Chief Marketing Officer

Job Title:

Chief Marketing Officer

Job Summary:

The University of San Francisco (USF) seeks a strategic, results-driven, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to lead marketing at USF and serve as the university's senior-most marketing executive. This is a role with a changed focus, created to support strategic decision making and create a results-driven office at USF.

The CMO will hold full authority over marketing prioritization, not simply execution, and will be accountable for translating brand strategy, demand generation, and lifecycle marketing into measurable enrollment and revenue outcomes across undergraduate and graduate portfolios.

Full Job Description:

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategic Leadership & Roadmap Execution

• Own end-to-end execution of the university's 3-Year Marketing Roadmap, including sequencing, resource allocation, and data-driven course correction
• Ensure undergraduate and graduate go-to-market plans are developed for every school on a consistent cadence, using standardized planning templates and frameworks
• Operationalize a formal work-intake and prioritization framework across the division, including a two-bucket (proactive strategic / reactive service) work model

Organizational Design & Team Leadership

• Lead and develop the Strategy, Creative, Web & Digital, Content, and Marketing Operations functions as direct reports
• Oversee performance and consistency of the embedded marketing strategist model deployed across academic schools

Brand Strategy & Demand Generation

• Set and own university-wide brand strategy, including development and stewardship of an incrementality-tested brand campaign
• Redefine marketing's core performance metrics across every level of the organization — from lead volume, lead quality, and cost of acquisition, replacing legacy service-desk metrics such as requester satisfaction and turnaround time

Enrollment Partnership & Governance

• Hold a standing seat on the university's enrollment leadership team
• Co-own a shared enrollment/marketing performance dashboard with Strategic Enrollment Management
• Lead a recurring quarterly joint-planning cadence with enrollment leadership to align funnel performance, budget, and campaign strategy

PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONS

Performance will be assessed against the following key performance indicators (KPIs):

• Lead volume and lead quality, disaggregated by school and by undergraduate/graduate track
• Cost per lead (CPL) and cost per enrolled student (CPE)
• Response time on enrollment-critical, time-sensitive requests
• Progress against Year 1 roadmap milestones
• Stakeholder confidence, measured via Dean, Provost, President, and Strategic Enrollment Management surveys and reviews

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• Masters Degree Required
• Over 10 years of progressively responsible professional experience, including significant experience leading complex initiatives, developing strategy, and exercising independent judgment in matters with broad organizational impact.
• Demonstrated track record building or substantially restructuring a marketing function within a complex, decentralized organization; higher education experience preferred but not required
• Proven accountability to hard performance metrics (pipeline, conversion, CAC/CPL) rather than brand or awareness metrics alone
• Experience exercising decision authority across multiple internal stakeholders with competing priorities in a matrixed environment
• Experience designing, implementing, or operating a resource prioritization or intake-governance framework across a marketing or creative team

Preferred

• Experience in higher education enrollment marketing, admissions marketing, or a comparably regulated, multi-stakeholder demand-generation environment
• Experience partnering directly with enrollment, admissions, or sales leadership on shared pipeline and funnel metrics
• Experience leading organizational transitions from federated/embedded marketing models toward centralized centers of excellence

Full-Time/Part-Time:

Full time

Pay Rate:

Salary

Salary Range :

$180,000 - $225,000 annualized; commensurate with experience