Account Director in Toronto

Portfolio Management: Oversee the day-to-day health, performance, and delivery of a portfolio of proprietary B2B conferences, trade shows, and experiential activations across foundational B2B and B2C accounts.

Strategic Growth: Drive account growth, retainer and staffing models, operational performance, and financial efficiency in alignment with client objectives and agency targets.

Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner closely with Creative, Strategy, Integrated Production, Operations, Finance, Analytics, and Project Management leaders to ensure ideas scale effectively into live, digital, or hybrid environments.

Team Leadership: Build, mentor, and manage high-performing account teams, creating clarity around roles, priorities, standards, and accountability.

Hands-On Leadership: Lead at the right altitude while staying connected to delivery. Manage up and down, remove barriers, support the team during critical moments, and model a team-first approach where no task is beneath the role. This is a highly hands-on role that requires the flexibility to operate strategically while stepping into day-to-day delivery when business needs require it.

Core Leadership Priorities:

• Portfolio Management: Oversee the day-to-day health, performance, and delivery of a portfolio of proprietary B2B conferences, trade shows, and experiential activations across foundational B2B and B2C accounts.
• Strategic Growth: Drive account growth, retainer and staffing models, operational performance, and financial efficiency in alignment with client objectives and agency targets.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner closely with Creative, Strategy, Integrated Production, Operations, Finance, Analytics, and Project Management leaders to ensure ideas scale effectively into live, digital, or hybrid environments.
• Team Leadership: Build, mentor, and manage high-performing account teams, creating clarity around roles, priorities, standards, and accountability.
• Hands-On Leadership: Lead at the right altitude while staying connected to delivery. Manage up and down, remove barriers, support the team during critical moments, and model a team-first approach where no task is beneath the role. This is a highly hands-on role that requires the flexibility to operate strategically while stepping into day-to-day delivery when business needs require it.

What You'll Do:

• Portfolio & Client Leadership: Own the overall health, direction, and performance of an assigned portfolio, balancing client partnership, team capacity, delivery quality, financial outcomes, and growth.
• Serve as a senior, trusted advisor to client leaders by understanding their business objectives, marketing priorities, organizational dynamics, and measures of success.
• Set the account vision and translate it into clear annual and program-level priorities for clients and internal teams.
• Lead senior-level client conversations, business reviews, workshops, presentations, and escalations with confidence, clarity, and sound judgment.
• Build durable relationships across client organizations, anticipate needs, navigate complex stakeholder environments, and protect long-term partnership health.
• Provide oversight across multiple workstreams while ensuring clear ownership, decision-making, communication, and accountability at the day-to-day level.

Strategic Growth & Business Leadership:

• Develop and lead account growth strategies that expand relationships, services, and revenue while delivering meaningful value for clients.
• Shape retainer, staffing, and operating models that support client needs, team sustainability, and agency financial targets.
• Connect experiential recommendations to broader client business and marketing objectives across B2B and B2C audiences.
• Identify emerging opportunities, whitespace, and innovation informed by client needs, audience behavior, industry trends, and marketplace insights.
• Contribute senior account leadership to new business efforts, agency capabilities, proposals, pricing strategies, and pitch development.

Integrated Program & Delivery Oversight:

• Provide senior oversight across the full experiential lifecycle, from strategy and concept development through planning, production, execution, measurement, and optimization.
• Ensure strategic and creative ideas can scale into operationally sound live, digital, or hybrid experiences without losing the integrity of the vision.
• Partner with Project Management and functional leads to establish scopes, workbacks, governance, staffing plans, decision rights, and operational roadmaps.
• Anticipate portfolio and program risks, resolve complex issues, and lead escalations before they affect quality, profitability, timelines, or client confidence.
• Establish consistent standards across programs for communication, documentation, quality control, reporting, and post-event learning.
• Be prepared to step into critical workstreams, client conversations, onsite delivery, and problem-solving whenever the business requires it.

