The Opportunity

Shift has earned its place as an industry innovator. Now it's time for the world to know it. We are looking for a high-impact Strategic Communications Director to dramatically elevate Shift's profile across tier-1 business and technology media, position our CEO as a preeminent voice in AI and insurtech, and ensure Shift punches well above its weight in market awareness.

This is not a traditional PR role. We want a strategist, storyteller, and execution oriented leader who knows how to move markets—someone who has the media relationships, executive presence, and creative instincts to break through the noise and put Shift on the map alongside the most recognized names in AI and enterprise technology.  We believe Shift’s story is a powerful one worth telling, and we’re looking for someone who can make it happen.

What You'll Do

Drive Tier-1 Media Coverage

• Build and maintain deep relationships with senior journalists, editors, and producers at leading business and technology outlets—including print, digital, and broadcast—across the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, CNBC, and sector-specific technology and insurtech media.
• Pitch and land feature articles, executive interviews, bylines, and well-placed quotes that position Shift as an essential voice in the AI and insurance transformation narrative.
• Develop compelling, news-driven story angles that resonate beyond the insurance vertical and into mainstream business and technology conversations.
• Manage all aspects of media relations, including rapid-response to breaking news, proactive pitching, and crisis communications preparedness.

Elevate CEO Visibility & Thought Leadership

• Own the CEO's communications platform end-to-end: develop speeches, keynote presentations, talking points, op-eds, and LinkedIn content that establish a distinct, compelling executive voice.
• Secure high-profile speaking opportunities at premier AI, insurtech, and investor conferences—including Davos-tier business forums, major technology summits, and industry flagship events.
• Prepare the CEO for media appearances, panel discussions, podcast interviews, and analyst briefings, ensuring every interaction reinforces Shift's strategic narrative.
• Build and manage relationships with event organizers, conference program committees, and industry organizations to ensure Shift's leadership is consistently represented on the most prestigious stages.

Shape Shift's Strategic Narrative

• Develop and continuously refine Shift's corporate communications strategy, messaging architecture, and brand narrative in close partnership with the CMO and CEO.
• Translate complex AI and insurance technology concepts into accessible, persuasive stories for diverse audiences—including business press, investors, partners, and customers.
• Collaborate across marketing, product, sales, and leadership to ensure a consistent, differentiated voice across all external channels.
• Monitor the competitive communications landscape and identify opportunities to seize narrative ground and inject Shift into key industry conversations.

Operate at the Executive Level

• Engage comfortably and credibly with Shift's Board of Directors, C-suite, strategic customers, and investor community—advising on communications strategy and representing the company externally when appropriate.
• Partner directly with the CMO on enterprise-wide communications priorities, budget, agency relationships, and team development.
• Serve as a trusted advisor and communications counselor to senior leadership on high-stakes announcements, market positioning, and reputational matters.

What We're Looking For

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of progressive communications experience, with meaningful time in senior roles at a high-growth technology company, global PR agency serving tech clients, or both.
• A verifiable track record of securing feature coverage and prominent placement in tier-1 business and technology media—not just industry trade press.
• Proven ability to develop CEOs and senior executives as media figures and thought leaders, including speech and presentation development, media training, and conference positioning.
• A robust, active network of journalist, editor, and producer relationships at top-tier media outlets.
• Demonstrated success securing executive speaking slots at leading, high-profile industry conferences in AI, enterprise technology, financial services, or insurance.
• Exceptional writing skills—the ability to craft compelling narratives, speeches, op-eds, briefing documents, and messaging frameworks with minimal direction.
• Experience operating at the executive level, including advising C-suite and Board stakeholders and managing sensitive communications with discretion.

Strongly Preferred

• Background in or deep familiarity with AI, machine learning, insurtech, or enterprise SaaS—enough to credibly represent Shift's technology and market position.
• Experience navigating international or multi-market communications, given Shift's global footprint.
• Track record working with companies at scale-up or growth stage—motivated, entrepreneurial , resourceful, and adept at driving outsized impact with focused resources.
•  Existing relationships with organizers of marquee AI and insurtech conferences (e.g., Money20/20, InsureTech Connect, AI Summit, Davos forums).

