Creative Operations Director

Your Mission:

Almost everything at Proximity flows through our Creative Services department, who ensure that the look and feel of all our communications is consistent with our brand and resonates with our audiences—from rural Myanmar farmers, to donors, to our own team. As our organization drives towards our goal of 1 million farmer customers, we need an experienced Creative Operations Director to keep projects and budgets on track, and amp up our processes, skillsets and deliverables.

As the Creative Operations Director, you are one of those rare people with a project management background that can also speak creative. You excel at implementing and maintaining tools, methods and processes that help bring structure, rigor and momentum to creative projects, and ultimately improve the creative work. In this role, you would run the operations of our small but mighty Creative Services team through next-level studio management, production and stakeholder management.

What You Will Do:

Trafficking and Resourcing:

• Ensure fair workload by directing traffic of work across the design studio, building systems and processes to increase efficiency and proactively identifying issues related to bandwidth and skillset.
• Drive longer-term forecasting with Head of Marketing and Communications.

Project Management and Production:

• Lead the Creative Team in stepping up project management across all projects, implementing and evolving project management tools and systems as needed, to ensure strong partnership and on-time delivery within the marketing team and across the org.
• Provide high-level operational, logistical and timeline oversight of all projects in the Creative Studio, anticipating changes and risks and directing accordingly.
• Be the “face” of the creative services team towards other departments, managing the overall relationship, leading high-level project discussions and presentations, and proactively and collaboratively solving issues.

Creative and Production:

• Identify gaps in creative and production competencies, equipment and processes and enact initiatives to grow these areas through internal trainings and if need be, outsourcing and recruitment.
• Build skillsets within the creative team on design, photo and video production methods and tools such as concept and script writing, storyboarding, shot list and production schedule, post production, animation, photo-retouching and 3D rendering.
• Lead production of all photo and video projects from concept, to preproduction, to production, to post production and delivery, partnering with external vendors as needed, and instilling best practices.
• Proactively suggest opportunities for video and photo content to help support our farmer and donor-facing communications.

Vendor and Consultant Management:

• Collaborate with our finance team to streamline procurement of preferred creative agencies, freelancers and production vendors.
• Manage the procurement process for vendors for higher-value projects, getting budget pre-approvals, briefing potential vendors, conducting group proposal reviews and handling negotiations.
• Employ strong vendor management skills to maintain strong relationships with our close vendor partners, particularly creative and production agencies.
• Enforce proper procurement practices across the creative and marketing teams in line with Proximity guidelines.

Team Management:

• Grow and evolve the Creative team structure and lead recruitment for new or existing roles in partnership with the People Operations team.
• Oversee Creative team performance and achievement of individual, departmental and organizational goals.
• Manage time-off, salary and performance discussions and career growth paths for all Creative Service team members.

Must Haves:

• 5-7 years progressive project management, studio management or production experience in a marketing and/or agency environment
• 2-3 years experience in a leadership position managing a team; at least 1 year within a Myanmar team and organization
• Demonstrated understanding of creative and production processes, and ability to project manage creative team members and deliverables
• Demonstrated understanding of the current production and creative landscape both globally and within Myanmar
• Ability to work across teams and cultures to build strong relationships
• Interest in being part of an organization that greatly impacts local communities
• At least conversational in speaking, writing and reading in English

Added Bonus:

• Fluent in speaking, writing and reading in Myanmar
• Experience or expertise in the social enterprise or development sectors
• Experience or expertise in agriculture or climate change
• Experience with print or digital production

About Proximity

Proximity Designs is tackling globally important issues at the nexus of climate change, deep poverty, food insecurity, inequality and political conflict. We do this by helping hundreds of thousands of rural people care for their soils, grow more food, earn better incomes and build resilience against climate change. We address a critical government and market failure, by designing and delivering products and services needed to make farming families more productive, profitable and environmentally sustainable. We offer our low-income customers a suite of innovative and affordable farm solutions such as micro-irrigation systems, bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides, soil health testing kits, on-call crop protection services and farm loans.

Over the past 20 years, we’ve generated USD 782 million in additional income for 1.2 million poor farming households across rural Myanmar. With this income increase, farmers can invest in their future: education for their children, more nutritious food, better healthcare and investments in their farms or other village enterprises.

How to Apply

If you are interested in joining us, please click Apply to submit your application.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis without regards to race, sex, color, national origin, sexual orientation, age, or marital status, and therefore interested candidates are encouraged to apply.

Please note that only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

Keywords

Creative OperationsDirectorProject ManagementProductionCreative TeamVendor ManagementTeam ManagementStudio ManagementMarketingAgencyLeadershipRecruitmentPerformanceCommunicationAgricultureClimate Change