Sr Director Conference & Events

Overview

Join our Team as Senior Director Conferences and Events!

Imagine a place where who you are, where you're from, or the circumstances that surround you don't determine your access to experiences or opportunities. Now imagine a mission, created to enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens. That's what we do.

At Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA), we're committed to doing whatever it takes to build great futures for America's youth, and our conferences and events play an important role in bringing our Movement together to learn, connect, collaborate, and lead.  We are seeking a Senior Director, Conferences & Events to provide strategic leadership for a diverse portfolio of national, regional, and role-based convenings serving thousands of attendees annually.

This is an opportunity for an experienced events leader to do more than execute exceptional events. We are looking for a thought partner and industry expert who can help shape how BGCA convenes its Movement, bringing fresh ideas, strong business acumen, operational discipline, and deep expertise in large-scale event strategy and production.

This role is hybrid, with an in-office presence Tuesday and Wednesday, and requires up to 40% travel.

About the Team

The Conferences, Learning & Events team oversees a diverse portfolio of national, regional, and role-based convenings that serve thousands of attendees annually. As a strategic partner to organizational leaders, the team transforms business priorities into exceptional learning and engagement experiences while driving innovation, operational excellence, and continuous improvement across the event ecosystem.

As Senior Director, you will lead a team of three event managers while partnering extensively across BGCA with senior leaders, event owners, Finance, Legal, Learning & Development, Youth Development, Organizational Development, external vendors, hotels, convention centers, and other partners.

Responsibilities

What You'll Do

Set the strategy. You'll serve as the strategic lead for BGCA's national, regional, and role-based conferences and learning events, developing an integrated event roadmap that aligns our convenings with organizational priorities, learning objectives, attendee needs, and business outcomes.

Be a trusted advisor, not simply an executor. You'll partner with senior leaders and event owners to turn their vision into successful experiences while bringing your own expertise to the table. You'll anticipate downstream implications, challenge assumptions when needed, recommend solutions, and help leaders make informed decisions about attendance, venues, programming, budgets, sponsorship opportunities, and the overall attendee experience.

Lead complex, large-scale events. You'll provide strategic oversight for events that can exceed 3,000 attendees and involve multiple hotels, convention facilities, vendors, business partners, internal teams, and competing priorities. You'll ensure planning is coordinated across the entire portfolio rather than approaching each event in isolation.

Build stronger systems and capabilities. You'll assess our current people, processes, tools, and event infrastructure and establish scalable practices that allow the team to work more efficiently and consistently. That includes standardized planning tools, governance, timelines, technology, vendor practices, and enterprise-wide event standards.

Strengthen our in-house expertise. You'll identify capability gaps across the team and build the expertise needed to manage increasingly complex events. That includes areas such as housing management, venue sourcing, hotel blocks, food and beverage, AV and production, registration, attendee communications, and other critical components of large-scale conference operations.

Own the business of events. You'll oversee multimillion-dollar event budgets, forecasting, vendor negotiations, contracting, cost management, and ROI measurement. You'll also understand how event design, exhibitor experiences, sponsorships, and partnerships can support revenue goals—even though fundraising itself is not the primary responsibility of this role.

Elevate the attendee experience. You'll continually look for ways to make BGCA's events more engaging, accessible, innovative, and impactful—from registration and pre-event communications through the on-site experience and post-event engagement.

Develop a high-performing team. You'll coach and develop three event managers, establish clear expectations and accountability, build new capabilities, manage workload and priorities, and create an environment where the team can grow from strong execution to strategic event partnership.

The Competencies That Will Make You Successful

• Strategic Leadership: Sees beyond individual events to build an integrated strategy that connects organizational priorities, attendee needs, learning, operations, and impact.
• Executive Partnership & Influence: Operates as a trusted advisor who can listen to a business need, bring expertise and perspective, identify implications, and influence decisions without simply taking an order.
• Operational Excellence: Brings structure to complexity and builds scalable processes, systems, standards, and tools that enable consistent execution across a large event portfolio.
• Financial & Business Acumen: Understands the economics of large-scale events and makes sound decisions around budgets, contracts, vendors, sponsorship opportunities, resources, risk, and ROI.
• Innovation & Continuous Improvement: Stays connected to the events and hospitality industry and actively introduces new ideas, technologies, experiences, and practices that elevate the work.
• People Leadership & Development: Builds a high-performing team through clear expectations, coaching, accountability, capability building, and meaningful opportunities for growth.

What Success Looks Like

Your early focus will be on understanding the current event ecosystem and determining where BGCA can strengthen its approach. Within your first 90 days, you'll assess the Conferences & Events function through a people, process, systems, and tools lens and establish a clear, prioritized roadmap for improvement.

From there, you'll begin translating that roadmap into action, strengthening team capabilities, building repeatable processes and resources, advancing BGCA's evolving enterprise event strategy, and successfully delivering major conferences and convenings against established participation, financial, experience, and learning outcomes.

Longer term, success means BGCA has a more strategic, scalable, data-informed events function that consistently delivers exceptional experiences, strengthens organizational alignment, manages resources responsibly, and continuously raises the bar for how we convene our Movement.

Qualifications

What You’ll Bring

We're looking for a seasoned events leader with the depth of experience and leadership presence to immediately add value in a complex environment. The strongest candidates will bring:

• 10+ years of progressive experience leading large-scale conferences, conventions, meetings, hospitality operations, or enterprise events, with experience managing events comparable in complexity to 3,000+ attendee, convention-center-level experiences.
• Significant experience leading and developing event professionals or teams, including the ability to assess capability gaps and build expertise.
• Deep knowledge of large-scale event operations, including venue and site selection, multi-property hotel blocks and housing, food and beverage, AV/production, registration, attendee experience, vendor management, and event technology.
• Demonstrated experience managing multimillion-dollar budgets, forecasting expenses, negotiating complex vendor agreements, and identifying opportunities for cost efficiencies.
• Strong executive presence and the ability to serve as a credible advisor to senior leaders, bringing recommendations, identifying implications, navigating competing priorities, and constructively influencing decisions.
• Strong project and portfolio management capabilities with experience coordinating multiple events and complex cross-functional workstreams simultaneously.
• An understanding of sponsorship, exhibitor, partnership, and other event revenue models and how event design can help maximize partner value and revenue opportunities.
• A track record of bringing new ideas, technologies, industry trends, and best practices into an organization rather than simply executing established approaches.
• Experience with event management platforms such as Cvent, CrowdCompass, EventMobi, or comparable technology.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of relevant education and experience. CMP or comparable industry credentials are strongly valued.

Experience may come from a large hotel or hospitality organization, convention center, association, corporate events environment, nonprofit, or another organization producing events of comparable scale and complexity. What matters most is the depth of your large-scale event expertise and your ability to translate that expertise into stronger strategy, systems, experiences, and results.

Work Environment & Travel

This is a hybrid role with an in-office presence on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Because our work comes to life at conferences and events across the country, this position requires up to 40% travel and the flexibility to work early mornings, evenings, weekends, and extended days during major events.

Compensation 

The salary range for this role is $120,000.00 to $135,000.00 BGCA takes into consideration a combination of a candidate’s education, training and experience, as well as the position’s scope and complexity, the discretion and latitude required for the role and other external and internal data when establishing a salary level. We are highly invested in every employee’s total well-being and offer a substantial and comprehensive total rewards package.