DIRECTOR OF EVENTS

Director Of Events

Location: Arlington, VA (Hybrid) a minimum of 2 days/week in the office Salary: $110,000 - $130,000 annually

Reports to: Vice President of Strategic Engagement

About The Role

The Director of Events leads Mercatus's organization-wide events strategy and owns the standards, prioritization, and tradeoff decisions that keep a lean events function high-impact. Operating in a resource-constrained environment, the Director right-sizes the event portfolio to institutional priorities and available budget, decides which events Mercatus should own directly and which are better carried by program teams or external partners, and builds the systems that let a small core team and contract support deliver flagship events at a consistently high standard.

The Director partners with senior leadership on planning and budgeting, leads a small core team supplemented by contractors during peak periods, and serves as the single point of accountability for event quality, brand alignment, and the experience of donors, scholars, and outside guests.

Specific Duties

Portfolio Strategy & Tiered Resourcing

• Develops and maintains a tiered event portfolio that matches level of support to institutional priority: flagship events with dedicated staffing, programmatic events run from established playbooks, and lighter-touch events supported through self-service tools rather than central staffing.
• Collaborates with senior leadership to decide which events Mercatus should run, and recommends alternatives, deferrals, or cancellations when an event is not the right mechanism or the resources are not justified.
• Right-sizes the calendar to available budget and staff capacity and makes tradeoffs across the portfolio explicit rather than allowing quality to slip unmanaged.
• Establishes organization-wide standards and metrics of success for events.

Flagship Event Leadership

• Leads or oversees the organization's flagship events, including Markets and Society, EV events, the Ideas of India Conference, and the Brickell Group Unconference.
• Serves as the escalation point for high-risk or high-visibility event decisions.
• Ensures consistent quality, brand alignment, and stakeholder experience across the flagship tier.

Lean Team & Contractor Management

• Runs a small core events team and scales capacity by engaging and managing contractors around flagship-event peaks, such as the fall Markets and Society event, rather than through permanent headcount.
• Builds playbooks, templates, vendor lists, and booking processes that let program teams self-serve lighter-touch events and carry recurring programmatic events with minimal central support.
• Manages structured handoffs of bounded, repeatable events to program teams while the events team retains oversight of standards.

Budget, Cost-Sharing & Partner Agreements

• Leads event input into annual organizational budgeting and oversees allocation of event budgets to strategic priorities.
• Negotiates cost-sharing arrangements for partner-driven and externally funded events, including coverage of event-staff and overhead costs, as a condition of Mercatus support.
• Evaluates event performance and return on investment across the portfolio and gathers data and feedback to inform future strategy.

Systems, Team & Cross-Organizational Partnership

• Sets and maintains standards for event planning, execution, and evaluation, and implements improvements as needs evolve.
• Leads, mentors, and develops the events team; sets clear expectations, priorities, and performance standards; and fosters a collaborative, high-performing culture.
• Builds trust-based relationships with program leadership and stakeholders and positions the events team as a strategic, organization-wide partner.
• Facilitates alignment and decision-making on priorities and tradeoffs.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education, training, and work experience.
• Seven or more years of related experience in event strategy, planning, and execution, including complex and high-profile events; or a comparable combination of events experience and closely related work such as development, program, or operations leadership.
• Experience managing event budgets, external vendors, and contractors.

Required Skills, Knowledge and Abilities:

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong organizational, project management, and time management skills.
• Ability to think strategically and align events with organizational goals.
• Sound judgment and decision-making in high-stakes or time-sensitive situations, including comfort declining or deferring events under resource constraints.
• Experience managing external vendors and event contractors and negotiating cost-sharing or partner agreements.
• Ability to build playbooks, improve processes, and create self-service systems that let others run events to standard.
• Experience supporting organizational planning and budgeting processes.
• Strong interpersonal skills and a professional presence for donor- and guest-facing events; development or fundraising experience a plus.
• Experience utilizing MS Office (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, Teams).

Mercatus Center at George Mason University