Executive Director, Business Lead

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VML is a global creative company that combines brand experience, customer experience, and commerce to create connected brands that drive growth. Guided by a Human First philosophy, VML is known for its innovative work for brands and consistently ranks among the world’s leading creative companies, including the WARC Creative 100. VML’s global network spans 55+ markets with principal offices in Buenos Aires, Kansas City, London, New York, São Paulo, Shanghai and Singapore. 

VML is part of WPP, the trusted growth partner for the world's leading brands. Powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform WPP Open, WPP unites cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, creativity, production, enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel. 

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Role Summary

WPP Enterprise Solutions is seeking a senior Business Lead to oversee a large-scale AI-enabled Content Supply Chain transformation program for Ford. This role will be the ultimate accountable business leader for the workstream, responsible for ensuring that the program is strategically connected to Ford’s broader marketing, customer experience, personalization, production, data, technology, and business transformation priorities.

This is not a traditional account management role. It requires a senior client and business leader who can translate enterprise ambition into clear priorities, connect workstreams across a complex WPP and Ford ecosystem, and ensure the program delivers meaningful business value. The ideal candidate understands how content, data, technology, decisioning, workflow, governance, and measurement come together to enable modern personalized marketing at scale.

The Business Lead will own the “what” and “why” of the program: what Ford needs, why it matters, how the work connects to enterprise objectives, how priorities should be shaped, and how WPP should organize around the opportunity. This is a hands-on business leadership role, requiring someone who can both lead the room and do the work — shaping strategy, writing POVs, building executive narratives, getting into workstream details, and turning ambiguity into clear decisions and action. They will partner closely with the Program Delivery Lead, who will own the “how” of activation, delivery operations, governance, and execution.

This role requires executive presence, strong commercial judgment, deep client relationship skills, and the ability to bring clarity to ambiguity. The right candidate will be able to lead senior stakeholder conversations, identify growth opportunities, shape strategic narratives, and keep a complex transformation effort moving with focus, confidence, and momentum.

Core Responsibilities

Business Leadership & Strategic Ownership

• Own the overall business leadership of the Ford Content Supply Chain transformation workstream across WPP Enterprise Solutions, Ford.
• Serve as the senior business owner responsible for connecting the program to Ford’s broader enterprise priorities, including content personalization, marketing efficiency, customer experience, data enablement, production transformation, AI adoption, and measurable business growth.
• Translate complex transformation needs into clear business priorities, strategic narratives, workstream objectives, and executive-ready recommendations.
• Ensure the full program ladder ups to Ford’s ambition to deliver the right content, in the right format, to the right customer, in the right channel, at the right moment.
• Maintain a clear view of how content production, asset lifecycle management, taxonomy, metadata, DAM modernization, data connectivity, decisioning, workflow governance, and measurement work together as one connected transformation.
• Help WPP and Ford prioritize the right opportunities, avoiding fragmented activity and ensuring the work remains focused on scalable, enterprise-level outcomes.
• Act as a senior strategic advisor to Ford and WPP leadership, helping stakeholders understand what matters, what is urgent, what is dependent, and where investment or decision-making is required.

Client Partnership & Stakeholder Leadership

• Build and maintain trusted relationships with senior Ford stakeholders across marketing, customer digital and loyalty, IT, product, CRM, web, production, media, measurement, legal, governance, and related business units.
• Serve as a primary client-facing business lead for the CSC transformation workstream, ensuring Ford stakeholders have confidence in the direction, clarity of priorities, and value of WPP’s role.
• Lead senior-level conversations that require business framing, strategic judgment, prioritization, escalation, and alignment.
• Understand Ford’s business environment, internal dynamics, stakeholder needs, organizational constraints, and transformation ambitions.
• Connect dots across Ford teams that may be working on related but disconnected efforts, helping surface overlap, dependencies, opportunities, and risks.
• Ensure the WPP team is positioned as an integrated enterprise partner, not a collection of disconnected agency or platform workstreams.
• Bring calm, clarity, and confidence to complex client conversations, especially when scope, ownership, feasibility, budget, or priorities are unclear.

Commercial Ownership & Growth

• Own the commercial strategy for the CSC transformation workstream, including growth planning, scope development, revenue opportunities, and business case framing.
• Identify opportunities to expand WPP’s role across strategy, operating model design, production transformation, content automation, data enablement, workflow, measurement, governance, and technology integration.
• Shape new scopes of work, commercial proposals, pilot packages, transformation roadmaps, and executive business cases in partnership with delivery, strategy, technology, production, finance, and WPP capability leads.
• Ensure work is commercially viable, properly scoped, and connected to measurable value.
• Partner with WPP leadership to forecast growth, identify resourcing needs, and package the program in a way that can scale across Ford teams, regions, brands, and business units.
• Translate technical or operational opportunities into business language that Ford executives can understand, support, and fund.
• Identify where pilots should become platforms, where one-off efforts should become repeatable operating models, and where WPP can create durable enterprise value.

