Sr. Strategy Director

UMT - Internal; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Translation is seeking a Senior Strategy Director in New York to lead strategic direction across major client accounts, shaping brand and cultural strategy with executive-level leadership. This role emphasizes cultural insight, storytelling, and collaboration with data, business and creative leadership.

You will mentor strategists, raise strategic quality standards, and partner to deliver integrated, high-impact work. Four days in office and one day remote, NY/CA salary ranges apply.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in strategy, brand development, or cultural strategy.
• Proven leadership for major client accounts and integrated engagements.
• Ability to defend strategic recommendations with senior clients.
• Synthesize research, culture, and business context into actionable strategy.

Responsibilities

• Set strategic direction across key client accounts, ensuring clear, culturally informed thinking.
• Define problems and opportunities to guide work and decisions.
• Lead development of brand, cultural, and creative strategy that inspires teams and clients.
• Manage multiple engagements and prioritise impactful work across teams.
• Shape strategic approaches to major briefs and opportunities.

Skills

Strategic leadership

Brand strategy

Cultural strategy

Storytelling

Client leadership

Mentoring

Ambiguity management

Team collaboration

Qualitative & quantitative research

People management

Job description

We are an award-winning independent creative solutions company that aspires to be the most culturally-influential company in the world. We help ambitious brands harness the power of culture to solve their biggest challenges. As a unique mix of experts in culture, technology, and storytelling, we are united by a passion to grow brands in ways that advertising alone can never do.

We are an entrepreneurial business – not a traditional “ad agency.” That means we value resourcefulness and tenacity just as much as we value creativity and intelligence. We’re unapologetically ambitious!

We are looking for a Senior Strategy Director to join Translation. This role demands four days in office and one day remote.

What You'll Do

• Set the strategic direction across key client accounts, ensuring our thinking is clear, differentiated, culturally informed, and connected to meaningful business outcomes.
• Define the real problem behind complex business and brand challenges, quickly identifying the tensions, opportunities, and strategic choices that should guide the work.
• Lead the development of brand, cultural, and creative strategy, translating insight into a clear point of view that inspires both clients and creative teams.
• Lead multiple engagements and workstreams simultaneously, maintaining a high standard of strategic quality while helping teams prioritize what matters most.
• Shape the strategic approach to major briefs and opportunities, determining what we need to learn, questions to answer, and how different disciplines should come together.
• Partner with Data Strategy, Context, Business, and Creative leadership to create an integrated strategic vision for the work.
• Develop and mentor strategists, providing clear direction and feedback while helping junior and mid-level talent strengthen their judgment, storytelling and strategic craft.
• Raise the quality of the Strategy discipline, establishing strong standards for briefs, narratives, presentations, research, and strategic recommendations.
• Contribute to Translation’s intellectual capital, developing perspectives that advance how we understand audiences, culture, brands, and business.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Exceptional strategic judgment with the ability to distinguish an interesting observation from an insight that can meaningfully change the work.
• Strong command of brand, cultural, and creative strategy, with the ability to connect them into a cohesive strategic narrative.
• Ability to simplify complex business and cultural challenges into clear, compelling strategic choices.
• Persuasive storyteller who can build and present a strategic argument with clarity, confidence, and conviction.
• Strong client leadership skills and the ability to build credibility with senior clients.
• Ability to lead through ambiguity, bringing structure and direction to assignments that may not begin with a clearly defined answer.
• Strong creative instincts and the ability to translate strategy into direction that inspires and improves creative work.
• Strong understanding of qualitative and quantitative research, with the judgment to determine when additional research is necessary and how findings should inform strategy.
• Ability to lead, coach, and elevate other strategists while maintaining accountability for the quality of their work.
• Collaborative leadership style with the ability to bring different disciplines and perspectives toward a common strategic ambition.
• Deep curiosity about people, culture, brands, and business, informed by interests and experiences that contribute a distinct point of view.

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant experience in strategy, brand development, communications, cultural strategy, or a related discipline.
• Demonstrated experience leading strategy for significant client accounts, campaigns, brand platforms, or integrated engagements.
• Proven ability to independently develop and defend strategic recommendations with senior clients and internal leadership.
• Demonstrated ability to synthesize research, cultural intelligence, business context, and audience understanding into actionable strategy.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading strategy across multiple/ complex, multi-workstream accounts.
• Strong understanding of the digital, social, media, and creator ecosystems.
• Demonstrated ability to turn cultural understanding into distinctive brand, cultural, and creative strategies.
• Proven ability to uncover and translate audience-specific insights into impactful brand, cultural, and creative strategies

About UnitedMasters

UnitedMasters Inc. represents the creative solutions company, Translation , and the leading software and services platform for independent creators, UnitedMasters . UnitedMasters enables ownership, exposure, and new paths for financial return for independent creators, while Translation helps brands leverage the power of contemporary culture to achieve transformational growth. Combined, UnitedMasters, Inc. is the world’s leading marketplace for cultural capital, connecting independent artists and brands to realize a future in which all creators own their future. Backed by Alphabet, Andreessen Horowitz, and Apple, UnitedMasters, Inc. is reimagining how brands and artists come together to tell their stories, build profitable growth, and push culture forward.

Salary Hiring Range: $160,000 -$190,000

Our salary ranges are based on paying competitively for our size and industry, and are one part of many compensation, benefits and other reward opportunities we provide (e.g. bonus, stock options, 401(k) match, etc.)

Individual pay rate decisions are based on a number of factors, including qualifications for the role, experience level, skillset, and balancing internal equity relative to peers at the company. We expect the majority of the candidates who are offered roles at our company to fall healthily throughout the range based on these factors.

The range above is for the expectations as laid out in the job description, however we are often open to a wide variety of profiles, and recognize that the person we hire may be less experienced (or more senior) than this job description as posted. If that ends up being the case, the updated salary range will be communicated with you as a candidate.

The salary range above is for the NY/CA. As a company, we have a location based strategy, which means the salary range could be lower or higher than this if the role is hired in another location.

As set forth in UMT - Internal’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

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