Marketing Director

Description:

Who We Are

Outward Bound USA (OBUSA) is a national nonprofit educational organization with a mission to spark lifelong growth through challenge—outside. For more than 60 years, we have worked to expand access to transformative learning experiences for young people across the country. Our work is guided by a bold vision: generations of youth empowered to realize their potential—rising with courage, leading with compassion, and building more connected, resilient communities.

OBUSA serves as the national organization for Outward Bound in the United States. We charter and empower the network of OB schools, steward the Outward Bound brand and trademark, and set national standards for safety and risk management. Through scholarship fundraising and national initiatives, we work to remove barriers to participation and strengthen the Outward Bound system's overall impact.

Position Impact

Guided by our Vision for Impact 2030, OBUSA advances this work through targeted initiatives designed to:

• Create new and expanded capacity within network Schools by positioning Outward Bound as a valued educational partner to families, schools, and community-based organizations
• Accelerate access to outdoor and experiential learning for historically underserved communities
• Strengthen a leading-edge research and development engine to continuously improve program quality and outcomes.
• Cultivate a workplace that attracts, develops, and retains exceptional outdoor educators and mission-driven professionals across the system

Reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer, the Marketing Director is responsible for translating OBUSA’s marketing strategy into clear, coordinated, high-quality external execution across channels. This role provides day-to-day leadership for integrated marketing planning, editorial direction, campaign operations, agency coordination, and cross-channel delivery—ensuring the team’s work is aligned to organizational priorities and built to support open enrollment demand, fundraising support, and long-term brand strength.

This role is also accountable for maximizing the value of OBUSA’s storytelling by maintaining a shared story and asset inventory, coordinating long-form content development with external support, and building repeatable repurposing workflows that allow stories to inform social, lifecycle, web, fundraising, partnerships, and executive visibility efforts.

The Marketing Director also serves as a key content partner to the Development team, ensuring storytelling assets support fundraising goals across channels.

This is a high-impact role on a small marketing team, managing channel leaders across Social, Lifecycle, and MarTech while coordinating outsourced creative production and PR support. The Director is expected to keep work moving, protect strategic focus, and help the CMO drive integrated campaigns that are brand-right, audience-informed, and operationally realistic.

Our Culture

At Outward Bound USA, our work is grounded in trust, courage, accountability, and service. We foster openness and inclusion, communicate honestly, and value the perspectives each person brings. We embrace challenge, take thoughtful risks, and learn from both success and failure. We hold ourselves responsible for our commitments and show up in service to one another and to the OB network Schools we exist to support. We believe in being crew, not passengers. Everyone contributes, every voice matters, and we move forward together.

Functions and Responsibilities

Integrated Marketing Strategy \& Campaign Leadership (40%)

• Own integrated campaign planning in support of brand strategy. Set messaging direction, audience priorities, and creative guardrails so execution across owned, earned, and paid channels is cohesive, timely, and aligned to enrollment, fundraising, and partnership goals.
• Lead paid and performance strategy across owned and organic channels. Connect campaigns across paid media, lifecycle follow-up, landing pages, and content; direct agency partners on media planning and reporting; extend coordination to influencer and direct-buy opportunities when applicable.
• Establish and own a content priority framework that keeps Enrollment, Development, Partnerships, and other stakeholders aligned; drive strategic decisions informed by audience data, performance trends, and campaign insights surfaced by the team.
• Direct internal channel experts and external creative partners with clear briefs, timelines, and quality standards; leverage AI and marketing technology to improve efficiency, personalization, and performance across campaigns.

Content Strategy, Story Infrastructure \& Cross-Channel Delivery (35%)

• Own the organization’s content strategy, including editorial calendar, intake, briefing, approvals, and QA; and lead distribution strategy so content produced by the team, Schools, and external partners reaches the right audiences in the right formats across every channel.
• Develop the infrastructure that enables Schools and external partners to create higher-quality content, providing storyboarding guidance, asset standards, and production resources. Then establish systems to catalog, repackage, and syndicate that content for national use.
• Own the marketing content partnership with Development, ensuring impact narratives, donor-ready story packages, and fundraising appeal assets are drawn from the shared content inventory and delivered with sufficient lead time to support annual fund, major gift, and campaign priorities.
• Maintain a shared story and asset inventory sourced from students, alumni, staff, community voices, and external partners with audience-specific packaging so content can be efficiently repurposed for enrollment, fundraising, partnerships, and brand without rebuilding from scratch.

