Vice President of Digital Content Strategy & Innovation

Vice President of Digital Content Strategy & Innovation

This role is ideal for a media leader who can translate strategy into clear priorities, playbooks, and measurement across editorial, audience, events, and revenue teams to drive growth without compromising editorial integrity.

Executive VP, Operations,Gardner Business Media

Location: Cincinnati, Ohio (Priority given to candidates located in or willing to relocate to the Cincinnati area)

About Gardner

Gardner is a leading B2B media company with a long-standing legacy of serving industrial manufacturing audiences through trusted brands, high-quality journalism, events, and marketing services. Our growth depends on building direct relationships with discrete manufacturing professionals and developing monetization models grounded in credible engagement and audience insights.

The Opportunity

Gardner is seeking a Vice President of Digital Content Strategy & Innovation to join our Strategic Leadership Team. This executive leader will shape and drive the future of our digital content ecosystem, strengthen direct audience reach, support the company’s event portfolio, and enable repeatable revenue programs across our brands.

This role is ideal for a media leader who can translate strategy into clear priorities, playbooks, and measurement across editorial, audience, events, and revenue teams to drive growth without compromising editorial integrity.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and execute a comprehensive digital content strategy aligned with Gardner’s business objectives and audience needs.
• Identify and lead innovative content formats, platforms, and distribution strategies that can be executed consistently across owned, partnered, and syndicated channels.
• Ensure content strategies are scalable, data-informed, and adaptable to evolving B2B audience behaviors.
• Partner with audience and data teams to strengthen direct audience reach (email/newsletters, event registrations, and other owned channels).

Events-to-Digital Integration

• Partner with the events team to align programming and content strategy so each event supports year-round digital engagement and revenue.
• Implement repeatable workflows for content creation and post-event publishing, with clear sponsor deliverables and reporting.
• Coordinate cross-functional planning for event-related products, including pre-event audience growth and post-event lead and content programs.
• Explore and pilot new avenues for content monetization, including sponsorship models, paid content, licensing, syndication, and emerging platforms.
• Serve as a catalyst for experimentation while maintaining strong editorial and brand integrity.

Creator & Partner Relationships

• Build and foster mutually beneficial partnerships with independent contributors, industry experts, associations and external collaborators that expand expertise and scale content and event programming
• Develop frameworks for onboarding, disclosure, quality standards, revenue sharing, and long-term partnerships.
• Represent Gardner as a trusted, innovative partner to industry communities and partners across content, events, and marketing programs.
• Serve as a key member of Gardner’s Strategic Leadership Team, contributing to company-wide planning, prioritization, and decision-making.
• Collaborate closely with editorial, sales, marketing, audience development, events, and product teams to align content strategy with revenue goals and execution capacity.
• Lead, mentor, and inspire high-performing teams while fostering a culture of clarity, innovation, collaboration, and accountability.
• Develop a culture of experimentation, accountability, and continuous learning with talent equipped for modern digital and manufacturing focused media.
• Work closely with Audience Development and Data teams to leverage offsite readers into first-party data

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in B2B media, digital publishing, agencies, events, or content-led organizations, with demonstrated strategic leadership.
• Proven track record developing and scaling digital content strategies that drive audience growth and revenue.
• Deep understanding of digital media trends, creator economies, content monetization models,…