Financial & Commercial Management:

• Own portfolio-level financial performance, including revenue visibility, forecasting, staffing and utilization considerations, budget oversight, reconciliations, and profitability.
• Provide senior review and approval of estimates, scopes of work, retainers, change orders, commercial assumptions, and client proposals.
• Monitor financial performance and delivery efficiency, taking corrective action when scope, staffing, timing, or cost creates risk.
• Partner with Finance, Production, and Operations leaders to improve forecasting accuracy, protect margin, and create commercially sustainable ways of working.
• Balance strong client stewardship with disciplined scope and change management, ensuring teams protect both the relationship and the business.

Team Leadership & Culture:

• Lead, coach, and develop account talent across levels, with clear expectations, regular feedback, career development, and succession planning.
• Create an environment of collaboration, accountability, inclusion, transparency, and continuous improvement.
• Delegate effectively while maintaining visibility into the work, enabling team members to grow without sacrificing quality or control.
• Work fluidly across levels, managing up to agency leadership and down through account and cross-functional teams to align priorities and accelerate decisions.
• Model calm, decisive, team-first leadership, especially during high-pressure planning periods, live events, and client escalations.
• Assess capacity and capability needs proactively, escalating constraints and recommending staffing or operating-model changes before they become delivery risks.
• Balance strategic thinking with hands-on leadership, adjusting altitude based on the needs of the client, team, and business.

Qualifications Required Experience:

• 10+ years of account leadership or client service experience within an experiential marketing, event marketing, sponsorship/activation, or integrated marketing agency.
• Demonstrated success leading complex experiential portfolios that may include conferences, trade shows, sponsorships, activations, tours, hospitality, employee experiences, and hybrid programs.
• Demonstrated experience serving as a senior client partner across complex stakeholder organizations, including presenting recommendations, navigating ambiguity, influencing senior decision-makers, and remaining closely connected to teams through high-pressure planning and event delivery.
• Proven experience leading and developing account teams, including managers and senior managers, while directing cross-functional teams across Strategy, Creative, Production, Operations, Project Management, Finance, Analytics, and field execution.
• Strong commercial experience across portfolio budgeting, forecasting, scopes of work, staffing plans, retainers, change management, reconciliation, profitability, and resource efficiency.
• Experience identifying and converting organic growth opportunities, contributing to new business, and expanding integrated agency services.
• Deep understanding of live-event planning and production, staffing, vendor management, logistics, risk management, onsite execution, and post-program measurement.
• Experience working across both B2B and B2C programs required.

Who Will Thrive In This Role:

• You think beyond individual projects and understand how client relationships, team structure, delivery models, and financial performance connect across a portfolio.
• You can operate confidently with senior clients and agency leaders while staying approachable, practical, and connected to the team doing the work.
• You bring a clear point of view, make decisions with incomplete information, and know when to elevate, align, or act.
• You balance strategic leadership with executional fluency and can quickly diagnose what is needed to move a program forward.
• You are commercially minded and comfortable protecting scope, margin, and team capacity without weakening client trust.
• You develop people, create clarity, and hold teams accountable while fostering an environment where people can do their best work.
• You are collaborative and low-ego. You understand that seniority does not remove you from the work, and you step in when the team or client needs you.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Agency-side experiential marketing leadership experience.
• Experience overseeing national or multi-market programs, proprietary conferences, trade shows, sponsorships, tours, festivals, hospitality, or large-scale event portfolios.
• Experience leading integrated campaigns across experiential, digital, social, content, communications, and measurement.
• You act with confidence as the client liaison working closely with our internal teams to ensure the client voice is represented during planning.
• Experience supporting large enterprise clients and complex matrixed stakeholder organizations.
• Experience partnering with field teams, staffing agencies, production vendors, venues, and partner agencies.
• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, communications, business, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.

Important Note: This is an experiential marketing leadership role. Successful candidates will combine senior account and portfolio leadership with meaningful hands-on experience delivering live events, activations, conferences, sponsorships, trade shows, hospitality programs, tours, or other brand experiences.