Vice President, Programming - Fortune Live Media

Company Overview

Fortune, the world's premier business media brand, is also the quality leader in executive conferences (Fortune Live Media). Extending the publication’s award-winning content and exclusive insider access, Fortune brings together the world's business executives with top government officials and thought leaders.

Each year, Fortune hosts a select number of invitation only live and virtual meetings and membership communities for the leaders who are setting the global business agenda. Building upon Fortune’s expert reporting and unrivaled power to convene top CEOs/C-Suite, policymakers, and experts, Fortune Live Media convenes extraordinary gatherings of the world’s most important decision-makers. Fortune conferences, which rely on both the moderating skills of Fortune’s top editors and peer-level interaction across industries, are renowned for their ability to tap into the insights of global business leaders and provide a world-class experience for every participant.

Position Overview

Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer of Fortune, Lisa Cline, the VP of Programming will lead a programming team that combines top-notch speaker recruitment and expertise in content development to create the innovative programs across all of Fortune’s conference franchises. This individual will collaborate with Fortune’s editorial teams to set the agenda, recruit speakers in order to bring Fortune’s journalism to life onstage. He or she will also develop the speaker recruitment strategy and process, create content development plans, execute speaker invitation mailings, work closely with the edit, sales, and marketing teams, and oversee a team of program directors and managers who will prepare each speaker for their role onstage, provide research, script notes and briefing packets for each conference speaker.

Primary responsibilities:

• Lead speaker recruitment and content strategy for conference division across multiple events and high-end conference communities with overall responsibility for the conference agendas and a staff of approximately 3-4 full time people and another 5-6 independent contractors
• Program director responsibilities for at least one major conference franchise
• Keep current with business trends and maintain personal network to:Collaborate with Edit on curation of c-suite speaker invitation list, including new ideas
• Pitch new content ideas for program agenda to editorial teams
• Collaborate with sales to create custom programming ideas to pitch clients
• Strategize with management team on creation of new conference products
• Manage a team whose primary responsibilities include:
• Create program development plan, including strategy, key dates and implementation
• Recruit and retain approved speakers and moderators and maintain database
• Prepare confirmation documents and briefing materials for speakers
• Secure biography and photos of speakers for websites and program guide
• Provide weekly status reports to the larger team
• Supervise the planning and execution of the onsite speaker experience in collaboration with Production
• Write descriptive text for website including program overviews and session descriptions
• Coordination of speaker logistics pre-event and onsite
• Researching speaker prospects
• Travel (including international) to oversee the onsite program execution is required.
• Maintain awareness of best practices, market trends, competitive activity and leverage across conference platforms
• Hire, train and develop a high-performing staff.