Cross-WPP Integration

• Bring together the right WPP capabilities across Enterprise Solutions, WPP Production, WPP Open, WPP Media, partner ecosystems.
• Operate as a connector across WPP teams, ensuring capabilities are organized around Ford’s business need rather than internal structures.
• Help define how WPP shows up as one integrated team across strategy, production, delivery, data, experience, technology, measurement, and governance.
• Partner with the Program Delivery Lead to ensure WPP resources are aligned to the right priorities, decision rights are clear, and workstreams are coordinated.
• Ensure the team is using consistent language, frameworks, program narratives, and executive materials across the transformation.
• Identify where WPP should bring forward new capabilities, partnerships, tools, agents, AI workflows, or operating models to strengthen the program.

Program Narrative, Executive Communication & Decision Support

• Own the strategic narrative of the Content Supply Chain transformation program.
• Develop clear, executive-ready materials that explain the business problem, transformation opportunity, current-state challenges, future-state model, priority workstreams, dependencies, value case, and roadmap.
• Prepare senior stakeholders for key decision moments by framing options, tradeoffs, risks, recommendations, and required actions.
• Ensure leadership communications are concise, connected, and grounded in business impact.
• Help Ford and WPP leadership understand how individual workstreams connect into a larger transformation architecture.
• Create alignment around why foundational work — taxonomy, metadata, DAM, asset planning, data connectivity, workflow, decisioning, and measurement — is required to unlock AI-enabled personalization at scale.
• Continuously translate complexity into a simple, actionable story that builds confidence and momentum.

Transformation Leadership

• Help move the organization from disconnected projects to a coordinated transformation program.
• Identify where current processes, platforms, operating models, or ownership structures are limiting scale.
• Shape recommendations for new ways of working across content planning, production, asset management, content assembly, activation, performance feedback, and optimization.
• Help establish the business case for investment in content supply chain modernization, including speed, efficiency, personalization, quality, consistency, governance, and measurable performance.
• Partner with delivery and workstream leads to ensure transformation recommendations are actionable, not theoretical.
• Champion a practical, progressive approach: prove value through prioritized use cases, then scale through governance, operating model, technology, and adoption.

Measurement & Business Value

• Ensure the program is anchored in measurable business outcomes.
• Define and socialize the value story across efficiency, speed to market, asset reuse, content quality, governance, personalization readiness, customer engagement, conversion, and long-term business impact.
• Partner with analytics and delivery teams to ensure performance measurement is embedded into the program from the beginning.
• Push the team to connect operational progress to business results, not just activity completion.
• Help shape dashboards, executive readouts, and value-tracking frameworks that show how the transformation is progressing.
• Ensure Ford sees a clear connection between investment, operational change, and measurable business return.

Requirements

• Senior client leadership experience across complex marketing, digital, technology, production, transformation, or enterprise consulting environments.
• Experience leading large, matrixed client relationships with multiple stakeholders, agencies, partners, platforms, and business units.
• Strong understanding of modern marketing operations, content supply chains, personalization, customer experience, CRM, web, production, data, measurement, and marketing technology.
• Business-level fluency in major enterprise marketing technology and content platforms, including Adobe, Salesforce, DAM systems, workflow tools, analytics platforms, AI-enabled production tools, and decisioning environments.
• Ability to understand technical and operational topics well enough to guide business decisions, frame tradeoffs, and lead executive conversations.
• Strong commercial acumen, including experience shaping scopes of work, identifying growth opportunities, developing business cases, and supporting revenue expansion.
• Excellent executive communication skills, including ability to simplify complex ecosystems into clear narratives, recommendations, and decision frameworks.
• Proven ability to lead through ambiguity, establish structure, and create momentum in complex transformation environments.
• Experience working across agency, consulting, technology, or client-side organizations preferred.
• Automotive experience is highly valuable but not required.

Competencies

• Strategic connector who can see the full ecosystem and understand how individual workstreams ladder up to enterprise transformation.
• Executive-level communicator who can build trust, simplify complexity, and drive alignment.
• Commercially sharp business leader who can identify opportunity, shape value, and grow the relationship responsibly.
• Collaborative operator who knows how to bring multiple disciplines, agencies, partners, and stakeholders together around a shared agenda.
• Transformation-minded leader who can balance vision with pragmatic execution.
• Client-first partner who understands how to anticipate needs, manage sensitivities, and create confidence.
• Comfortable with ambiguity, complexity, and evolving priorities.
• Fluent in both business and technology conversations, without needing to be the technical architect.
• Able to challenge constructively, escalate appropriately, and keep teams focused on outcomes.
• Calm, resilient, and decisive under pressure.

The base salary range for this position at the time of this posting is indicated below. Individual compensation varies based on job-related factors, including location, business needs, level of responsibility, experience, and qualifications. We offer a competitive benefits package, click WPP Benefits for more details.

_$155,000—$390,000 USD

We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office an average of four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

WPP (VML) is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers. 

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