Lead Brand Strategist

Are you a strategic thinker who loves uncovering deep insights about audiences and translating them into clear positioning, sharp messaging, and strategic direction for brand and digital work? Ifyou'reenergized by research, synthesis, and connecting evidence to impact —you'llfinda special homeat Interactive Strategies.

We'relooking for a Lead Brand Strategist to join our growing Strategy team. In this role,you'lllead the research and strategic foundation of brand engagements — discovery, positioning, messaging, and audience insight — and partner closely with a creative director to translate that foundation into brand and digital solutions.

You'llalso extend brand strategy into how organizations show up across their web experience and marketing channels, working alongside UX, content, and creative teams to keep execution aligned to strategy.

You'llwork with mission-driven organizations — like the American Kidney Fund, Rainforest Trust, Urban Institute, CFP Board, Operation Smile, and The Wilderness Society — helping them build brand and digital strategies that move people and drive results.

Requirements

You'lllead the research and strategy phase of engagements from discovery through recommendation, collaborating with a cross-disciplinary team of creative directors, UX designers, writers, developers, and project managers.

We'relooking for someone who can:

• Lead brand discovery through stakeholder interviews, workshops, and brand research.
• Design and conduct user and market research — qualitative and quantitative — to uncover audience motivations,perceptions, and unmet needs.
• Synthesize research into actionable strategy deliverables — audience personas, brand narratives, positioning frameworks, value propositions, and messaging strategy — grounded in evidence, not intuition.
• Define brand platforms (mission, vision, values, personality, messaging hierarchy) and partner with a creative director to translate that definition into visual and verbal expression.
• Extend brand strategy into digital strategy — providing strategic direction and input on web experience and marketing initiatives, in partnership with UX, content, and creative teams who own execution.
• Serve as the strategic through line across an engagement — ensuring creative and digital solutions stay grounded in the research and positioning that informed them.
• Bringnew approaches to research and strategy, including how AI and data-informed methods can sharpen insight and speed synthesis.
• Build strong, collaborative client relationships —facilitating workshops, presenting findings, and guiding decisions with clarity and confidence.
• Contribute to business development by helping shape strategy-related proposals, approaches, and new offerings.
• Continuously improve our research and strategy process.

Qualities you bring to the table...

• Research Rigor.You design research that answers the right questions, and you trust evidence over instinct.
• Strategic Vision.You connect audience insight to positioning and messaging, always grounded in evidence and clarity.
• Synthesis Discipline.You take complex, sometimes conflicting inputs and turn them into a clear, defensible strategic direction.
• Collaborative Partner.You workhand-in-handwith a creative director — contributing strategic direction, not creative execution — and know where that line sits.
• Confident Communicator.You'reat ease facilitating workshops, writing briefs, and presenting research and strategy to clients with clarity and poise.
• Empathetic Leader.You listen first, synthesize complexity, andlead with emotional intelligence.
• Curious by Nature.You'reenergized by digging into data and human insight to inform every recommendation.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience leading brand strategy engagements, with research as a core, hands-on part of your practice.
• Demonstrated experience designing and running research — surveys, interviews, focus groups — and synthesizing findings into strategic frameworks.
• Experience producing strategy documentation: personas, audience segmentation, competitive analysis, positioning frameworks, messaging architecture.
• Comfort partnering with (not substituting for) creative direction — you can…