Director, Industry Relations

Director, Industry Relations

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The Director, Industry Relations provides visionary,enterprise-level leadership for employer engagement, industrypartnerships, and early-career pipeline development across the institution. Reporting to the Assistant Vice President, Career Development, this role designs and executes a comprehensiveindustry relations strategy that advances student outcomes,strengthens institutional reputation, and builds sustainable talent pipelines into priority sectors including film, television, digitalmedia, journalism, communications, marketing, and the arts.

Serving as the institution's primary ambassador to industry, the Director cultivates high-impact partnerships with employers,studios, agencies, production companies, nonprofits, and emergingcreative enterprises. The role ensures that employer engagementefforts translate into measurable student opportunities, includinginternships, project-based learning, fellowships, and full-time employment.

This position operates at both strategic and executionallevels-setting vision, securing flagship partnerships, and buildscalable systems, while ensuring consistent, high-quality employerengagement across geographic markets (e.g., Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and beyond).

• Develop and execute a multi-year, institution-wide employer and industry relations strategy aligned with enrollment priorities,academic programs, and student success outcomes.
• Identify and prioritize target industry sectors and geographicmarkets, with a focus on high-growth creative and communicationsfields.
• Serve as the senior liaison to executive-level industry partners, including C-suite leaders, alumni executives, andadvisory boards.
• Build and steward flagship partnerships that yield recurringpipelines (e.g., studio partnerships, agency cohorts, productionpipelines, media fellowships).
• Position the institution as a preferred talent partner through consistent branding, storytelling, and outcomes reporting. Designand implement structured early-career talent pipelines, includinginternship-to-hire programs and rotational or cohort-based hiringmodels
• Establish and scale employer commitment frameworks, includingresume review and portfolio critique programs, guaranteed interviewprograms or priority candidate pipelines, and multi-year recruitingpartnerships
• Collaborate with academic and career development leadership toalign partnerships with curriculum, credit-bearing internships, and experiential learning models.
• Expand opportunities across emerging and nontraditionalemployers, including startups, creator economy platforms, and independent production networks.
• Develop and implement revenue-generating employer engagement models, such as sponsored programs and recruitment packages,employer-funded internships or fellowships, and industry-sponsoredlabs, studios, or experiential programs
• Partner with Emerson's advancement, alumni relations, and external affairs groups to align employer partnerships withphilanthropy and institutional priorities.
• Identify opportunities for public-private partnerships, grants,and workforce development funding.
• Lead, coach, and scale a high-performing industry relationsteam, including establishing portfolio management strategies and segmentation.
• Build and standardize employer engagement protocols, ensuring consistency in outreach, relationship management, and service delivery.
• Collaborate closely with career coaching, internship, andalumni teams to ensure seamless student-to-employerpipelines.
• Develop and maintain comprehensive employer engagementdashboards, tracking employer growth and retention, internship andjob posting volume, student participation and pipeline utilization,and conversion rates. Produce regular reports for senior leadership on ROI, market trends, and outcomes.
• Benchmark performance against peer institutions and national standards (e.g., NACE). Monitor and analyze labor market data,hiring cycles, and industry shifts, particularly within creative and communications sectors.
• Advise institutional leadership on emerging trends such asstreaming industry dynamics, AI in media, and…