Executive Director, Marketing

Responsibilities

• Shape the Foundation’s broader marketing strategy and priorities in partnership with senior leadership, translating organizational and fundraising goals into clear marketing strategies, investments, and measurable outcomes.
• Set and lead an integrated marketing strategy across channels and audience segments, ensuring touchpoints are coordinated, data-informed, and consistent with the Foundation's brand and mission.
• Lead, develop, and manage a team that includes senior marketing professionals and the Senior Director, Community Fundraising & Children’s Fund, establishing clear priorities, decision rights, and shared goals across the function.
• Set the marketing strategy for Board, Transformational and Principal Gifts, and Grateful Patient Family (GPF) audiences, serving as a strategic advisor to senior fundraising leaders and ensuring engagement is coordinated, personalized, and aligned with broader fundraising priorities.
• Champion a digital-first operating model: prioritize digital and automated channels by default, and reserve print and direct mail for the specific audiences and moments where the data shows it is the most effective option.
• Establish a cohesive audience segmentation and journey framework that puts audience and persona insights into practice, so communications are coordinated, relevant, and tailored across channels and programs.
• Serve as a senior advisor to leaders across the Foundation on audience strategy, marketing opportunities, channel investment, and integrated engagement, bringing a marketing perspective to organization-wide priorities.
• Build and evolve the Foundation’s marketing capabilities, identifying the skills, tools, processes, and resources needed to support a modern, high-performing marketing function.
• Establish a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring emerging practices in digital marketing, automation, AI, testing, personalization, and analytics are translated into scalable team capabilities and measurable business impact.
• Define the marketing performance framework, establishing goals, KPIs, measurement practices, and reporting that connect marketing activity to fundraising and organizational outcomes.

Requirements

• A bachelor's degree in a related discipline and/or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of experience in marketing, marketing communications, direct response, fundraising marketing, or a similar field, including significant people-leadership experience.
• Demonstrated experience setting and leading an integrated marketing strategy across channels, audiences, and programs, with the ability to translate organizational priorities into marketing strategy and measurable outcomes.
• Experience analyzing donors, campaigns, or customer data and translating it into strategy, metrics, and business insights.
• Strong aptitude for using AI tools and applying them to marketing work, with comfort evaluating and adopting new AI-enabled tools as they emerge.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, with the ability to build a compelling, audience-centered case across channels
• Strong people-leadership skills, with experience managing and developing senior professionals or functional leaders and building high-performing teams.
• Experience serving as a strategic partner to senior leadership, influencing organizational priorities and decisions related to strategy, investment, audience engagement, and performance.

Preferred

• Experience leading marketing transformation, organizational change, or the development of a more integrated and scalable marketing operating model.
• Marketing automation platforms (e.g., HubSpot) and CRM/donor database systems.
• AI-enabled marketing tools, personalization engines, and testing/experimentation programs.
• Grateful patient and family (GPF) programs, healthcare, or higher-education fundraising or marketing.
• Building or scaling in-house marketing capability to reduce dependency on outside agencies.

Benefits

• Generous leave, including PTO, holidays, Summer Fridays, and a sabbatical (after 7 years of employment)
• Annual bonus opportunity
• Retirement plan + employer match
• Premium Medical and Dental coverage
• FSA + dependent care FSA
• Employer-paid life insurance
• Legal services plan
• Commuter Benefits, including CalTrain “Go Pass” Program
• 4-week paid maternity and paternity leave for new parents
• Stipend for home office and mobile phone