Director of Protocol and Special Events

Job description / Role

Responsibilities

- Particularly those that raise campus visibility and secure financial support from donors of the University.
- Serves a critical function as the campus coordinator who consults with senior campus leaders to identify, plan and encourage staff within and outside the university to participate in overarching campus wide events.
- Gains consensus and maintains timetables of program and event milestones, projects and tracks an annual events budget, ensures adherence to UC and campus funding policies, and oversees the overall implementation of complex and detailed program plans.
- Holds events staff responsible for strict adherence to pre-approved events budgets.
and detailed program plans.
- Ensures the Business Operations Manager completes timely reconciliation of event expenditures and prompt payment of expenditures by and to internal and external partners.
- Serves as a talent manager for staffing, including volunteers, both within Special Events and Protocol and the campus community in order to assemble the complement of staff and volunteers vital to the success of major projects.
- Has full responsibility and accountability for high-profile events that provide important forums for interactions with community leaders, elected officials, volunteer organizers and business leaders.
- Serves as the campus resource on developing and maintaining campus protocols including social and event etiquette for all aspects of events.
- This function is part of the overall Communications and Public Affairs outreach effort in developing and maintaining a spirit of goodwill that fosters the best possible institutional image internally and externally.
- Develops a strategic annual events budget to ensure complex and detailed budgets are preapproved for major events, including vendor negotiations and contracts, purchasing, equipment projections and proper method of payment of all invoices.
- Supervises budgetary planning for each event, ensuring compliance with AUIB purchasing and financial policies.
- Primary responsibilities are for the oversight and hands-on attention to ensuring that all activities, from major campus wide signature events to Chancellor-hosted activities, stay within budget and ensuring compliance with funding rules.
- Operates in the complex and sophisticated area of entertainment that is considered exception to policy and must give critical oversight to these expenses.
- Directs and supervises the preparation of strategic plans in relation to protocol and logistics for all official visits and events hosted by the University.
- Does so in a manner that integrates the broader strategic objectives of the University and taking into account the timeframes, the logistical, budgetary and resource requirements and the specific objectives for the official visit or event.
- Ensures the independence of the University protocol matters while maintaining excellent relations.
- Provides authoritative and comprehensive advice in relation to the planning, organization and execution of official visits and events.
- Acts as resident expert for the University on the requirements, standards, traditions and expectations in relation to protocol and associated diplomatic conventions.
- Ensures that these are understood, incorporated and reflected in the official visits and events hosted by the University.
- Manages visits and events budgets.
- This responsibility includes coordinating the budget planning processes, estimating resource requirements and advising senior officials and senior executives on visit/event resource requirements.
- Ensures that commitments and expenditures are appropriately monitored and controlled.
- Conducts, in collaboration with other partners when relevant, post event evaluations and prepares reports of official visits and events to draw lessons and to identify practices that can be applied to the planning and conduct of future visits and events.
- Develops and refines best practices to enhance and improve planning and management of future official visits and events.
- Represents the University in inter-agency planning for visits and events.
- Collaborates with protocol and event management colleagues and officials in various other agencies and activities where visits or events require multi-agency collaboration in both the planning and execution phases.
- Assigns projects to the logistics and protocol coordinators.
- Establishes goals, priorities, timelines, and production standards and performance expectations.
- Reviews and adjusts plans and workloads as required.
- Reviews team and individual performance and prepares performance assessments.
- Approves or recommends professional training and development. Initiates staffing and classification actions.
- Coaches, guides, and mentors’ staff on an ongoing basis.
- Directs and oversees the development of information technology and information management tools and resources required for the successful preparation and delivery of visits and events.
- Oversees events as they occur in a real-time, often in a 24/7 environment where there is little margin for error.
- Must resolve urgent, confidential and sensitive issues as they arise and needs to manage multiple and changing priorities and demands from clients, stakeholders and representatives of the official visitors.
- Intervenes and takes immediate action to ensure that the dignity and integrity of the occasion is preserved.
- As a member of the management team contributes to the overall financial and human resource management of the Directorate and ensures that operational requirements are met.

Requirements

Qualifications and Experience:

- Bachelor's or Master’s Degree in Communications, Marketing, Journalism, Advertising;
- Must have 10 years’ experience in communications and marketing and events planning.
- Knowledge of social media and communications platforms.

Application Procedure:

Applications should include a curriculum vita, and contact information for three (3) professional references. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Confidential review of materials and screening of candidates will begin immediately.

About the Company

AUIB is an American-style, nonprofit university located next to the Baghdad International Airport in Baghdad. This large-scale, multi-million dollar project is funded by Iraqi and U.S. donors, both public and private. The university opens for students on Jan. 17, 2021, with the College of Arts & Sciences, College of International Studies, and the College of Business. Eventually, there will be 10 colleges at the university, including a College of Medicine.