Director, Consumer Comms & Social Media

Headway; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical

Dental

Vision

HSA/FSA

401(k) match

Parental leave

Fertility reimbursement

Job summary

Headway is seeking a Director of Consumer Communications and Social to build and lead a new function from the ground up. This player-coach role covers earned media, organic social, and content marketing to raise Headway's awareness and relevance across culture and conversations.

You will own messaging, set strategy, and lead a small team, partnering with Brand and Product Marketing to drive engagement and meaningful coverage.

Qualifications

• You have 10+ years in consumer communications — ideally including at least 3+ years in-house leading teams.
• You've built a consumer communications or brand function from the ground up before.
• You have deep media relations skills, real relationships with reporters at relevant consumer outlets, and experience managing an agency.
• You're a strong data storyteller who knows how to turn research and analytics into something a consumer will actually engage with.
• You've led organic social — you know how to pick the channels that matter, build content that performs, and grow real engagement.
• You're a builder and a player-coach — energized by standing up a small team and getting your hands dirty at the same time.
• You have sharp cultural instincts and the courage to take a risk to create a moment, always in a way that's additive to the brand, never off of it.
• You do not shy away from taking (calculated) risks and you are full of creative ideas for buzz moments and angles that break through noise and generate real attention.
• Bonus points if you've worked in mental health or another regulated industry.

Responsibilities

• Consumer communications and earned media: Set messaging and strategy that build Headway's relevance in the news cycle, with a sharp eye for cultural conversations; maintain relationships with reporters and manage our agency partner.
• A data storytelling content flywheel: Work with research and analytics to mine data, package for consumers, and distribute across earned, owned, and social channels.
• Organic social: Build and lead the organic social team; define channel strategy and content that drives engagement.
• Content marketing: Own patient-brand content across blog, YouTube, and Substack, optimized for discoverability.
• Cultural relevance: Monitor culture and place Headway in conversations in a way that's true to the brand.

Skills

Consumer communications

Team leadership

Media relations

Data storytelling

Job description

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but most providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway’s mission is to fix this by building a new mental healthcare system everyone can access. We started by solving the biggest barrier to care: insurance. The admin work - credentialing, claims, payment reconciliation - is a nightmare. We've automated that.

But we're going further. Over 90,000 providers across all 50 states run their practice on our software, serving over 2.6 million patients. We are building the best tools for therapists to run their entire practice, reimagining the experience of finding a therapist, and investing in the platform foundations to enable this at scale, and building much of it with AI. We aren't just a billing layer; we are becoming the platform where care actually happens.

We're a Series D company with $325M+ in funding (a16z, Accel, Spark Capital, etc.), looking for exceptional people to help us achieve this mission. We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better.

Brand, Product Marketing, Communications, and Creative tell Headway’s story to everyone we serve: patients looking for care, providers building their practices, and the health plans and health systems we partner with. Our team shapes who finds us, who trusts us, and who comes back.

We're looking for a Director of Consumer Communications and Social to build and lead that function from the ground up. This is a player-coach role for someone who wants to build and run a content flywheel across earned media, organic social, and content marketing — one that raises awareness of Headway and puts us in the right conversations in culture. You’ll own Headway’s share of voice across press, LLMs, search, social, and word-of-mouth conversations. You'll lead and grow a small team, and work hand-in-hand with the rest of Communications, Brand, and Product Marketing.

What you'll own

• Consumer communications and earned media. Set the messaging and strategy that build Headway's relevance in the news cycle, with a sharp eye for the cultural conversations where we belong. Maintain strong relationships with reporters at the consumer outlets that matter, and manage our agency partner.

• A data storytelling content flywheel. Work with our research and analytics teams to mine data, package it in a way a consumer actually wants to read, and distribute it across earned, owned, and social channels.

• Organic social. Build and lead the organic social team. Set our channel strategy, decide where we show up, and develop the content that drives real engagement.

• Content marketing. Own the content that fuels our patient brand communications across a variety of channels including blog, YouTube, substack — and build it to be found and surfaced wherever people (and increasingly, AI tools) are looking for answers.

• Cultural relevance. Keep a finger on the pulse of what's happening in culture, and know how to put Headway into that conversation in a way that's true to the brand. Be comfortable taking smart risks to create a real buzz moment.

You'd be a great fit if…

• You have 10+ years in consumer communications — ideally including at least 3+ years in-house leading teams. You’ve also led or partnered closely with social or content marketing.

• You've built a consumer communications or brand function from the ground up before.

• You have deep media relations skills, real relationships with reporters at relevant consumer outlets, and experience managing an agency.

• You're a strong data storyteller who knows how to turn research and analytics into something a consumer will actually engage with.

• You've led organic social — you know how to pick the channels that matter, build content that performs, and grow real engagement, not vanity metrics.

• You're a builder and a player-coach — energized by standing up a small team and getting your hands dirty at the same time.

• You have sharp cultural instincts and the courage to take a risk to create a moment, always in a way that's additive to the brand, never off of it.

• You do not shy away from taking (calculated) risks and you are full of creative ideas for buzz moments and angles that break through noise and generate real attention.

• Bonus points if you've worked in mental health or another regulated industry.

This is a rare moment — Headway is at the inflection point where scale meets credibility, and the person who builds this function will leave a lasting mark on how behavioral health is delivered and funded in America. If that sounds like the challenge you've been waiting for, we'd love to meet you.

Comprehensive benefits:

Medical, dental, vision, HSA/FSA, 401(k) including match for 2027!, Carrot Fertility reimbursement, and paid parental, medical and caregiver leave.

We believe a team's strength is in its people, and we cannot achieve this mission without a team that reflects the diversity of this problem – across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, national origin, religion, family status, disability, military status, and experience. Headway is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Headway will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please inform the recruiter when they contact you to schedule your interview.