's license, prior experience training staff.What You Don't NeedYou don't need to be a photographer. You don't need to know anything about cameras. We have photographers; we need someone to run the place. xhyhwjd How to ApplySend a résumé and a short note — a few sentences is fine — telling us about a time you ran something busy and it went well, or ran something busy and it didn't, and what you did about it. Apply here: Pop-Up Event Director applicationWe hire from all backgrounds and experiences, and we'd rather hear from you than not if you're reading this and wondering whether you're a fit.Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.