Associate Director, Research Advisory Services

Terrain Mastery

Build and maintain issue expertise across research terrains, with a special focus on those most important to members across the university executive cabinet at educational institutions and the teams they lead each day: including the delivery of dynamic strategy to guide transformation; advancement and fundraising strategy; campaign readiness and execution; and donor and alumni engagement.

Store and curate EAB's perspective across the breadth of research terrains to give partners the most direct access to EAB's advice.

• Experience working with senior institutional leaders and advancement organizations through practitioner, consulting, or advisory experience.
• Leverage EAB's insights, best practices, tools, and data to help partners make decisions and implement best practices and develop a deep understanding of assigned terrain, market trends, and evolving client needs.

Content Delivery and Facilitation

Work directly with partners to diagnose their problems, challenge their assumptions, guide decisions, and suggest solutions.

• Deliver EAB's point of view and advice through phone consultations, virtual meetings, conferences, and on campus presentations.
• Makes EAB insights and data accessible and impactful for our partners, bringing clarity and context to their understanding of their challenges;
• Presents partners with new ideas and potential solutions to those challenges and advocate for adoption;
• Acts as an expert outside voice, building consensus and educating committees and staff.

Customer Success and Commercial Support

Collaborate with the research customer success team to execute on a scalable and impactful partner delivery model and deliver high-impact client interactions.

• Support sales in new partner development.

Research Collaboration

Leverage terrain expertise to generate original insight and content in assigned areas (e.g., blog posts, social media posts, briefings, presentations, etc.).

• Actively participate in ongoing research processes and share market insights with research colleagues to inform future EAB insights and deliverables.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree, with an excellent academic record and 5+ years of post-graduate, professional experience; or 4+ years of post-graduate, professional experience and advanced degree.
• Experience working with client executives, either at a college, university, district, or school or as a consultant or advisor.
• Superior verbal, written, facilitation, and presentation skills.
• Ability to create a compelling narrative through data visualization, graphics, and slides.
• Excellent relationship building and collaboration skills; ability to build relationships with and engage and challenge senior-level executives.
• Advanced degree.
• In-depth understanding of education industry and the specific role that senior institutional leadership has in setting strategy and decision making in areas such as strategic Information Technology, AI, and Enterprise Data Management.
• Demonstrated ability to distill market and terrain insights, drawing on client interactions.
• Experience producing written content and deliverables for an executive-level audience (e.g., blogs, social media feeds, reports, briefings).
• Commitment to embracing a continual learning environment and contributing to a dynamic and welcoming culture of fairness, authenticity, and belonging in support of EAB's mission, values, and aspiration.