Director of Operations
Keystone Symposia develops and produces conferences for the top biology researchers in the world. The Director of Operations provides leadership to optimize conference execution at conference venues worldwide. This includes conference placements, budgets, meeting manager supervision and negotiation of vendor contracts. Five to eight years of management experience, a bachelor’s degree, and travel as well as working at least 2 days/week in our Silverthorne, CO office are required. Compensation is $105,000 to $125,000/year depending on experience, plus our generous benefits package.
Objectives:
• Collaborate with executive-level management in the development of performance goals and long-term operational plans
• Maximize efficiency and productivity through extensive process analysis and interdepartmental collaboration
• Set strategic goals for operational efficiency and increased productivity
• Work with staff within the departments and leadership in the development of financial and budgetary plans
• Analyze current operational processes and performance, recommending solutions for improvement when necessary
Overall Responsibilities:
• Review, and where necessary, develop, implement, and monitor day-to-day operational systems and processes that provide visibility into goals, progress, and obstacles for our key initiatives
• Build and maintain relationships with all department directors, external partners, and vendors to make decisions regarding operational activity and strategic goals
• Plan, monitor, and analyze key metrics for the day-to-day performance of the operations to ensure efficient and timely completion of tasks
• Devise strategies to ensure optimization of conference programs, identifying and implementing process improvements that will maximize output and minimize costs
• Uphold organization policies and standards, ensuring regulations are followed
• Work closely with human resources to lead team with integrity and establish and maintain a trusting, inclusive, and productive environment
Specific Responsibilities:
• Provides continuous assessment of our current venues and sites, including reviews of contracts.
• Identifies potential new sites based on site priorities.
• Travels to some of the potential sites and existing sites to review property and customer service standards.
• Coordinates and negotiates details for contracts.
• Oversees meeting and programming information on the Web site to ensure that it is upto-date as it pertains to the program, lodging, activities, and dining.
• Creates and prepares budget items and budget scenarios as directed by the leadership team.
• Oversees site budgets. Prepares budget scenarios for new sites and new programming. For new sites: distance from airport, cost, location to science, required room blocks guaranteed; airfares, etc.
• Develops new program scenarios for development agreements, unique venues, 2-day, 2.5-day, etc. conferences, and determines a testing/evaluation process to determine the success of a new program both from financial and programming aspects.
• Oversees speaker budget and meeting budgets; provides break-evens, food and beverage spreadsheets for budget and meeting site placement.
• Coordinates new LiveStream and in-person meeting management processes so information that is pertinent to both departments is easily obtained and staff is crosstrained where possible.
• Works with staff from Meeting Management and Program Implementation to coordinate final meeting placement.
• Works with Finance and Operation department staff to institute strategies for meeting location and timing.
• Supervises Lead Conference Coordinator, Conference Coordinator, Associate Conference Coordinator, and Attendees Services staff.