EVP, Integrated Strategy

Job Description:

YOUR MINDSET
You have spent your career becoming fluent in disciplines most people keep separate. You don't see creative strategy and media strategy as different languages. You see them as different expressions of the same strategic thinking. That mastery is what qualifies you for this role.

You believe that the best ideas scale, that coherence matters more than novelty, and that the team creating the strategy is as important as the strategy itself. You lead with conviction and curiosity. You build a culture where people think bigger about their work because they get excited about it.

ROLE OVERVIEW
You will help imagine, architect and operate an Intelligent Story System for a multi-brand healthcare enterprise at the executive level, setting the vision that orchestrates three interconnected business units - consumer retail operations, pharmacy benefit management, and health insurance - ensuring every strategic decision, creative expression, and media deployment radiates from a powerful idea.

This leadership role demands mastery of two disciplines that most separate: Brand Strategy and Connected Strategy. You have spent your career developing deep expertise in both. You don't translate between them. You hold them as one integrated practice.

You lead the creation of Catalyzing Ideas. You orchestrate their deployment. You're persuasive in the C-suite. You grow their business and that strengthens our relationship. You develop the next generation of integrated leaders. You are the strategic authority on how three interconnected brands move as one. You will report to the Chief Strategy Officer.

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategic Boldness - Ideas

• Shape and create the Catalyzing Idea(s) that will help orchestrate across three distinct business units with sophistication and specificity
• A builder of brand worlds that dimensionalize ideas- articulating character, conviction, and edges with rigor and specificity that drives great creative work
• Develop the strategic narratives that help enterprise leadership understand not just what you're doing, but why it matters and how it moves their business
• Bring the same strategic depth to idea development as to system deployment. The ideas are the work. They are not secondary to execution, and brave ideas matter.

System Orchestration - The Deployment

• Architect an Intelligent Story System: defining WHERE ideas reach the right audiences across all three business units and orchestrating HOW they show up in context
• Identify audience signals that inform where and when each idea becomes urgent and inevitable
• Ensure that as the system expands across channels, moments, and audiences, coherence never breaks. Every execution- whether retail media, pharmacy communications, or insurance education- radiates from the same idea
• Lead creative, media, product, and retail teams to rally around the idea itself, not fracture into tactics. Help them understand they're part of something bigger than their discipline, and why their piece matters to the whole.

Cross-Brand Enterprise Leadership

• Hold the enterprise perspective. You are the leader who sees where all three brands can move together and where they must move independently
• Identify strategic opportunities where one idea scales across all three business units (creating compounding effect) and where each business unit needs its own force (creating specificity)
• Create conditions where the three brands strengthen each other, not cannibalize each other

Media + Creative Integration at Strategic Foundation

• Think in both languages simultaneously, from idea through deployment. You are fluent in creative strategy AND media strategy- not choosing between them, but weaving them together around an idea
• You understand how media strategy informs which ideas can scale, which audiences you can reach, where cultural moments live. You understand how creative strategy demands certain media contexts to land. You hold both truths at once
• Brief media and creative leaders not as separate functions receiving strategy, but as strategic partners who help shape how ideas move in the world

Relationship Growth & C-Suite Stewardship

• Build and steward a mission-critical relationship by delivering integrated work that creates visible business impact for enterprise leadership
• Position yourself as the strategic authority the enterprise turns to when the question is "how do our brands behave?" or "what's the opportunity we're missing?"
• Create the conditions where integrated strategy becomes not a nice-to-have, but fundamental to how their enterprise operates

Team Building & Leadership Development

• Help assemble and lead a world-class team that embodies integrated thinking at every level
• Recruit for depth, not just breadth. You want strategists who are genuinely fluent in both creative and media thinking, not people who dabble in both
• Develop the next generation of strategists who understand systems thinking, not just tactical execution
• Create psychological safety where team members are empowered to challenge siloed thinking and contribute strategic ideas, not just execute briefs
• A servant leader. Your actions help create our culture

Measurement, Learning & System Optimization

• Create a learning agenda that tracks whether the system is actually working. Use measurement not as reporting, but as feedback. Let data inform how you tune the system for the next cycle

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

• Your ideas are clear enough that a junior strategist can explain them. They're sophisticated enough that a CEO pauses and says "yes, that's what we're trying to do."
• Creative and media strategies are inseparable. You cannot explain one without the other. The team describes them as one thing
• All three business units operate from shared ethos while maintaining distinct expressions where it makes sense. The coherence is visible; the differentiation is clear
• Your team thinks in systems. They understand signal stacking. They see how their work feeds the whole. New team members are onboarded into a way of thinking, not just a project
• You have recruited and developed strategists who will lead integrated thinking across the agency- your legacy is multiplication
• Measurement shows that ideas are proliferating, signals are clustering as predicted, and the system is compounding over time
• The relationship grows because integrated strategy has become indispensable to how they operate. They ask for more

KEY QUALIFICATIONS

Experience:

• 13+ years strategy experience with deep expertise in BOTH creative strategy AND media strategy
• Demonstrated mastery of both disciplines - not sequential experience, but genuine fluency in how ideas and media interact
• Proven track record defining strategic ideas, not just executing them
• Leadership experience building and developing teams
• Enterprise-level relationship management; comfort briefing C-suite

Intellectual Foundation:

• Deep understanding of how systems work- not just campaigns, but interconnected strategic systems
• Comfort holding complexity: three brands, multiple audiences, multiple signals, one coherent force
• Ability to operate at 30,000-foot strategic level AND in the work itself
• Evidence that you think about how ideas propagate and compound, not just how they perform in a single moment

The annual base salary range for this position is $285,000 - $300,000. Placement within the salary range is based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and other factors permitted by law.Additionally, this position is eligible for discretionary incentive compensation.

Benefits available with this position include:

• Medical, vision, and dental insurance,

• Life insurance,

• Short-term and long-term disability insurance,

• 401k,

• Flexible paid time off,

• At least 15 paid holidays per year,

• Paid sick and safe leave, and

• Paid parental leave.

Dentsu also complies with applicable state and local laws regarding employee leave benefits, including, but not limited to providing time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, in accordance with its plans and policies. For more information regarding dentsu benefits, please visit www.dentsubenefitsplus.com.

To begin the application process, please click on the “Apply” button at the top of this job posting. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis, and qualified candidates will be contacted for next steps.

Location:

Originally posted on Himalayas