Senior Director- Head of Marketing Advisory CEMEA

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Visa is looking for a seasoned, inspirational leader to grow the Marketing Advisory business across the CEMEA region.  As a key member of the CEMEA Marketing leadership team, the selected candidate will drive the strategy, vision, and go-to-market approach to continue advancing our marketing advisory business in addition to building new marketing capabilities that serve Visa clients across the region.

Our marketing advisory business is a rapidly growing business and part of Visa’s overall strategic growth priority to deliver value added services revenue through client engagements. This role provides leadership and guidance to country Client Marketing and advisory teams across CEMEA and partners closely with global counterparts, Visa Consulting & Analytics (VCA), sales teams and finance to execute a range of service lines, from marketing strategy, brand advisory, research and insights and marketing execution.

The ideal candidate will be a results-oriented, highly motivated, and inspirational leader with the ability to set a clear vision to drive growth. The individual must be flexible and have a “can do”, positive attitude, combining a solutions-orientated mind-set with a highly collaborative approach. The ideal background for this role includes marketing, sales and strategy consulting expertise. This leader must have a strong track record in managing high-performance teams through direct and indirect reporting lines, coupled with experience of working in a global matrix environment across fast-changing sectors.

The selected individual will bring strong commercial acumen and deep, proven marketing expertise in world-class brands, and will be ready to take the team and the Marketing Services function in CEMEA to the next level. The role will report directly to the SVP, Chief Marketing Officer CEMEA and is a member of the region’s marketing leadership team.

Essential Functions:

• Responsible for developing and commercializing a suite of marketing advisory and services to deliver growth and impact for Visa clients.

• Partner with Visa Consulting & Analytics (VCA) to develop ‘One Visa’ strategic operating model to help better serve our clients

• Develop and expand service lines for the CEMEA region

• Lead global Request For Proposal (RFP) response efforts across regional Client opportunities, including the response, pitch work and ideation showcasing Visa as the most competitive and strategic option for our clients.

• Manage the annual planning cycle through a strategic, bottom-up approach

• Partner with the CEMEA marketing leadership team to support strategic thought leadership and advancement of client offerings

• Champion cross-functional operating model, including with country Client Marketing leads, Visa Consulting & Analytics and Finance

• Develop clear and concise executive level communications to report on progress

This is a hybrid position. Hybrid employees can alternate time between both remote and office. Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office 2-3 set days a week (determined by leadership/site), with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% or more of the time based on business needs.

• Minimum 15 years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 12 years of experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters/MBA/JD/MD)
• Proven leader with a track record of building and developing diverse, top performing and highly engaged teams
• Independent, self-starter with a proven record of driving complex strategies across large teams
• Strong relationship building experience along with the ability to collaborate and work across countries and various business units to execute on a strategy and develop a new business
• Strong influencing skills across a matrix environment
• Ability to structure and manage complex projects and processes with multiple stakeholders at both senior and junior levels
• Able to identify issues, conduct analyses, synthesize findings, and make recommendations
• Personal presence and ability to clearly communicate compelling messages to senior level executives, excellent presentation skills, including strong oral and writing capabilities
• Proven ability to build and develop a goal-oriented culture and continually raise the bar for team achievements
• Executes decisions with the goals and vision of the company in mind, acts as a representative of the company brand both internally and externally
• Client marketing, consulting, sales, or other client-facing experience required
• Ability to quickly understand our client’s business strategies and needs, and use that to identify opportunities for joint marketing programmes that deliver growth for the client and Visa
• Prior experience identifying, scoping, pitching, and advising Clients on data-driven marketing strategies preferred, in market or in region experience preferred
• Strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills, strong analytic skills, ability to translate data and insights into marketing strategies
• Deep understanding of the payments marketing landscape and working knowledge of payment product economics preferred
• Comfortable operating in ‘white space’, proactively pursuing new ideas/capabilities, building out a “playbook” approach enabling scalable/ repeatable solutions
• - Strong financial acumen and ability to partner with all divisions of Finance

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.