Group Account Director

Responsibilities

• You’ll be the person clients trust to steer their business, the person your team looks to for direction and standards, and the person who ensures our best work gets made and gets seen.
• You’ll go deep on your clients’ businesses, categories, and competitive landscapes — translating market shifts into real strategic counsel, not just status updates.
• You’ll run QBRs that showcase impact and surface new opportunity, build trust-based relationships at every level, and cultivate genuine senior and C-suite relationships, not just day-to-day contacts.
• You’ll drive organic growth across your accounts, contribute actively to new business, and identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities across the network.
• On the financial side, you’ll own forecast and pipeline visibility, manage project burn in close partnership with Operations, lead procurement conversations, and bring performance against plan into monthly finance reviews — so nothing about the health of your business is a surprise to you or to leadership.
• You’ll lead the full cross-functional client team — not just direct reports — with clear roles and shared accountability.
• You’ll invest in your team’s development, delegate intentionally, and stay closely attuned to workload and morale.
• You’ll also act as an extension of agency leadership: managing up on risks early, modeling the standards and energy you want the agency to have, and being a visible, active contributor to Iris’s culture and priorities beyond your own House.
• You’ll be a genuine advocate for great creative — pushing for the stronger idea even when it’s the harder sell — and you’ll partner with the CCO and creative leadership to protect that work through the client sell-in process.
• You’ll also make sure recognition follows: case studies, awards, press visibility are things you actively pursue, not afterthoughts.

Requirements

• 15+ years in account leadership at an agency, with direct P&L or budget ownership
• Experience developing 360 campaigns, including production shoots
• A track record of building senior client relationships that go beyond the day-to-day brief
• Experience leading and developing cross-functional teams, including people not in a direct reporting line
• Strong financial fluency — forecasting, scoping, burn management, pricing conversations
• A genuine point of view on creative quality, and the confidence to advocate for it with clients
• Curiosity about AI and a track record of adopting new tools and ways of working
• Composure and judgment under pressure — someone who protects trust and morale even in hard moments
• Able to work in-office at least 3 days per week, and available for client travel as needed