Senior Events Program Lead – Global Water Community

Water Environment Federation; Alexandria (VA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

The Senior Manager, WEF Events, will lead planning and execution across WEF’s event portfolio, excluding WEFTEC, coordinating Educational Programming, Marketing, and Sales.

This role requires hybrid work in Alexandria, VA, with two in-office days every other week and travel up to 20% for meetings and events.

We seek a results-oriented leader who can align diverse teams, manage budgets, and deliver exceptional events that further WEF’s mission.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience.
• 7+ years of experience managing complex, cross-functional programs; experience with event planning, associations, or comparable multi-stakeholder initiatives preferred.
• 2+ years of People Leadership experience
• Demonstrated ability to lead and influence cross-functional teams without direct supervisory authority.
• Strong judgment and demonstrated ability to make timely decisions involving competing priorities, multiple stakeholders, and incomplete information.
• Experience managing integrated work plans, budgets, timelines, dependencies, risks, and performance measures.
• Exceptional facilitation, communication, negotiation, conflict-resolution, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Demonstrated commitment to inclusive collaboration and ensuring relevant perspectives are incorporated into planning and decision-making.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and remain effective in a dynamic, deadline-driven environment.
• PMP, CMP, CEM, or comparable professional certification preferred.

Responsibilities

• Own the integrated event program: Lead planning and coordination across all functional areas from initial concept and business planning through execution and post-event evaluation.
• Drive decisions: Establish decision points, facilitate productive discussion, resolve competing priorities, and make final cross-functional decisions when alignment cannot be achieved.
• Create accountability: Establish clear roles, deliverables, deadlines, and dependencies; monitor progress; and hold functional leads accountable for agreed-upon responsibilities.
• Lead cross-functional collaboration: Convene the right stakeholders at the right time and ensure work across Events, Programming, Marketing, Sales, Community Engagement, Culture and Belonging or other internal stakeholders is coordinated rather than developed in silos.
• Ensure inclusive participation: Proactively identify who needs to be included and/or involved in a decision and ensure affected teams, volunteer communities, committees, and other key stakeholders have meaningful opportunities to contribute.
• Resolve gaps and conflicts: Identify and/or resolve unclear ownership, missed handoffs, conflicting priorities, and emerging risks; facilitate resolution and make decisions necessary to keep the program moving.
• Integrate strategy and business planning: Coordinate development of event objectives, audience strategy, theme, location, timing, programming, sales, marketing, promotion, pro forma budget, and management of projections.
• Manage risk and communication: Surface operational, financial, participant-experience, and organizational risks early and maintain clear communication of decisions, ownership, progress, and unresolved issues.
• Drive continuous improvement: Lead post-event reviews, document lessons learned, and ensure improvements are incorporated into subsequent events.

Skills

Cross-functional leadership

Stakeholder management

Facilitation

Negotiation

Communication

Conflict resolution

Decision making

Budgeting and planning

Education

Bachelor's degree

PMP certification

CMP certification

CEM certification

Tools

MS Office Suite

Job description

The Senior Manager, WEF Events, will lead planning and execution across WEF’s event portfolio, excluding WEFTEC, coordinating Educational Programming, Marketing, and Sales.

This role requires hybrid work in Alexandria, VA, with two in-office days every other week and travel up to 20% for meetings and events.

We seek a results-oriented leader who can align diverse teams, manage budgets, and deliver exceptional events that further WEF’s mission.