Assistant Director, Strategic & Creative Communications; Intercollegiate Athletics

Assistant Director, Strategic & Creative Communications

Intercollegiate Athletics 86717

The Strategic and Creative Comms assists with storytelling and digital communication efforts for 2‑3 assigned Olympic Sports. Under the direction of the strategic lead, this position helps execute content strategies that reach fans, recruits, and the community. The position supports the department's goals of brand awareness and student‑athlete retention by creating consistent, engaging content. By focusing on specific sports, the role provides the necessary support to help those programs succeed within the existing athletics digital ecosystem.

Content Creation & Capture

• Supports the Olympic Sports teams by capturing and producing content in various forms, including video, photos, and social media graphics.
• Utilizes tools like Adobe Photoshop and Premiere to execute assets that align with the team's media plan.

Media Plan Execution

• Assists with the daily implementation of the sport‑specific media plan.
• Helps maintain the schedule of information flow, ensures messaging cadence is met, and updates content based on direction from leadership.

Team Engagement, Research & Immersion

• Spends time with assigned teams to identify storytelling opportunities.
• Assists in gathering information on student‑athlete personalities and coaches' strengths to help broaden the team's public message.
• Identify sport influencers and engage to broaden the messages.

Communication Coordination

• Collaborates with the digital, fundraising, and gameday entertainment teams to help synchronize publicity efforts.
• Acts as a liaison for routine media requests and assists with coordinating storytelling tasks.

Strategic Communications Project Supporter

• Serve as the main point of contact for the assigned sports specific to storytelling aspects of the position.
• Triage, assign and communicate requests, coverage, and alterations or additions to the media plan and maintain historical knowledge of each sport.

Other

• Facilitate required statistical submissions, written notes, historical records or releases specific to the assigned sports.
• And other duties as assigned.

• Knowledge to create and deliver targeted content in efforts to promote sports/athletes, assist in recruiting and retaining athletes for the sports represented.
• Ability to execute a sport‑specific, storytelling strategy - using existing mediums and content.
• Follow a sport‑specific media plan that includes cadence of messaging, audiences, mediums, types of content, and schedules.
• Ability to learn all facets of an Olympic sports program - including personnel, trends, participants, national landscape and audiences.
• A collaborator that is flexible in adjusting schedules, timelines, content, messaging, mediums, etc. in order to best fit the immediate and impactful needs of a sports program.
• Knowledge of digital media assets and other communication content and how they are used to communicate.
• Knowledge of social media platforms and how to use them to promote sports teams.
• Previous experience using Facebook, X, Tik Tok, Instagram and other social media channels to storytell.
• Knowledge of NCAA/Power 4 landscape, including recruiting cycles, NIL trends, and student‑athlete retention drivers.
• Working knowledge of concepts and principles of news and media communications.
• Must maintain current knowledge of applicable rules and standards of the Atlantic Coast Conference, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), as well as other associations and agencies to which the Berkeley campus of the University of California adheres, and at all times avoid any and all violations of these rules and standards and/or the ability to learn.
• Time and project management skills.
• Knowledge on how to develop and implement original ideas and correctly identify and effectively solve problems.
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Thorough knowledge of the fundamentals of design and user experience, including skill to design in an appealing, lively and relevant way.
• Thorough understanding of the technical language and requirements of the assigned work.
• Thorough knowledge of content management…