Senior Vice President, Influencer Strategy

Senior Vice President, Influencer Strategy

New York, New York, United States

Weber Shandwick is more than a leading global PR agency – we're an engagement agency and we're working in and around the cutting edge of the new media landscape. We're storytellers, content creators, and we engage people IN the story. Our success is built on a deep commitment to client service and to our people. We embrace creativity and collaboration, and we engage stakeholders in new and creative ways to build brands and reputations.

Senior Vice President, Influencer Strategy

The Senior Vice President, Influencer Strategy serves as a senior leader within the North America Influencer Practice, responsible for driving client excellence, business growth, operational innovation, and influencer marketing capability development across the region.

This role will act as a trusted advisor to executive-level clients while leading the evolution of influencer strategy, technology adoption, measurement frameworks, and best practices across North America. The SVP will partner closely with regional leadership and the North America Senior Leadership Team to build scalable influencer solutions, strengthen organizational capabilities, and ensure consistent knowledge sharing and operational excellence throughout the network.

The ideal candidate combines deep influencer expertise with strong business acumen, experience working with enterprise technology brands, a passion for innovation and AI-powered solutions, and a proven ability to build high-performing teams.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior-level and C-suite clients, providing strategic counsel on influencer marketing programs, creator partnerships, talent management, compensation structures, measurement frameworks, and risk management.
• Develop a deep understanding of client businesses, audiences, competitive landscapes, and growth objectives to create impactful influencer strategies that drive measurable outcomes.
• Lead the creation and execution of integrated influencer and creator programs in partnership with Strategy, Creative, Analytics, Paid Media, and Client Experience teams.
• Provide executive-level recommendations and thought leadership on emerging trends, platform developments, AI applications, and creator economy innovations.
• Act as senior escalation point for complex influencer engagements, ensuring best-in-class client service and program delivery.
• Serve as the lead for influencer marketing technology, AI-powered solutions, measurement platforms, and operational tools.
• Develop and execute a strategic roadmap for influencer technology adoption, optimization, and governance across the network.
• Partner with regional leaders and specialty teams to evaluate, implement, and scale best-in-class influencer tools, platforms, and workflows.
• Act as the primary subject matter expert on influencer technology, AI applications, creator analytics, and measurement innovation.
• Drive standardization of influencer tools, reporting methodologies, operational processes, and measurement frameworks across North America.
• Continuously evaluate emerging technologies and industry partners to improve operational efficiency, campaign effectiveness, and business outcomes.
• Play a leadership role in the North America Influencer Center of Excellence, helping shape the future of the discipline and drive consistency across markets.
• Establish and maintain communication frameworks that effectively cascade key business updates, client learnings, industry trends, technology advancements, and best practices throughout the influencer organization.
• Create scalable playbooks, frameworks, and training programs that elevate team expertise across influencer strategy, technology, analytics, measurement, and AI.
• Partner with the North America Senior Leadership Team to identify capability gaps and implement solutions that improve organizational effectiveness.
• Foster strong collaboration across regions to ensure alignment on priorities, processes, and strategic initiatives.
• Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing influencer team while creating a culture of accountability, innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning.
• Support succession planning and career development efforts by identifying and nurturing future leaders within the practice.
• Proactively coach team members and facilitate participation in training, development, and growth opportunities.
• Build and scale influencer teams to support client growth and evolving business needs.
• Champion a culture of knowledge sharing, cross-functional collaboration, and operational excellence.
• Lead influencer strategy efforts for major new business opportunities and support inbound requests across the North America network.
• Serve as the senior influencer representative on new business pitches, strategic planning initiatives, and growth opportunities.
• Identify opportunities to expand influencer services across existing accounts and unlock incremental revenue opportunities.
• Partner with account leaders to solve business challenges, strengthen client relationships, and drive organic growth.
• Contribute to thought leadership initiatives that position the agency as a leader in influencer marketing, creator partnerships, AI innovation, and technology-enabled communications.
• Provide strategic leadership for influencer programs supporting enterprise technology, innovation, and business transformation initiatives.
• Develop and oversee strategies that leverage industry experts, thought leaders, executives, creators, and professional influencers to drive business impact.
• Build and maintain relationships with influential voices across business, technology, leadership, innovation, and professional creator communities.
• Guide teams in leveraging professional content creators and executive influencers to support thought leadership, reputation management, and business objectives.
• Bring expertise in working with LinkedIn creators, executive voices, and professional influencer ecosystems.

Qualifications

• 9+ years of experience in influencer marketing, social media, communications, or integrated marketing, preferably within an agency environment.
• Proven experience leading large-scale influencer programs and managing high-performing teams.
• Deep understanding of the influencer marketing landscape, creator economy, social platforms, and emerging industry trends.
• Strong experience working with enterprise technology brands, B2B marketing initiatives, and executive influencer programs.
• Demonstrated expertise with influencer technology platforms, social analytics tools, measurement solutions, and AI-powered marketing technologies.
• Experience evaluating, implementing, and managing influencer technology solutions and operational workflows.
• Strong strategic planning, client counseling, business development, and relationship management skills.
• Exceptional communication, presentation, negotiation, and storytelling abilities.
• Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive alignment across complex organizations.
• Experience building and scaling teams while fostering an inclusive, collaborative culture.

Is This You?

Be a driver of culture: Must have true passion and understanding of pop culture and are part of the community (be it music, gaming, fashion, food, internet culture, etc.) This job is the intersection of creative, strategy, marketing, technology, content creation and production; your energy must be driven by your lifestyle. You must influence creative ideations: from the ideas presented, to the influencers selected, to the content created, all the way down to the language used in post copy.

Have high cultural competencies: Understand the role and importance of diversity, equity & inclusion (DE&I) You must be culturally vigilant with the ability to understand, communicate with and effectively interact with people across cultures.

Have "Gravitas" in the influencer space and skin-in-the-game: Deep understanding of the influencer landscape is required. Proven ability to build, speak and grow relationships with change agents and cultural makers (celebrities, influencers, artists, thought leaders) directly or via their agents. You must be open to a public-facing role; willingness to speak publicly about influencer trends when opportunities present itself to the WS Influencer Team.

Know how to identify and manage diverse vendors and partners: in an industry where technologies (saas platforms, AI, managed services, etc) are popping on the daily, at high volume, no less, you must have experience working with RFPs and meeting with leading tech companies to understand their services and identify their uniqueness (and keep up with their ongoing changes in our WS influencer database)

Be ready to lead at any moment: working with the Influence Lead, NA, you will learn to "step up to the plate" and lead effectively in the client's and agency's best interests while also helping to cultivate, mentor and coach mid to junior staff members on the influencer team.

Hustle: identify influencer opportunities (organic or new) to ensure influencer marketing continues to be a strong marketing discipline and revenue driver on your assigned account or at Weber Shandwick.

Think like a lawyer: risk management is big to us. you understand how important it is to follow best practices (FDA guidelines, FTC updates, platform requirements), continuously build our COE by partnering with legal and finance to ensure risk and liabilities are reduced and tamed for every campaign you touch.

Have experience building engaged audiences: on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Clubhouse and other distribution platforms.

Know how to build a story: you will build client presentations that tell smart, compelling stories, never "rinse and repeat" which requires you to be highly motivated, energetically charged