Associate Vice President, Integrated Outreach
University of South Carolina

Founded in 1801, the University of South Carolina (USC or university) is the flagship institution of the University of South Carolina System (system). The system is the leading educator for the state, serving 53,000 students across eight institutions. Committed to serving a diverse population of students with widely varying backgrounds, career goals, and aspirations, USC offers over 350 degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and professional program levels, affording students the most comprehensive array of educational programs in the state. Graduate and undergraduate degree programs are offered in the following areas: arts and sciences; business; education; engineering and computing; hospitality, retail and sport management; information and communications; music; nursing; public health; and social work. Graduate programs are also available in law, medicine (Columbia and Greenville campuses), and pharmacy.

The flagship campus in Columbia is home to 16 colleges and schools and over 2,600 faculty, many of whom have earned significant recognition, placing the university in the top 5 percent of public universities in the nation for national faculty awards received. As a Carnegie-classified Tier I research (R1) institution, research grant awards were $309 million in the 2024 fiscal year.

The Position

Location: Columbia, South Carolina.

Reporting Relationships: The Associate Vice President, Integrated Outreach will report to the Vice President, Marketing.

Responsibilities:

The Associate Vice President, Integrated Outreach will be responsible for leading and coordinating comprehensive brand communication strategies to enhance the university’s reputation, visibility, and engagement. This role involves overseeing internal and external brand communications, media relations, digital marketing, and brand initiatives. This executive will work with various stakeholders, including senior leadership, faculty, and unit heads to develop messaging that aligns with the university’s brand platform.

Additional responsibilities will include:

• Lead and develop the outreach team; provide clear strategic brand communications direction, motivate, and inspire internal and external stakeholders.
• Facilitate collaboration and communication with account service, production, digital video, and technical teams.
• Manage multiple campaigns from concept to completion: strategy, message and branding development, full production execution.
• Oversee all levels of brand management-collateral, website, social, digital magazines, OOH, print direct marketing, video concepts, support materials, etc.
• Actively strategize and contribute to the USC brand management team; participate in the business development process, proposal creation and delivery of presentations.
• Conceptualize, present, and develop strategic concepts for highly effective branding programs.
• Lead message development and communications best practices across the university.
• Identify and support opportunities to continually advance the university’s image and reputation with targeted audiences.
• Foster and maintain a work environment that encourages, recognizes and rewards creativity, innovation, and personal accountability.
• Implement changes/pivots to messaging based on data/insights that are central to the university’s brand image.

The Candidate

Education/Certifications: An undergraduate degree in marketing, communications or related field is required. An MBA is preferred.

Professional Qualifications:

• 10+ years’ experience and understanding of internal communications and engagement and its application to organizational change and continuous improvement.
• Experience working in a decentralized environment with multiple stakeholders.
• Solid grasp of how data analytics and insights drive performance metrics.
• Proven ability to leverage financial and operational metrics to drive organizational decision making and achieve strategic objectives.
• Executive-level communication and influencing skills with the ability to effectively engage with individuals at all levels of the organization.
• Decisive, able to make clear-cut and timely decisions with the appropriate amount of information.
• Experience developing organizational objectives into material for targeted communications and engagement activities across a range of different channels and media.
• Demonstrated experience and leadership in managing comprehensive strategic communications, media relations and marketing programs to advance the University’s mission and goals.
• Experience developing organizational objectives into material for targeted communications and engagement activities across a range of different channels and media.

Personal Characteristics:

The successful candidate must possess outstanding leadership, interpersonal and communications skills. The candidate must be a high-energy, hands-on individual with strength of convictions - a self-confident leader who, in part due to his/her personal presence, style and demeanor, effectively sells ideas and solutions to others. This person is by nature a risk-taker and has a high level of ambition. Of equal importance, this person must have unquestioned integrity.

• Adept at strategizing and communicating effectively with various internal departments to solve problems and find solutions to challenges.
• Creative and strategic thinker who will bring innovative ideas forward to solve problems and help the organization thrive.
• Problem solver who can take initiative and set priorities while being flexible.
• Highly organized and able to handle multiple projects.
• Adept at navigating complex environments with evolving priorities and communication plans.
• Able to manage “the Chaos” while being open and transparent with the organization.
• A balanced individual capable of forging productive working relationships with a broad range of personality types and styles.
• Visionary who can see the bigger picture and bring balance and direction to the day-to-day tasks with practical follow through; natural ability to influence change and lead a multidisciplinary team with confidence.
• Emotionally intelligent with a keen understanding of own limitations; values building strong teams that complement each other in diversity of thought, knowledge, and experience, to enable organizational success.
• Adaptable, flexible, and able to multitask; ability to work within an ambiguous, fast-moving environment, while also driving toward clarity and solutions.
• Comfortable with the challenge to reach agreement among occasionally conflicting interests to enhance the common good of the organization.
• Promote collaboration in situations where cultural differences prevail in a global economy.
• Highly intelligent, with exceptional conceptual and creative skills, and the ability to visualize and translate the needs of the marketplace into business opportunities.
• Ability to anticipate change and proactively pivot in order to take advantage of industry trends.
• Analytical, with a strong detail orientation – someone who can examine relevant industry information and translate that information into effective strategies and programs.
• Mature, confident, and successful professional with the executive presence and industry stature to effectively represent USC externally and bring enhanced credibility to the organization.
• Strong service orientation, a disciplined work ethic, and ability to instill a high standard of excellence across the organization.
• A balanced individual capable of forging productive working relationships with a broad range of personality types and styles.
• Lives the values: Demonstrates the values of USC through words, actions, and by example.