Director, Public Affairs

The Opportunity

Brunswick Group is seeking a senior professional to join the team, to specifically drive our communications and public affairs offering across various sectors and practice offerings. The opportunity to also participate in Brunswick’s exciting portfolio of international assignments is a given.

You will source and lead projects, deliver strategic content, valuable insights, and advice to clients, particularly supporting the senior management, in addition to identifying, and delivering regular and proactive ideas for clients. 

Using an existing strong network, you will generate new client relationships, coupled with the ability to develop existing ones, in addition to recognising new business opportunities for the wider expertise of the firm.

As part of the leadership team, you will need to lead and manage teams, establishing clear roles, managing performance, and ensuring that all key stakeholders and client needs are being covered by the team.

Our Italian office

Our Italian office is based in Milan and provides strategic guidance to leading corporations, organizations, and public bodies on all aspects of Stakeholder engagement, Financial and corporate communications, crisis, public affairs and reputation management.

The Milan office was open in 2007. Since that year, Brunswick has been positioning itself as a global strategic communications advisory firm in the country, with deep knowledge of the Italian market at corporate, industrial, political, media and financial levels. In the years, we expanded our activities in Rome, where we have a Senior Advisor and the headquarter of several clients and we are planning to reinforce the team with a Director based in Rome.

Our core expertise is strategic corporate communication advice, including multi-stakeholders engagement, media and influencers relations, financial communications, M&A and Capital Markets deals, crisis preparedness as well as support in the preparation of communication procedures, top management media training, employee engagement, analysis, sustainability programmes, culture and arts.

Key responsibilities: 

Client Contribution & Handling

• Deliver strategic advice to clients, drawing on specialist sector public affairs expertise and depth of advisory experience
• Demonstrate deep knowledge of a clients’ business and strategic stakeholder engagement issues
• Influentially engage with key stakeholders and be experienced in building trusted senior advisory relationships.

Business Development

• Source new business opportunities, apply knowledge and experience to lead well-run pitch teams and drive the pitch preparation
• Use deep knowledge of key sectors to promote new business approaches and ideas
• Assist in pitches for colleagues across regions and sectors
• Identify new opportunities to deliver other Brunswick expertise to existing clients; actively pursue and secure extensions of client relationships
• Build and maintain strong external networks to deliver valuable insight to clients and the Firm
• Have an existing network with other communications and public affairs professionals and/or advisors.

Communication Skills

• Design and carry out tailored campaigns contributing to clients’ strategic goals
• Write thoughtful, well-structured content; consider audience in style and tone of communications
• Express a point of view in a thoughtful manner; able to analyze and distil complex information
• A strong written and verbal communicator including fluency in Italian and English
• Manage traditional, digital, and social media as a complement of a global public affair campaign
• Exhibit good judgement and exercise discretion
• Question and challenge in a constructive way

Team Management

• Actively and effectively manage client account teams, driving day-to-day delivery
• Provide advice and leadership across teams to ensure effective working
• Foster development of team members’ skills and client handling ability by identifying new challenges and encouraging team to stretch where appropriate

Candidate specification

• A minimum of 15 years’ experience, working within public Authority, Government’s offices, most relevant ministries offices, law firm, a consultancy firm, corporate in-house environment, a Financial institution, a public affairs agency,
• Deep experience in producing campaign, public affairs and communications strategies, action plans, developing narratives addressed to Institutions.
• Additionally, will have worked advising companies in a crisis, or other critical moments, such as strategy updates, CEO changes, mergers, and high value transactions, particularly advising the client’s senior management
• Experience in managing teams of five or more people
• A good working understanding of business and finance in general
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced environment
• A strong verbal communicator and an engaging presentation style
• Energetic team player with strong self-motivation
• Ability to think strategically and creatively, with strong problem-solving skills
• Strong attention to detail with the ability to multitask in high-pressure situations
• Entrepreneurial and collaborative spirit
• A dynamic self-starter with a strong work ethic
• Able to create Thought Leadership pieces for Firm initiatives.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Maintaining and strengthening a diverse workforce and inclusive workplace are pillars of Brunswick’s culture and key to our future success. Valuing and supporting every colleague as an individual while helping them reach their full potential is critical to attracting and developing our greatest strength – our people. By embracing our differences and diverse perspectives we create richer experiences within our firm and enhance the quality of the ideas and advice that we deliver to our clients.

Brunswick is an equal opportunities employer and our Equal Opportunities Policy is available on request.

About Brunswick Group

Brunswick is a critical issues firm. We advise the world’s leading companies on how to navigate the critical issues they face and engage with their critical stakeholders.

Our purpose is to help our clients play their role in the world more successfully. We help the leaders of the world’s great value-creating organizations operate successfully across the increasingly complex and fast-changing arenas of finance, politics and society at large.

Brunswick is one firm globally, operating as a single profit centre. This allows us to respond seamlessly and effectively to clients’ needs wherever they are in the world.

Background

Founded in London in 1987, Brunswick’s global partnership has grown organically to 27 offices in 18 countries. We began as a M&A and financial communications firm and, over time, expanded our capabilities to provide expert advice to our clients on a range of business critical issues. We invested in new offices, sector teams and practice groups including investor engagement; shareholder activism; governance; regulatory and public affairs, including geopolitical; crisis; litigation; social issues including climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion; cybersecurity, data and privacy; employee engagement; digital communications; opinion research and analysis, and; creative services.

Our CEO is Henry Timms, based in New York. Our Chairman is Sir Alan Parker, based in London.