Director of KQED Audience Lab and Audience Intelligence

The Director of the KQED Audience Lab and Audience Intelligence team will manage, mentor and lead the team in making data from KQED audiences and systems as well as external data, more accessible, understandable and insightful, creating a deep understanding and empathy for audiences while also innovating and incubating new products and services. Reporting to the Vice President of Membership Generosity and Audience Intelligence, the Director is charged with continued definition, building and shaping of KQED’s data analytics, audience research best practices, and increasing KQED’s innovation culture. The Director will work closely with a variety of key stakeholders across the organization to ensure they have the salient information and data points needed to make key business decisions.

The Audience Intelligence team ensures that KQED has the salient information needed to make informed decisions in our programming and services, as well as a deeper understanding of our audiences - current and prospective. The KQED Innovation Lab is focused on innovating and incubating new products and services to serve the changing media needs of the Bay Area. The KQED Lab provides space, resources and processes to take ideas from concept to prototype while producing a series of KQED staff workshops and events to increase KQED’s innovation culture, professional learning and immersion in the latest media technologies.

The Director guides the work that links people, process, and product interactions over time to create a holistic and exceptional experience for KQED audiences and donors. This role will manage the two roles of Senior Manager, Business Intelligence and Manager, Audience Research, plus the Innovation Lab and will lead the reporting and data analytics results that provide the actionable insights for performance improvements, quality enhancements, strategic planning, and operational efficiencies. They will also ensure the production of the highest quality on-time deliverables, and consult with clients on the interpretation of the results and recommended actions for improvement and growth.

This role will drive research and innovation strategy that will enhance the understanding and merits of new business models, the economic opportunity behind new products and approaches, and the case for change in how we better understand audiences and address their needs. They will support leadership across the organization in solving high priority operational issues by driving the communication and development of suitable strategies and goals based on key organizational data, and alignment with cross-functional business partners. 

The successful candidate will look forward to managing people, collaborating with business stakeholders, can see the ‘big picture’ and pull together lots of different inputs, and has demonstrated capabilities managing by influence across disciplines and job levels. Further, this individual will have terrific people and project management skills and impeccable detail-orientation, with the ability to manage across multiple cross-functional stakeholders. They will be an exceptional communicator and strategic thinker with strong analytical, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.

KQED envisions a public media organization with a culture that centers on human dignity, equity, and belonging. This will enable us to better serve and reflect the Bay Area through diverse and inclusive storytelling. 

We value the contributions of marginalized people in society — including Black, Indigenous, and all people of color,  people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ people — and we believe that these communities must be centered in the work we do, and we strongly encourage members of these communities to apply.

The mission that drives us:

KQED provides citizens of Northern California with a community-supported alternative to commercial media.   We provide citizens with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions; convene community dialogue; bring the arts to everyone and engage audiences to share their stories. We help students and teachers thrive in 21st-century classrooms, and take people of all ages on journeys of exploration- exposing them to new people, places and ideas.

This role will work hybrid between working in KQED's newly renovated headquarters and working remotely. KQED requires employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
 

Salary Range: $131,000-$163,000 Annually

This role will work hybrid between working in KQED's newly renovated headquarters and working remotely. KQED requires employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Essential Functions: 

1. Support KQED’s sustainability by aligning Innovation Lab & Audience Intelligence activities with the organizational goals and objectives.
2. Manage, coach and ensure the professional development of the Senior Business Intelligence Manager and Audience Research Manager
3. Lead workshops to answer critical business questions through design thinking, rapid prototyping, and testing ideas with internal stakeholders and external audiences/prospective audiences. 
4. Lead strategy design sessions with internal stakeholders to unearth the root cause of problems that face public media today. 
5. Manage the portfolio of Lab projects – from scoping, timelines, budgeting and assigning resources – guiding projects through the process from idea to prototype.
6. Lead high level, strategic research initiatives utilizing innovative research methods and experiments to help drive program and product direction for the organization.
7. Partner with cross-functional business and technical teams to provide analytics in support of enterprise-wide efforts through education, knowledge sharing, business acumen and robust analysis
8. Provide direction in the creation of  qualitative/quantitative studies to collect user feedback, create a deep understanding and empathy for KQED current and prospective audiences, and work cross-functionally with audience development, content, fundraising, marketing and  product teams to meet the business needs.
9. Promote a culture of excellence, data driven discussions, healthy skepticism, knowledge sharing, expansion of the team’s skill set and teamwork with a focus on KQED’s growth
10. Recruit, select and retain highly qualified professionals; provide the leadership necessary to maintain a motivated, productive and competent team through open communication, delegation of responsibilities and authority; guide and direct colleagues in their professional development encouraging a high level of quality and job satisfaction.

Knowledge/Experience Required:

1. 8+ years of experience leading user research initiatives for highly collaborative, multidisciplinary teams with the ability to thrive in and make sense of highly ambiguous problem spaces.
2. 5+ years of experience in managing teams
3. 2+ years of experience with design thinking, including the ability to design processes for soliciting and synthesizing stakeholder feedback, ideas, insights and research
4. Proven leadership ability and a track record of having created and managed highly collaborative cross-functional, cross organizational teams. 
5. Ability to proactively bring together groups of individuals to solve a problem and enable others to understand and execute the resulting vision
6. Experience successfully balancing long term strategic priorities with short term tactical needs.
7. Experience communicating the value of design and creative strategy to stakeholders at all levels, building allies and support for the team and key initiatives
8. Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills, the ability to convert data into actionable insights through analytics; ability to think strategically.
9. Strong facilitation and active listening skills with experience conducting interviews using engaging questions to help participants drive the conversation.