Global Network Growth Executive Director

Who We Are

VML is a global creative company that combines brand experience, customer experience, and commerce to create connected brands that drive growth. Guided by a Human First philosophy, VML is known for its innovative work for brands and consistently ranks among the world’s leading creative companies, including the WARC Creative 100. VML’s global network spans 55+ markets with principal offices in Buenos Aires, Kansas City, London, New York, São Paulo, Shanghai and Singapore.

VML is part of WPP, the trusted growth partner for the world's leading brands. Powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform WPP Open, WPP unites cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, creativity, production, enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel.

For more information, please visit www.vml.com and follow along on LinkedIn #WeAreVML.

The Role

As the Growth Network Director, you will hold one of the most senior and consequential commercial roles within WPP Enterprise Solutions. You will be responsible for turning the most valuable market signals, client relationships, and WPP network intelligence into high-quality, strategically shaped growth opportunities and for creating the momentum that moves them from first conversation to qualified pursuit.

Operating at the intersection of consultative selling, transformation strategy, and executive relationship management, you will bring a rare combination of commercial instinct and intellectual rigour. You do not wait for a brief to arrive fully formed. You identify signals others miss, impose strategic clarity where ambiguity exists, shape the opportunity narrative before the client has fully articulated the need, and mobilise the right combination of WPP expertise around a live, credible commercial path. This is enterprise growth leadership in its most active and most demanding form.

Working fluidly across WPP Network Growth, you will engage at the highest levels of the organisation and the market, operating credibly alongside Global Client Leads, agency CEOs, senior client stakeholders, consulting and technology partners, and ES capability heads. Your effectiveness will be measured not by the volume of relationships you manage, but by the quality of the opportunities you originate, the rigour with which you qualify and shape them, and your ability to connect the right people, at the right moment, around the right commercial proposition.

Core Responsibilities

Generate:

Proactively identify and progress high-value opportunities across existing WPP relationships, direct enterprise demand, senior stakeholder networks and strategic market signals, converting early intelligence into commercially viable pursuits before the opportunity has fully formed

Build genuine, durable trust at the highest levels with Global Client Leads, agency leaders, WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Open, consulting and alliance partners, and senior client stakeholders, creating the access and relationships that sustain commercial momentum over time

Assess each live opportunity with commercial discipline and strategic clarity, evaluating client need, ES relevance, revenue potential, urgency, stakeholder access, winnability and the required path to activation so that the team's energy is concentrated where it matters most

Shape:

Translate ambiguous client problems into a clear, compelling Enterprise Solutions opportunity narrative, spanning CRM, commerce, CX, content, data, AI, platforms, marketing technology, managed services and operating model transformation, making the complex feel navigable and the case for action feel urgent

Lead the pursuit strategy for priority opportunities from end to end; owning problem framing, stakeholder mapping, commercial logic, solution direction, proof points and activation needs and carry that strategy through to a result

Know exactly when and how to bring in solution, commercial, technical, delivery, alliance and subject-matter expertise, assembling the right combination of people at the right point in the opportunity lifecycle, not before they add value and not after the moment has passed

Activate & Lead:

Provide clear, decisive leadership readouts on priority opportunities, covering blockers, decision points, commercial potential, next actions and escalation needs and ensuring senior stakeholders always have an accurate, current picture of where the most important pursuits stand

Help define how WPP Enterprise Solutions shows up to the network and to enterprise clients as a credible transformation and growth partner, contributing not just to individual opportunities but to the commercial infrastructure and positioning that makes future growth possible

Set a high bar for MD and Group Director colleagues across opportunity quality, client readiness, strategic thinking and commercial discipline, multiplying your impact well beyond your own pipeline and raising the performance of the team around you

Who you are

You are an executive-level growth leader with a demonstrated record of creating and converting large enterprise opportunities, not inheriting them

You operate with credibility in complex matrix environments, moving fluently across consulting, technology, agency, platform, media, creative and client leadership groups, adapting your register without losing your point of view

You are commercially sharp and consultative in equal measure, equally comfortable shaping a transformation strategy at the outset and driving the commercial execution that turns it into a win

Your executive presence is substantive, not performative. You can simplify complex transformation topics for senior client and internal audiences without losing the depth that makes your perspective worth having

You are an entrepreneurial operator, capable of building a new growth motion from the ground up while advancing live opportunities that cannot wait for the infrastructure to be in place

What you'll need

You typically bring 15 or more years of experience across enterprise growth, transformation consulting, technology consulting, digital transformation, marketing transformation, integrated agency leadership, strategic sales or complex client leadership, with a career that has consistently placed you in rooms where large, complex decisions were being made

You have worked directly with C-suite and senior enterprise stakeholders across marketing, technology, customer, operations, data, AI, commerce and transformation agendas and with enough regularity that it is your natural operating environment, not an occasional stretch

Your background may have been built inside a consulting firm, systems integrator, technology business, digital transformation firm, large agency network, media network, WPP operating company or enterprise sales organisation. The path matters less than what it gave you: commercial depth, network credibility and the strategic range to operate at the level this role demands

You have direct experience shaping large pursuits, managing strategic accounts, navigating multi-market opportunities, driving partner-led growth or leading multi-capability transformation programmes, and you understand the difference between being close to those efforts and being accountable for them

You hold yourself and others to a high standard across revenue accountability, pipeline discipline, complex stakeholder management and opportunity qualification, not as processes you follow, but as disciplines that define how you work

We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office an average of four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

WPP (VML) is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or r