Vice President of Events

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Locations: Lansdowne, VA
Team Overview
The Vice President of Events will translate ADF's organizational priorities into an audience-centered event strategy and ensure that every element of the event works together to produce the intended mission outcome. This role serves as the event's primary owner and final integrator—aligning executive leadership, Subject Matter Experts, event producers, creative partners, speakers, and vendors around one cohesive experience. The VP of Events will provide strategic oversight of ADF's entire event portfolio and hands-on executive-producer accountability for ADF's flagship events, serving as the final decision-maker for the audience experience.
Key Responsibilities
Event Strategy
Oversee ADF's complete portfolio of events as one strategic investment, defining the event's purpose, priority audience, desired outcomes and measures of success.
Partner with executive leadership to prioritize events based on mission impact, audience need, investment and organizational capacity, recommending when events should be launched, redesigned, consolidated, scaled or discontinued, and assigning each event an appropriate tier, governance model and level of support.
Team Leadership
Establish the structure, roles, and decision rights of the Events Team, and recruit, develop, and retain top producers and specialists.
For ADF’s major events, serve as executive producer — the final decision-maker for the audience experience, leading the onsite event structure, and protecting the approved strategy from unnecessary late-stage changes, and making timely decisions when programming, speaker, production, or operational issues arise.
Programming, Creative, and Production Leadership
Own the overall agenda, story arc, session sequence and audience journey, show order, transitions, and pacing.
Evaluate programming, creative, and production recommendations collectively to ensure the full experience supports the approved event strategy.
Direct the Creative Director, Event Producer and production partners toward one event vision.
Subject Matter Expert Integration
Serve as the senior liaison between Events, executive leadership, business units, development, communications, legal, security and external partners, ensuring stakeholders contribute expertise without assuming operational or programming authority.
Event Standards and Systems
Establish the ADF event-planning methodology and ensure it is used consistently, including standard processes, tools and timelines for strategy, budgeting, procurement, speaker management, site visits, production and onsite execution.
Financial Stewardship
Oversee event portfolio budgets, staffing and resource allocation, partnering with the Event Producer/Event Manager to establish the budget and investment priorities.
Evaluate event investment in relation to mission impact and measurable outcomes, including where increased investment will materially improve mission impact.
Minimum Qualifications
Bachelor's degree from an accredited university
12+ years of event management experience
Experience in overseeing live AV production.
Demonstrated experience supervising and developing teams, with a track record of building and retaining high-performing staff.
Hands-on experience with event technology platforms (e.g., registration, AV/production, or analytics tools) and Microsoft Office Suite.
Demonstrated ability and willingness to travel frequently for events, including periodic international travel.
Preferred Qualifications