Events Director

About You

You are the person who makes ambitious live events come to life.

You came up through live production environments, so you know what a great show looks and feels like. You understand how creative, content, broadcast, competition, hospitality, and audience experience all need to work together. Somewhere along the way, you discovered that you are just as good at seeing the whole picture, setting the direction, and getting everyone moving toward the same outcome.

You have strong creative instincts and know how to turn a big idea into something real. You can protect what makes an idea special while still making it deliverable. You know when to push for something better, when to simplify, and when someone just needs to make the call.

You are relentlessly accountable. You are comfortable holding the master schedule, guiding, supporting and keeping those helping to drive deliverables on track. When a venue changes the load in window, a partner needs 57 chess sets in a city you have never worked in, and broadcast wants to move the stage two meters, you solve the problems without losing sight of why the event exists in the first place.

You care about the people in the room: the players, fans, creators, partners, guests, and crew. You believe a live event is judged by the experience people had, not by whether the original plan survived.

You are equally comfortable developing a three year strategy and walking a venue the night before doors open. You have high standards, good judgment, a low ego, and the ability to stay calm when the plan changes.

has created some of the most watched events in chess, including the Speed Chess Championship, the Champions Chess Tour, and Pog Champs. We are now building a broader portfolio of live experiences that includes flagship competitions, fan events, theatrical premieres, partner activations, publishing moments, and our global company meetup.

We are looking for someone to bring those experiences together and help define what  live events can become.

This is a senior individual contributor role to start. You will be our live events leader and our live events doer, setting the strategy while personally leading delivery, with strong experience creating cross functional alignment within a heavily matrix organization. As our live event portfolio grows, this role may also have the opportunity to build and lead an internal team.

• Set our live events strategy. Build a clear long-term vision for our live event portfolio and define how events can drive audience growth, community, brand, content, partnerships, and revenue.
• Own the portfolio. Create an annual roadmap across competitive events, fan experiences, company gatherings, premieres, partner activations, and new event concepts. Help us make smart decisions about where to invest, what to grow, and what not to do.
• Lead our biggest events. Serve as the accountable event lead for experiences such as the Speed Chess Championship Finals. Bring creative, competition, broadcast, content, hospitality, and operations together into one plan.
• Turn creative ambition into reality. Partner with our creative and content leaders to shape great event concepts, then build the budgets, schedules, teams, and production plans needed to deliver them.
• Own the integration layer. Build and hold the master event plan and physical run of show. Coordinate how spaces are used, how programming and activations fit together, and how content opportunities are captured. Make sure every internal team and external partner is working from the same plan.
• Own venues and production partners. Source, evaluate, negotiate, and manage venues, hotels, agencies, fabricators, and production vendors. Build a trusted global network so we are not starting from zero every time we enter a new city.
• Own the budget. Build and manage event budgets, track spending, oversee reconciliation, and manage the financial and contractual lifecycle of each event alongside our Finance and Legal teams. Bring a clear point of view on where money creates the most value for our audience.
• Define what success looks like. Help us measure events across attendance, fan experience, content performance, community growth, partner value, revenue, and brand impact. Use those insights to make each event better than the last.
• Support live experiences across Partner with teams across the company on activations of every size, from a film premiere or creator tournament to a fan zone, partner event, or…