Vice President of Marketing & Audience Development

Vice President of Marketing & Audience Development — North Carolina Symphony

Lead the marketing, communications, and audience development strategy for North Carolina's State orchestra — a 300-concert-a-year institution reaching all 100 state counties, led by Grammy Award-winning Music Director Carlos Miguel Prieto.

Founded in 1932, the North Carolina Symphony (NCS) is a vital and honored component of North Carolina's cultural life. The professional musicians of the orchestra serve communities across the state each year through concerts, education programs, and community engagement offerings reaching adults and schoolchildren in concert halls, auditoriums, gymnasiums, restaurants, clubs, and outdoor settings, with NCS also expanding access to audiences around the globe through concerts and educational offerings available through the digital space. NCS's state headquarters venue is the spectacular Meymandi Concert Hall at the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Raleigh, with statewide service including series in Chapel Hill, Wilmington, New Bern, and Moore County, as well as the Summerfest series at its summer home, the outdoor Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary. NCS leads one of the most extensive education programs of any symphony orchestra in the country, serving over 150,000 students each year.

Reporting to the President & CEO, the Vice President of Marketing & Audience Development is a key member of the senior leadership team responsible for developing and executing statewide strategies that achieve earned revenue, audience growth, patron loyalty, and institutional communications objectives. The Vice President provides executive leadership for marketing, sales, audience development, communications, brand strategy, patron experience, and patron loyalty initiatives that strengthen the North Carolina Symphony's visibility, deepen patron engagement, and advance the organization's long-term financial sustainability.

What you'll do:

In Earned Income & Marketing (40% of the role), you will provide strategic leadership for all statewide earned revenue initiatives, achieving annual ticket revenue goals of at least $5.7 million while managing departmental budgets and maximizing return on marketing investment. You will lead, mentor, and evaluate the marketing, sales, and communications team in planning and executing integrated, multi-channel campaigns using customer segmentation and analytics, dynamic pricing, targeted messaging, CRM technology, and performance analytics including regression analysis and sales pacing, and you will develop pricing, packaging, and promotional strategies that maximize attendance, revenue, and long-term patron value across subscriptions, single-ticket, and special event programming.

In Institutional Communications & Audience Development (20% of the role), you will develop the Symphony's comprehensive brand, communications, and audience engagement strategy to strengthen visibility, deepen community connections, and position the organization as one of North Carolina's premier cultural institutions, overseeing public relations, media relations, digital communications, social media, website content, videos, podcasts, email marketing, and print publications.

In Strategic Leadership & Organizational Sustainability (15% of the role), you will partner with the President & CEO and senior leadership team to develop and implement long-range strategies that strengthen financial sustainability and advance the Symphony's mission, providing leadership in earned revenue forecasting, expense management, programming recommendations, patron loyalty strategy, technology, and digital innovation.

In Customer Experience & Patron Loyalty (15% of the role), you will set the standard for organization-wide, customer-facing operations to deliver exceptional patron experiences before, during, and after performances, and you will lead organization-wide patron loyalty initiatives in collaboration with the Vice President of Philanthropy to strengthen retention, engagement, and lifetime patron value.

The remaining 10% of the role includes other duties and special projects as assigned.

What you'll bring:

Required:

• A bachelor's degree or equivalent
• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in performing arts marketing
• A track record of meeting and exceeding revenue and attendance objectives through integrated subscription and single-ticket marketing campaigns and CRM-driven audience engagement
• Demonstrated ability to analyze data, develop strategic plans, and make informed decisions that advance organizational goals
• Demonstrated success leading high-performing integrated communications and audience engagement initiatives
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal, written, and presentation skills
• High standards of integrity, professionalism, and sound judgment
• A collaborative leadership style with flexibility, initiative, and commitment to continuous improvement
• Commitment to supporting the mission, vision, and values of the North Carolina Symphony
• Proficiency with Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Copilot, and OneDrive
• Ability to travel throughout North Carolina and work evenings and weekends as needed
• A valid driver's license and reliable transportation, as driving between worksites and to various locations may be a central function of the position

Preferred:

• Orchestra marketing experience

Position Details:

This is a full-time salaried position based in the Triangle region of North Carolina. The annual salary is $140,000. The benefits package includes health insurance through Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, long-term disability coverage, life insurance, an employee assistance program, and voluntary vision and dental insurance. Enrollees in the optional 403(b) retirement plan receive an employer match, and the Health Savings Account offering provides a bi-annual employer contribution.

Raleigh, the Symphony's home base, is North Carolina's capital and the largest city in the Triangle (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) metropolitan area — one of the fastest-growing regions in the US, roughly 140 miles from the Appalachian highlands and 130 miles from the Atlantic Coast. The area is home to major corporate hubs including Fidelity Investments, Duke Health, IBM, Red Hat, SAS, GlaxoSmithKline, and Cisco, thirteen institutions of higher education, and a thriving cultural and sports scene including the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes and the sports programs of Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NC State.

To Apply:

Interested applicants should submit a resume and statement of interest to Rachael Holloway, Recruiter, ThinkingAhead Executive Search, at View email address on click.appcast.io.

ThinkingAhead Executive Search is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to a work environment that supports, inspires and respects all individuals. Personnel processes are merit-based and applied without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, age, disability, national or ethnic ancestry, military service status, citizenship, or other protected characteristic. This applies to every aspect of employment including hiring, training, advancement and termination. The firm is committed to creating a just culture of diversity, equity and inclusion by practicing, within the company and the marketplace we serve, intentional strategies that serve marginalized individuals and groups.