Director of Marketing

Naperville, Illinois, Employment Status: Administrative Description of Key Responsibility: Provide hands-on leadership for the College's institutional marketing, brand visibility, and top-of-funnel audience development efforts, ensuring alignment with institutional priorities and the direction of the Vice President for Communication and Marketing. Serve as a strategic marketing partner to the Vice President for Communication and Marketing, contributing ideas, analysis, recommendations, and executional support for initiatives that strengthen the College's visibility, reputation, and competitive position. Lead the development and implementation of institutional marketing strategies designed to expand awareness of the College among key external audiences important to the College's mission and future. Develop and execute a broad top-of-funnel marketing campaign that increases the College's exposure in key markets and communicates its distinctive value in a compelling, authentic, and mission-aligned manner. Steward the College's institutional brand identity in close collaboration with colleagues responsible for institutional voice, messaging, storytelling, editorial content, creative services, and communications strategy. Provide marketing leadership for the comprehensive redesign of the College website, including marketing strategy, audience pathways, user experience, vendor coordination, implementation support, and post-launch optimization. Oversee the College website as a primary institutional marketing platform, using audience insights, analytics, content strategy, accessibility standards, search best practices, and digital performance measures to improve visibility, engagement, and effectiveness. Collaborate with colleagues in admissions, advancement, athletics, academic affairs, student affairs, and other areas to ensure institutional marketing efforts support broad College priorities while remaining coordinated with unit-specific communications and marketing needs. Partner effectively with colleagues in institutional communication to ensure that marketing strategy, brand visibility, institutional voice, storytelling, media relations, internal communications, creative services, and editorial content work together in a coordinated and mutually reinforcing way. Develop creative briefs, campaign plans, audience strategies, project scopes, and other planning tools that translate institutional priorities into actionable marketing work. Manage relationships with external vendors, agencies, consultants, web partners, and other service providers, ensuring quality, timeliness, brand alignment, and fiscal responsibility. Use research, data, analytics, and market insights to inform marketing strategy, evaluate campaign effectiveness, and recommend adjustments that improve reach, engagement, and performance. Monitor market trends, audience behavior, competitive positioning, and emerging marketing practices, including appropriate uses of artificial intelligence and digital tools, to strengthen the College's marketing effectiveness. Support the development of processes, workflows, and project management practices that allow marketing work to be prioritized, coordinated, executed, and assessed effectively. Contribute directly to marketing planning, campaign development, project management, vendor coordination, and campaign execution as a hands-on member of the team. Represent the Office of Institutional Communication and Marketing on College-wide initiatives and committees as appropriate. Perform other duties as assigned. Education/Training: Bachelor's degree required in marketing, communications, public relations, journalism, business, digital media, or a related field. A master's degree or other advanced training in marketing, business, communications, digital strategy, or a related field is preferred. Experience: A minimum of seven years of progressively responsible experience in marketing, brand strategy, digital marketing, campaign development, website strategy, or a related field is required; ten or more years is preferred. The successful candidate will have demonstrated experience developing and executing marketing strategies that expand visibility, strengthen brand awareness, deepen audience engagement, and improve marketing performance. Experience in agency, corporate, healthcare, nonprofit, higher education, or other complex, mission-driven environments is relevant, with higher education experience preferred but not required. Licenses or Certifications: Certification: Professional certifications or advanced training in marketing, digital marketing, analytics, project management, web strategy, accessibility, artificial intelligence, or related fields are preferred but not required. Position Summary: This is a director-level opportunity for a creative, strategic, hands-on marketer to build institutional marketing capacity within an established communications, content, and creative services team at a mission-driven college. The Director of Marketing serves as a key member of the newly created Office of Institutional Communication and Marketing and provides leadership for the College's institutional marketing, brand visibility, and top-of-funnel audience development efforts. Reporting to the Vice President for Communication and Marketing, the Director brings strategic marketing expertise, creative thinking, and hands-on execution to the work of expanding awareness of the College and strengthening the institution's presence among prospective students and families, alumni, donors, community partners, and other external audiences. The Director will steward the College's brand identity and visibility as part of an integrated office, working in close collaboration with colleagues who lead institutional voice, messaging, media relations, internal communications, editorial content, presidential voice, and creative services. Success in this position will require a highly collaborative, team-oriented leader who can bring marketing discipline and fresh perspective to a well-established group of professionals while respecting the distinctive mission, culture, and complexity of higher education. The Director will play a central role in two major institutional priorities: leading the marketing strategy for a comprehensive redesign of the College website and developing a broad top-of-funnel marketing and audience development campaign designed to expand the College's exposure and strengthen its reputation in key markets. The position will oversee the website as a primary institutional marketing platform, helping ensure that it effectively presents the College's value, advances brand visibility, supports audience engagement, and reflects best practices in user experience, accessibility, search, content strategy, and digital performance. The ideal candidate will combine the creativity and market orientation of an experienced marketing professional with the judgment, adaptability, and mission sensitivity needed to succeed in higher education. Experience in agency, corporate, healthcare, nonprofit, or higher education settings may all be relevant, provided the candidate understands that the College's work is not simply to market a consumer product, but to communicate the value of a transformative educational experience in ways that are authentic, compelling, and strategically aligned.