Senior Director, Head of Visa Design Studio

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Job Description

We’re looking for a dynamic business leader to join and support us in our vision of building a best-in-class Global Creative Studio for one of the most impactful brands in the world.

The ideal candidate will be a strategic and entrepreneurial leader with a proven track record of building and leading successful global agencies or business/account teams - either within advertising agencies or at brand-side internal creative studios.

This person must have a passion for understanding and articulating global business problems, a talent for building strong partnerships with marketing executives, key global business stakeholders and regional brand and client teams. This candidate needs to be a great champion of the creative output with a strong belief in the creative product as the solution to business problems and a force multiplier.

This person must have a passion for strategy and creativity with a portfolio of work that shows successful global campaign initiatives that have earned and driven outsized business and media results.

They must have the ability to build and operationalize a team that consistently produces innovative and integrated creative solutions across the full spectrum of the media mix. They need to be able to thrive in a global environment, and must be comfortable guiding internal teams, agencies and production partners, but also willing to roll up their sleeves to do the work when necessary.

Effortless collaboration is a must - as this role will work closely with regions across the world to ensure best in class creative is implemented. This candidate must have a genuine appetite for building: for building and motivating people, for building a culture that fosters creativity, for building teams, and for building new capabilities.

This role will be responsible to lead a team of Business leaders, Project management and production.

This role will report into the CMO, AP Marketing.

What you’ll do:

Build a Center of Operating Excellence

• Be a part of the Creative Studio leadership team who will support in strategically shaping and building upon the vision and operating model for the Global Creative Studio.
• Build and maintain key relationships with senior Marketing executives by demonstrating a deep understanding of the global integrated marketing landscape and a commitment to driving business results.
• Develop a comprehensive operating plan with both immediate and long-term goals and milestones, assessing the business needs to shape capabilities.
• Ensure the Global Creative Studio is delivering best-in-class capabilities and partnership across all regions instilling a culture of collaboration

Build relationships

• Help lead and manage both internal and external agency partners in creative strategy, execution and production          
• Provide thought partnership to business partners both regional and global and regularly make recommendations on directions to improve area under scope
• Quantify key relationships between different parts of the business to facilitate prioritization decisions

Build upon a culture that fosters remarkable creativity

• Contribute to an environment that fosters remarkable creativity
• Maintain a culture where people love to work (and want to come and work), feel they can flourish, and are proud of what they contribute
• Support the development of remarkable ideas - across a variety of marketing touchpoints - that resonate with our audiences, earn an outsized share of cultural conversation, and create competitive advantage.
• Influence and achieve consensus on direction, priority, and decision making of area under scope
• Ensure quality output in all creative output.
• Ensure all creative is developed on time, on budget, and on brief.

• 15-18 years of experience with a bachelor’s degree or 12 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g., Masters, MBA, JD, MD or PhD)
• Deep agency-side or client-side experience working with or at global brands
• Thought leader of highly successful creative, brand development, and multichannel marketing campaigns
• Experience leading campaigns that have driven outsized business results and won recognition in the industry.
• Experience working and living in multiple countries as well as managing teams across geographies to have an informed market-first view to global marketing.
• Excellent people leader with proven ability to manage teams, the work, and influence outcomes in highly matrixed organizations with multiple stakeholders.
• Role models and influences aspirational behaviors of leading courageously, obsessing about customers, collaborating as one Visa, and executing with excellence.
• Strong executive presence with highly effective written and verbal communication skills including the ability to present with impact.
• Strong planning, organizational and problem-solving skills.
• Resourcefulness with strong sense of accountability and results-oriented drive.
• Ability to initiate and drive opportunities independently across multiple complex projects that have strategic implications for the brand and company, while operating in an environment that changes quickly.

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.