Job Description:
Reporting to the Vice President of Career Strategy and Services, the Director of Experiential Programs serves as a senior leader within a transformational career leadership team, driving a core pillar of Berklee’s strategic plan: preparing students for creative careers by deeply integrating industry engagement and experiential learning directly into the student experience.
The Director scales high-visibility experiential initiatives across Berklee’s seven career communities: Business, Composition, Design, Education, Health and Wellness, Performance, and Production. The Director leverages career development expertise, curricular integration, and internal faculty partnerships across all learning environments (Boston, Valencia, BerkleeNYC, and Online), advancing Berklee's mission to nurture the world’s most inspired artists into thriving global creative leaders.
In partnership with Academic Affairs, the Director leads, supports, and administers with their team curricular and co-curricular experiential learning opportunities. In collaboration with the Director of Industry Relations, the Director of Experiential Programs will transform external industry and employer relationships into high-impact learning experiences, opportunities for credit-bearing courses, and structured postgraduate pathways. Leadership for this role includes direct oversight of an Associate Director, an Assistant Director, graduate assistants, and student ambassadors.
ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS & PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES
1. Strategic Leadership & Curricular Innovation - Academic Partnerships: Champion the operational framework for career education and experiential programming in close partnership with Academic Affairs, department chairs, and faculty, serving as the Career Center’s primary liaison.
- Structured Experiential Offerings: Design, scale, and administer credit-bearing and structured experiential frameworks, including the expanding Berklee Fellowship Program, academic Co-Op courses, Experiential Design Labs (EDLs) linking real-world industry challenges to academic coursework, global Industry Exploration Trips, the Alumni Mentor Program, and First-Year Seminars (LENS).
- Industry Relations Partnership & Integration: Partner directly with the Director of Industry Relations to convert newly sourced corporate, brand, and entertainment industry leads into academic partnerships, live client briefs for EDLs, and credit-bearing internship opportunities.
- Pioneering Course Development: Partner with BEATL to incubate next-generation course offerings, masterclasses, and career education modules responsive to emerging technological landscapes (e.g., AI in music, spatial audio, web3 monetization models).
- Fellowships & Prestigious Awards: In partnership with faculty development, support the Fulbright Program strategy as Advisor, cultivating top-tier student candidates through full-cycle application, proposal, and interview preparation.
2. Specialized Student Readiness & Experiential Advising- Experiential & Academic Coaching: As part of the Career Center's unified team advising model, deliver specialized student and alumni coaching focused on academic internship and fellowship applications, audition preparation, and experiential learning readiness.
- Student Skills: Prepare students to execute on portfolio development, professional branding, platform optimization (e.g., LinkedIn, Berklee Career Manager), and professional etiquette to ensure students are fully prepared before engaging with external employers and partners sourced and developed by Industry Relations.
- Community Facilitation: Serve as an internal convener across the seven career communities, connecting students with alumni mentors, faculty leads, and peer networks to foster a culture of career-mindedness.
3. Strategic Operations, Governance & Faculty Alignment- Talent Direction & Culture: Lead, mentor, and inspire a high-performing internal team including the Associate Director, Assistant Director, and student leaders, fostering a culture of continuous innovation and professional cross-training.
- Faculty Engagement: Operationalize key institutional initiatives to bridge faculty and career services, including the strategic development and management of the Faculty Ambassador Network (F.A.N.) and faculty toolbox.
- Global Campus Synergy: Build seamless institutional alignment with Alumni Affairs, BerkleeNYC, and the International Career Center in Valencia to ensure a unified global career curriculum.
- Institutional Governance: Serve as a strategic voice for the Career Center on senior academic and administrative bodies (e.g., Curriculum Committee, Directors Council), relaying student outcome data and industry skill gaps back to academic leadership.
- Data-Driven Assessment: Establish robust metrics, quantitative outcome tracking, and analytics reporting to measure learning outcomes, internship completion rates, and post-graduation student success.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in education, higher education leadership, student development, or a related field required. A master's degree is highly preferred.
- Executive Industry & Functional Experience: 7–10 years of managing diverse teams and progressive leadership within higher education administration, arts education, or the creative industries. A background combining higher education curriculum design with an understanding of entertainment industry expectations is strongly preferred.
- Pedagogical & Instructional Mastery: Proven success in curriculum engineering, student development theory, learning assessment, and dynamic presentation delivery across in-person and digital platforms.
- Career Development & Experiential Learning: Deep knowledge of modern career frameworks, student coaching models, experiential learning theory, and credit-bearing internship structures.
- Leadership & Fiscal Management: Demonstrated success in leading cross-functional teams, managing complex operational budgets, and directing multi-stakeholder academic initiatives.
- Technical & Assessment Operations: Mastery of learning outcomes assessment, program analytics, deck creation, and experiential event production.
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES
- Strategic foresight, critical problem-solving, and executive decision-making capabilities to lead within an agile, fast-paced world-class institution.
- Exceptional communication, collaboration, and cross-cultural fluency, with the political acumen to engage effectively with faculty, academic department chairs, administration, and diverse student populations.
- High autonomy, comfort with ambiguity, and a relentless focus on student success outcomes.
- Deep passion for music, performing arts, creative tech, and higher education innovation.
SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Shared supervision of the Associate Director in partnership with the Director of Industry Relations and direct supervision of the Assistant Director of Experiential Programs.
- Oversight of support staff, graduate assistants, and student ambassadors.
WORK ENVIRONMENT
- Flexibility for occasional evening and weekend engagement at marquee institutional events, student showcases, and orientation programs.
Why Choose Berklee?
- Executive Impact: Lead strategy to integrate real-world industry experiences directly into degree programs across global campuses.
- Cultural Access: Enjoy nightly, unrivaled access to world-class music, theater, and dance performances across our campus venues.
- Total Rewards: Outstanding health and dental coverage, an institutional 403(b) retirement match, tuition assistance, generous PTO, and a paid winter break.
Hiring Range: $78,000 to $108,000; salary dependent on experience and education.
Please visit the Berklee Total Rewards page for a complete listing of benefits.
This document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise, other than an “at will” employment relationship.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Equal Employment Opportunity at Berklee:
We support an inclusive workplace where everyone excels based on personal merit, qualifications, experience, ability, and job performance. Berklee affirms that inequality is detrimental to our faculty, staff, students, and the communities we serve. Our goal is to make lasting change through our actions. Berklee is committed to providing fair and equitable consideration of all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, ancestry, age, national origin, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, genetic information, or status as a member of the armed forces or veteran of the armed forces, or any other category protected by federal, state, or local law.
As part of this commitment, Berklee will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact the Human Resources Team at [email protected] or call 617-747-2375.
*Currently enrolled Berklee students are not permitted to apply for staff or faculty positions.*
Employee Type:
Staff