Senior Director of Proposal Management & Creative Services

Purpose: The Senior Director of Proposal Management & Creative Services is responsible for the strategy, quality, and delivery of Business Development proposals. This role leads a team and operating model that allows the VPs of Business Development to focus on client relationships and win strategy, elevates every submittal, and ensures the proposal process consistently delivers at the highest level of quality. 

Essential Functions:

• Leads the proposal management team responsible for managing RFP projects, writing, designing, and managing various B2B projects, including lease extension presentations, proposals, and oral presentations; manages the proposal process in response to RFPs and RFEIs
• Owns the overall quality and competitiveness of proposals; serves as strategic partner to VPs of Business Development translating client intelligence, competitive context, and win strategy into a proposal process that produces differentiated, compelling submittals
• Defines the functional requirements needed to develop proposals by assessing, writing, researching, designing, packaging, and conducting quality assurance before delivering a world-class proposal
• Establishes the department’s intake, coordination, and content-gathering protocols, creating a structured and professional interface between the Proposal team and internal partners across Operations, Finance, Legal, Concepts, and other departments; ensures all cross-functional engagement is organized, purposeful, and efficient
• Holds accountability for proposal timelines, resource allocation, and delivery; proactively identifies risks to submission and deadlines and resolves capacity, quality, or coordination issues before they escalate to Business Development leadership
• Assigns project managers and proposal staff to participate in proposals, gathers feedback from VPs of Development on staff performance, develops staff capabilities, performs supervisory role for the proposal management team
• Manages large and complex proposal projects, with multiple sub-projects, requiring senior level oversight and extensive executive communications
• Oversees the development of project plans, including defining objectives, methods, timetables, and budget
• Oversees in-house and external resources to meet creative services needs on-time and within budget, ensuring high quality standards while meeting strict deadlines
• Participates with SVPs and VPs of development in forming themes and discriminators for the response framework that align with the established win strategy; participates actively in proposal reviews and debriefs
• Establishes organizational protocols or systems to identify customer issues, trends, opportunities, and effectively integrates them into strategy
• Selects and implements organizational and process tools to increase efficiencies with project management

Reporting Relationship: The Senior Director of Proposal Management & Creative Services reports to the Senior Vice President of Business Development

Minimum Qualifications, Knowledge, Skills, and Work Environment:

• Education and Experience: The combination of education and professional experience must exceed 10 years:
  • In a leadership role: Requires 5 years of experience leading a team of creative professionals engaged in proposal/project management in business development

• In a technical role: Requires 10 years of experience engaged in developing and delivering proposal management and creative content
• A bachelor’s degree in a program related to the functional area can count for 3 of the ten-year requirement
• An MBA or a master’s level degree in a program related to the functional area can count for an additional 2 years of the ten-year requirement
• In the industry: 3-5 years of Airport F&B and/or Retail experience
• Specialized Training:
• Training that leads to an in-depth understanding of the creative process and proposal/project management in business development
• Training that leads to demonstrated expertise in MS Project, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Creative suite applications
• Training that leads to demonstrated expertise of presentation creation in PowerPoint/KeyNote/Prezi
• Training that leads to demonstrated experience with photographic art direction; photography skills preferred
• Specialized Skillset/Competencies/Traits
• Advanced business acumen and also has the strategic mindset required to understand the long-term implications of proposal management decisions and to advance the organization’s goals
• Demonstrated history of anticipating the needs of the business and complex stakeholders, the employee population, and individual circumstances
• Demonstrated history of creating and maintaining positive work environments through coaching, developing, and leading teams to achieve common goals
• Demonstrated experience exhibiting a continuous improvement mindset with the ability to optimize work processes and achieve positive results
• Travel/Location: 
• This position is based at the North America Support Center in Bethesda, MD
• Requires up to 20% travel