Director of AI Innovation and Communications

About the role

Provides leadership and oversight in planning, managing, developing, and evaluating complex departmental strategy, initiatives and activities. The Director of AI Innovation and Communications will report to the Vice President for Media Relations & Strategic Communications.

Responsibilities

• Help MRSC develop and lead a department-wide AI communications and innovation strategy.
• Identify and prioritize opportunities across media relations, ASU News, strategic communications, presidential communications, visual communications, broadcast, social media, audience development and distribution.
• Partner with MRSC teams to identify, test and implement AI-enabled approaches that enhance their work.
• Modernize and enhance daily workflows through responsible use of AI.
• Reduce repetitive work and expand staff capacity while preserving human judgment, editorial standards, accuracy and accountability.
• Build AI fluency and adoption across MRSC.
• Provide training, coaching, shared resources, demonstrations and practical playbooks that meet employees at different levels of experience and comfort.
• Serve as the strategic and functional lead for MRSC AI initiatives.
• Define user needs, use cases, requirements, content standards, evaluation criteria, governance and adoption in partnership with the teams responsible for technical architecture, development, deployment and maintenance.
• Guide the continued development and evaluation of public-facing AI experiences.
• Lead the development of AI-assisted research, monitoring and knowledge-management capabilities.
• Help MRSC identify stories and experts across ASU, track developments in higher education and the broader AI ecosystem, and prepare timely briefing and communications materials in partnership with MRSC and enterprise technical teams.
• Lead MRSC's communications strategy for ASU's work in AI.
• Coordinate with MRSC leadership, Enterprise Technology, Knowledge Enterprise, Enterprise Brand Strategy and Management, academic units and other partners to develop accurate, consistent and compelling messaging about AI across ASU research, teaching, operations and public impact.
• Maintain an active network across the AI ecosystem.
• Stay closely connected to AI research, industry, policy, advocacy, technology media and relevant online communities; monitor emerging technologies, companies, regulation, public debates and narrative shifts; and translate those