Business Coordinator, Marketing Department

Department: Kellogg Marketing

Salary/Grade: EXS/5

The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University offers multiple unique programs to give our MBA students an opportunity to engage in learning across disciplines. These programs are supported by the Kellogg Academic Department infrastructure that provides high-level support to academic department faculty, PhD students, visitors, and staff.

Reporting to the Associate Director, the Business Coordinator is an integral part of the Kellogg Academic Departments infrastructure by providing high-level administrative and financial support. This role is responsible for excellent client service delivery to faculty, students, and visitors while supporting both academic programming and departmental operations. As a member of the academic departments' administrative team, this role coordinates research seminars, faculty recruiting events, and other academic events, managing logistics such as scheduling, travel arrangements, and visitor hospitality.

The position also supports faculty activity reporting and monitors PhD student status and progress.

The Business Coordinator is responsible for timely and accurate processing of financial transactions, including reimbursements, invoice payments, contracts, and related documentation, in compliance with university policies. The role also coordinates the hiring and payment of independent contractors, temporary employees, and student staff in alignment with HR and financial guidelines and contributes to the development and administration of annual budgets, fiscal resource allocation and expense tracking.

In addition, this role provides support for departmental operations, including managing supply orders, maintaining existing stock, technology inventory management, assisting with office space coordination, and responding to and elevating departmental requests to the correct stakeholders. The Business Coordinator collaborates with faculty, staff, and university offices to ensure smooth execution of department events, financial processes, and daily operations.

• Use an advanced knowledge of skills, methods & practices & some innovation, analysis, & reasoning to choose appropriate alternatives from among pre-defined policies & procedures to complete work that includes successive steps & involves some non-routine problems &/or decisions.
• Ensures that the program mission, values, guidelines, policies & procedures are implemented & maintained.
• Identifies service improvement opportunities, including leveraging technology, that will better enable program/project to achieve its goals and objectives.
• Performs general office support activities as assigned.
• Provides support to independent contractors, temporary employees, and student staff within the academic departments including but not limited to the hiring activities, timekeeping, and payments.

• Directly responsible for payroll, purchasing, travel & entertainment (T&E) transactions & requesting new chart strings using NU protocol.
  • Provides review and oversight of all types of financial transactions, some of which may be complex in regard to size or duration of account.
  • Enters individual &/or summary of transactions into journals &/or general ledger or other NU enterprise system.
  • Prepares faculty, student, and visitor reimbursements.
  • Processes grant-related expenditures on travel, consulting &/or equipment, along with various forms, such as Intra Institutional Vouchers, Requests for Accounting Corrections, the Research Assistant and Scholarship Appointments, &/or payroll adjustments, in accordance with granting agency guidelines & University policies & procedures.
• Ensures prompt payment of invoices, researching errors/delayed transactions.
  • Reviews; ensures approval based on alternatives regarding practice & policy; prepares, processes, reconciles & provides receipts (as appropriate) for transactions.
  • Troubleshoots problems; performs vendor/account research as needed; obtains additional information from or provides instruction & guidance for customers/vendors; corrects or escalates.
• Monitors open encumbrances & deficit chart strings.
  • Processes transfer &/or appropriation charges & may balance &/or close accounts.
  • Maintains Chart of Account lists.
• Reviews & reconciles actual expenses to budget per NU Audit guidelines.
• Provides financial policy interpretation to determine the validity of customer requests & ensure compliance.

• Maintains internal and external contact lists related to the academic department.
  • Develops and strengthens internal and external relationships by fostering active engagement in program success.
• Produces, edits, &/or distributes dept communications.
  • Develops coordinated, consistent marketing and brand messages.
  • Participates with area/unit senior staff in the conceptualization, development, and presentation of materials used in functional operations.
• Manages website, assuring updates are made in a…