Director of Communications

About the role

This role reports to the Chief Culture Officer and partners closely with the CEO, COO, CFO, Chief People Officer, and marketing to build the communications function VPP needs at this stage of growth. Occasional travel to conferences, industry events, and hospital visits is required.

Internal Communications

• Own the internal communications calendar and structure, including partner calls, all-hands meetings, town halls, and recurring leadership meetings.
• Select, launch, and manage VPP’s internal communications platform, ensuring it reaches every teammate, including frontline hospital staff without a desk or company email.
• Curate stories and manage channel strategy across email, the internal platform, an internal podcast, and creative assets (video, written stories, collateral), matching each message to the right channel.
• Serve as the internal communications consultant and air-traffic-control for IT, Operations, Finance, and other functions, coordinating what goes out and when.
• Act as a culture builder with a journalist’s eye, gathering stories and images from operators, project managers, and partners across the company, and packaging them to reinforce the VPP Way.

External Communications

• Draft external messaging for marketing and LinkedIn, serving as a primary writer for VPP’s external voice and partnering with marketing on campaigns, positioning, and content.
• Position VPP’s executive team as industry thought leaders by securing conference speaking engagements, podcast appearances, and op-eds, and developing their thought-leadership platforms.
• Build and maintain relationships with journalists covering veterinary medicine, private-equity-backed healthcare services, and related beats; pitch stories proactively.
• Develop external creative assets, including podcast, video, print, and digital storytelling that carries VPP’s story into the profession.
• Partner with marketing to shape industry narrative around partnership, ownership, and what a modern veterinary company looks like.
• Develop and maintain a company-wide crisis and issues-communications protocol, ensuring consistent, timely messaging during sensitive situations.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional communications experience, with meaningful work in both internal and external communications.
• Track record of writing for and coaching senior executives.
• Experience building or significantly improving communications programs, systems, or platforms.
• Media relations experience, including active relationships with reporters in a relevant industry.
• Bachelor’s degree in Communications, Journalism, English, Marketing, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Preferred: experience in a multi-site, distributed, or healthcare services organization.
• Strong command of AP style and executive/brand voice, with the judgment to adapt tone across audiences and channels.
• Experience developing crisis and issues-communications messaging under time pressure.

Ideal Candidates Will Possess

• A bias toward identifying problems and solving them, rather than waiting to be asked.
• A player-coach mentality: excited to do the work personally while also thinking and operating strategically.
• Excellent writing and storytelling skills, with the ability to find the story inside a strategy and tell it in a way people want to read.
• Tech-forward instincts, comfortable owning platform and process decisions and rolling them out company-wide.
• Independence and comfort operating in a matrix, reporting to the Chief Culture Officer while partnering closely with the CEO, COO, CFO, Chief People Officer, and marketing.
• A producer’s mindset: someone who finds and amplifies the story of a company.
• An understanding of what partnership means to VPP, and why it’s different from a corporate rollup.
• Genuine curiosity about how things work, why people do what they do, and what makes a place tick.

Physical Requirements

The employee must be able to remain in a stationary position at least 50% of the time and regularly use hands to grasp, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms. Hearing and visual acuity are required. The employee will constantly operate a computer and other office productivity tools and may occasionally lift or move up to 10 lbs.