Brand Visibility, Earned Media \& External Communications (25%)

• Drive earned media and brand visibility strategy by proactively identifying opportunities to reach new audiences through journalist relationships, guest platforms, CEO and SME thought leadership, and strategic content placements; coordinate external PR support when engaged to amplify and extend these efforts.
• Oversee external executive and organizational communications, including thought leadership, speaking opportunities, launches, and brand moments; partner with the Social Media Manager to ensure executive visibility is well-framed and consistent with broader messaging.
• Establish and steward external communications standards, including spokesperson readiness, message consistency, and post-campaign reflection, so OBUSA shows up credibly and proactively across all external channels.

Requirements:

Competencies

• Self-Management: You can set and follow through on goals independently, anticipate roadblocks, and support others in managing their commitments.
• Communication: You are skilled in developing messaging that connects with a wide range of stakeholders, from community members to decision-makers, fostering engagement and long-term relationships.
• Cultural Competence: You recognize, appreciate, and coach for cultural differences and commonalities.
• Collaboration: You can work effectively within a federated system, collaborating with various teams (e.g., Development, Marketing, Communications) to align strategies and achieve organizational goals.
• Conflict Management: You can manage and resolve conflict independently, even in high-stakes situations and across differences or hierarchy
• Continual Learning: You actively seek out new knowledge, perspectives, and practices, and apply what you learn to improve your work and the systems around you. You stay current in evaluation, research, and experiential education, and bring forward new ideas that strengthen programs, tools, and decision-making.
• Sense Making / Analytical Thinking: You can work effectively with complex concepts and data. You quickly make sense of new information, connect ideas across systems, and generate insights that others can act on.
• Influencing without Authority: You build alignment and commitment across stakeholders without relying on formal authority. You understand different perspectives and adapt your approach to gain buy-in.
• Functional/Technical skill: You bring strong capability in data analysis and apply these skills in ways that are practical and usable for the organization.
• Project Management: You scope work effectively, set clear goals, and map out the steps needed to get there. You anticipate dependencies, timelines, and risks, and create plans

Work Experience

• 7\+ years of progressive experience in marketing communications, integrated marketing, and/or content operations (agency and/or in-house), preferably in a mission-driven organization.
• 5\+ years demonstrated success building and running content operations systems (intake/prioritization, editorial calendars, briefing, approvals, trafficking, QA, and asset management).
• 3\+ years of experience managing external partners and agencies (creative production and/or PR coordination), including scoping, timelines/SLAs, feedback cycles, and quality standards.
• Deep experience coordinating multi-channel communications (social, email/lifecycle, web) and repurposing storytelling for different audiences and goals, including Development/Advancement.
• 5\+ years demonstrated ability to interpret performance data and audience insights to make strategic decisions—not building dashboards, but reading what the team surfaces and acting on it.
• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, communications, journalism, or related field or equivalent professional experience.
• 3\+ years of experience managing projects, budgets, consultants, or external partners to deliver work aligned with strategic priorities.
• 5\+ years of experience collaborating across functions (e.g., programs, sales, finance, development, communications) to align efforts and drive shared outcomes
• Demonstrated experience partnering with senior leaders and/or advisory bodies to align research strategies with organizational goals.

Location and Physical Requirements

• Permanent work authorization in the United States is required to apply for this position.
• This is a remote position; applicants must reside in one of the following states: AZ, CO, CT, FL, IA, ID, IL, IN, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NC, NM, NY, OR, PA, VT, and WA.
• Less than 5% of work time may be spent traveling.
• Ability to work at a computer for extended periods and analyze detailed data.

Compensation \& Benefits

• This is a full-time, remote, exempt position with an annual salary range of $115,000-135,000
• New hires typically fall within the lower third of the range, based on experience and internal equity.
• Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, disability, life insurance, and retirement plan from day one with a 5% employer match after six months.
• Employees receive 15 days of paid time off (PTO) per year, plus 10 federal holidays and 1 week of paid time off during the last week of the year.

Application Process

Review of resumes and cover letters will begin immediately, with an anticipated closing date of May 31, 2026

Cover letters may be addressed to Ben Worden, CMO

Outward Bound USA (OBUSA) is an equal opportunity employer and works to include diversity among its staff. OBUSA values the inclusion and collaboration among employees of diverse backgrounds and experiences. OBUSA prohibits discrimination against, and harassment of, any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, gender, pregnancy, genetic information, ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, familial status, military or veteran status, qualified individuals with a disability on the basis of the disability, or any other category which may be protected under applicable state or federal law. Outward Bound USA also promotes respect for all people, and will not tolerate harassment based on any of these characteristics nor on differences based on gender identity or expression.