Vice President for Marketing and Communications

The Boston Foundation (TBF or the Foundation) seeks a strategic, collaborative, and innovative executive to serve as its first vice president for marketing and communications (VP) at a time of evolution and building. 

The Boston Foundation is one of the nation’s first and most impactful community foundations. The Foundation serves the Greater Boston area through a hub of partnerships and networks that works with and answers to the communities it serves. This includes commissioning research, sharing knowledge, developing programs, fueling new ideas, providing seed capital, and traditional grant-making. Since his appointment in 2021, President Lee Pelton has identified new strategic goals to advance TBF’s mission. These are ambitious and timely: closing the gap on the region’s greatest disparities to increase equity and open pathways to opportunity, prosperity, and equitable outcomes. To achieve these complex and challenging goals, TBF recognizes the need to tackle the individual-, systems-, and root-level causes of inequity. Specifically, the Foundation is targeting four pathways in its push for increased equity: child well-being, economic opportunity, community wealth, and community leadership. 

The Foundation works with key partners to advance its goals: donors who give to and through TBF, both outright and through donor advised funds; nonprofits that help refine ways to meet the goals and provide tactical solutions; professional advisors who assist their clients to meet charitable giving goals; and civic leaders across Boston’s government, corporate, research, cultural, and institutional communities. In addition, TBF operates a consulting practice to provide strategic advice and support to philanthropically minded individuals and organizations seeking to maximize their impact. In short, TBF harnesses the collective power of all its partners to drive real change in Boston.

As The Boston Foundation pursues these goals and embarks on a campaign to support them, it seeks a vice president who will develop a comprehensive and systematic marketing and communications program capable of elevating and aligning all communications across the institution and ensuring that internal and external audiences alike have an increased awareness and refined understanding of TBF, its mission and goals, and its impact on Boston and disparate communities. Reporting to President Pelton and serving as an integral member of the senior leadership team, the VP will work closely with the president and other senior colleagues to build a strategic marketing, branding, and communications program that reflects and reinforces the Foundation’s commitment to increase equity for all people of Boston. This is a tremendous opportunity for a dynamic and accomplished executive to define and build an innovative approach to marketing and communications that unifies messaging across TBF, supports and furthers its goals, elevates the work of its partners, increases awareness of its work in the city and beyond, and engages all its myriad constituents, internally and externally.   

The successful candidate will be innately curious and relish a constant learning curve. The new VP will be keen to understand the complexity of TBF at a high level in the near term; simultaneously, they will be committed to ongoing, nuanced self-education about its wide array of programs, partners, and audiences. This ideal candidate will have substantial experience conceiving and implementing multi-faceted, integrated marketing, branding, and communications efforts that position and elevate the perception of an entire institution, brand, or company with multiple audiences. This person will also be a seasoned manager adept at motivating and empowering a lean, highly engaged staff, building a collaborative office that is sought out for its thought leadership and insights. 

The successful candidate must demonstrate a high level of integrity, trust, diplomacy, emotional intelligence, and curiosity to engage and partner effectively with key internal and external constituents. The VP must possess superb written and oral communication skills along with the ability to foster strong collaborative relationships across the Foundation. The ideal candidate will be a data-driven, results-oriented professional with a collegial and accessible leadership style. A bachelor’s degree is required.

The annual base salary range for this position is $275,000-$300,000. Except for roles with a set rate of pay, the wage/salary of the finalist selected for this role will be set based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to departmental budgets, qualifications, experience, education, licenses, specialty, and training. The stated hiring rate/range represents The Boston Foundation’s good faith and reasonable estimate of the rate/range of possible compensation at the time of posting.

Jack Gorman and Elizabeth Neustaedter are leading this search with Ryan Cheung.

The Boston Foundation believes that one of the great strengths of the Greater Boston community is the rich diversity of its residents in race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, age, and physical abilities. We are committed to supporting employees in their well-being and personal and professional growth, enabling all staff to contribute to the organization to their fullest.

The Boston Foundation is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We encourage applications from people with diverse backgrounds and experience.