What It Takes to Succeed

You are a hands-on communications leader who knows how to make things happen. You combine strategic vision with a willingness to jump in —developing narratives, driving media outreach, preparing executives, and managing high-priority opportunities from start to finish with a urgency and sound judgement. You are proactive, adaptable, and execution-focused, with the ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced global environment where priorities evolve quickly. You bring creativity, persistence, and strong judgment to every interaction and are motivated by elevating meaningful stories and delivering tangible results.

Foundry’s B2B brands have built direct audience relationships through websites, newsletters, events, and community for decades. The mandate now is to accelerate: Grow those audiences significantly, deepen engagement, and make one-to-one audience relationships the dominant revenue driver across the portfolio.  

As Global Editorial Director - B2B, you will own editorial identity and strategy for five globally recognized enterprise brands, lead a team organized by desks and topicality, and operate as a peer to our Editorial Director - Consumer. Each brand leans into its own distinctive voice, while centralized functions across audience development, content operations (SEO/GEO), video, and revenue provide the shared infrastructure behind them all.  This position will be required to be in the office full-time. 

Your job, simply: Make B2B editorial the single most valuable driver of audience growth across the Foundry ecosystem.  

MORE ABOUT YOUR BRANDS  

• CIO, CSO, Computerworld, NetworkWorld— Role-based audiences: IT leaders and professionals defined by their job and decision authority.  

• InfoWorld — Topic-based audience: developers and architects defined by the (AI) platforms and tools they use.  

WHAT YOU’LL DO  

Set editorial strategy  

• Define the voice, positioning, and content strategy for each brand - develop a distinctive identity for each, with all sharing a single operational backbone.  

• Apply the role-based vs. topic-based audience distinction as a governing principle across the portfolio.  

• Treat AI as infrastructure woven through every brand’s coverage, not a standalone beat.  

Build a team of creator-journalists  

• Recruit and develop creator-journalists who combine deep subject matter authority with multi-platform presence - across articles, newsletters, video, social, and event stages.  

• Cultivate individual editorial voices that build subscriber relationships and become trusted names in their fields.  

Grow and deepen the audience  

• Expand the subscriber base and increase engagement across every brand, ensure every editorial surface - article, newsletter, video, event session - feeds the subscriber pool.  

• Keep audiences inside the Foundry media ecosystem: moving readers across brands, into events, and back again rather than losing them to external platforms.  

• Own a composite audience-quality scorecard spanning reach quality, relationship depth, revenue contribution, and platform capital.  

Design content for two worlds  

• Every piece of B2B content should work in two modes: machine-readable for AI and search surfaces (structured, data-rich, and optimized for LLMs) and human-first for trust and community (personality-led, opinionated, relationship-building). Your editorial operation delivers both, every time.  

Integrate across the organization  

• Partner with our Content Operations team on publishing workflows and cross-brand content flow, with Audience Revenue on subscriptions and paywalls, with Video & New Media on distributing content across all platforms, and with Events on editorial-to-event programming.  

• Support commercial strategy without compromising editorial integrity. Manage budgets and resources against the content modellink framework.  

• Represent Foundry’s B2B brands externally - on stage, on panels, across digital channels.  

HOW YOU’LL BE MEASURED  

• Subscriber pool growth per brand (newsletter + registered + paid).  

• Audience quality and engagement depth across all five brands.  

• Anonymous-to-addressable conversion rate on editorial landing pages.  

• Cross-brand and cross-platform audience retention within the Foundry ecosystem.  

• Creator-Journalist audience-building: subscriber growth per byline, engagement per creator.  

• SEO and GEO performance: organic visibility, AI-surface citation rates.  

• Budget and resource management against forecast.  

WHAT YOU BRING  

• 10+ years in editorial leadership in B2B technology, enterprise media, or an adjacent industry.  

• An established network across the enterprise IT world - relationships with CIOs, CTOs, vendors, analysts, and conference organizers you can activate from day one.  

• Track record leading high-performing, globally distributed editorial teams with named-brand authority.  

• Deep understanding of enterprise IT buyers - their roles, their decision journeys, their pain points.  

• Fluency in audience strategy: growing websites, newsletters, community, and events - not just page views and programmatic reach.  

• Experience building or running a creator- or personality-led editorial model.  

• Comfort in a layered organization - leading through influence as much as direct authority, and partnering with shared functions that serve multiple brands.  

• Strong editorial judgement paired with commercial awareness and data literacy.