Academic Health Sciences Market Leader

Position Summary

We seek an individual with passion and expertise in the planning and design of Academic Health Sciences (AHS) facilities within Higher Education (HE), to co-lead our AHS market.

The primary role is to collaboratively lead the continued growth, evolution and positioning of our national AHS practice, and strategically leveraging our portfolio and your expertise to capture broader AHS opportunities on campuses throughout the country. Your goal is to attract and execute work at least as strong as the group's work in the past five years, delivering exceptionally designed projects.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities

Lead project teams in a fashion consistent with our firm’s core values through collaborative engagement with other firm leaders, team leaders and staff to attract new clients and build a long-term, sustainable future for our AHS team.

Business Development -Successfully lead the development of strategies and the implementation of marketing efforts for the AHS team. Achieve mutually-established annual business objectives, by:

• establishing new, or refreshing existing, high-level client relationships in the AHS environment (at the President, Dean and VP levels),
• building upon and promoting the team’s evolving reputation,
• nurturing the team’s ongoing client relationships,
• guiding the strategic preparation for interviews,
• advocating for and positioning our multi-dimensional service offerings, and
• proactively engaging with potential clients through idea-driven presentations and publications at conferences or in periodicals of value to them.

Project Development - Lead teams to deliver transformational experiences for owners and users, providing pre-design and design phase leadership, leading the generation and translation of design and planning concepts into final solutions for AHS projects, with the overall responsibility for client satisfaction, service quality and financial performance, delivering upon:

• the client’s vision,
• the quality of the work performed,
• design excellence,
• overall client service,
• all project goals, and
• the assignment of appropriate staff to projects.

Leadership - Create, motivate and lead a growing AHS team, by:

• collaborating with other team leaders to identify and achieve annual and long-range AHS market goals in collaboration with the overall HE team,
• establishing an environment that encourages experimentation, innovation, design creativity and collaboration,
• directly contributing a high level of energy and enthusiasm to the team,
• fostering a spirit of collaborative problem solving and design excellence, and
• mentoring and developing less-experienced team members in all aspects of client service, design approach and project delivery.

Qualifications

Expertise - We look forward to understanding your already established credibility within the AHS market. This should be easily evidenced through:

• a demonstration of how your project expertise has led to, and will lead to, work,
• a fifteen-year, or more, overall track record as a design professional,
• your most recent seven-to-ten years of experience focused on service to clients in the design of AHS projects,
• the knowledge you are able to share through discussion of your experiences, solutions you have delivered and current trends and issues in the AHS market,
• affirmative, President, Dean and VP-level, client references,
• relevant, published articles written by you as well as experience presenting at national conferences and organizations, and
• active participation in relevant professional organizations, such as SCUP.

Creativity - Your success and track record of programming and/or design excellence outcomes can be demonstrated through:

• a portfolio of completed, artful, AHS projects attributable directly to you,
• a legacy of effective problem solving, and
• an advanced design degree.

Marketability - Because people want to work with you, we anticipate the quality of your established client relationships will be supported by the ability to bring these relationships with you to Kahler Slater. This will be reinforced by:

• proven and verifiable experience identifying leads and building a high-quality network,
• demonstration of strong written and verbal skills,
• having articulate and compelling presentation skills, and
• possessing complementary project capabilities and credentials to those currently within the firm's portfolio.

Leadership - Your passion is obvious and people want to be on your team. We’ll look for established professional peer and subordinate relationships and the associated opportunity to bring these relationships with you to Kahler Slater. You should:

• embody a collaborative, consensus and process-oriented approach to design and decision-making,
• be a good team player who shares opportunities and understands your own limitations,
• have a proven track record of placing team goals above your own,
• possess a 7+ year track record of positive financial and quality results while leading teams, and
• enhance the firm's ability to attract additional talent through your contacts and reputation in this market sector.

Working Relationships and Scope

You will work closely with other team and firm leaders to create, promote and deliver AHS market opportunities within the overall scope of the HE team business plan. The HE team’s home base is Milwaukee, where the you will need to establish strong relationships. Specifically, you will:

• Work directly with all HE team members.
• Work closely with the HE leaders, the team’s Business Development Manager and other members of the Marketing + Graphics team to identify, pursue and win new work.

Working Conditions

Schedule flexibility is both required of you and will be returned to you due to the many concurrent projects and anticipated team responsibilities. Frequent national travel is required in order to service clients, develop new business and for professional development. Our expectation is you will spend the majority of your time with existing clients, prospective clients, and strategic business partners. As is customary in the industry for professional design staff, “full-time” will exceed 2,080 hours over the course of the year. 

Kahler Slater is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.

Kahler Slater is an E-verify employer.