Strategy & Implementation Lead

Our Strategy & Implementation team partners with organizations to design and activate customer-centric strategies. Through core practice areas, including brand strategy, change management, and human-centered innovation, we guide clients in aligning their internal systems, behaviors, and communications to support a customer-first vision. The Strategy & Implementation Lead plays a critical role in driving these efforts across client engagements, providing strategic direction to teams and ensuring delivery against complex business challenges. Key Responsibilities Project Oversight & Client Engagement: Lead client consulting engagements across a diverse portfolio of strategic initiatives, ensuring recommendations translate into tangible business actions and sustained impact within client organizations. Work includes: Identify brand and innovation territories through market, cultural, and consumer insight analysis to uncover differentiated growth opportunities. Translate insights into clear brand strategies, including positioning, purpose, and narrative. Activate brand and creative strategies end-to-end, partnering cross-functionally to bring ideas to market effectively. Lead innovation efforts, facilitating ideation and co-creation work sessions and workshops to generate new product, service, and experience concepts. Advance innovation pipelines by identifying unmet needs, validating concepts, and defining value propositions. Deliver assets that enable change and customer-centricity, including journey maps, experience principles, and playbooks that help organizations operationalize strategy. Serve as a strategic advisor, challenging thinking and uncovering transformative opportunities. Management and Leadership Establish rapport with executives and build trust quickly. Successfully guide engagement teams in delivering consistently exceptional client service and outcomes. Foster collaboration with other teams and specialties at Human8 (e.g., Communication Design, Research, Analytics), weaving appropriate competencies together for a cohesive result and client experience. Demonstrate genuine sensitivity, support, and encouragement for colleagues, along with consistent professional maturity. Business Development: Build strong, trusted relationships with the Account Strategy team and act as a subject matter expert to assist in client conversations, supporting solutions and proposal development. Ability to identify client needs and solutions to generate additional business opportunities through existing work. Skills, Knowledge and Expertise A degree in a related field is beneficial (Marketing, Brand, Organizational Development, MBA) but we equally value demonstrable, equivalent experience. We welcome candidates from diverse educational backgrounds. 8+ years of strategy or consulting experience, preferably in brand, business or marketing strategy and/or general insight led strategy work. High degree of comfort with ambiguity – ability to lay out an aspirational vision of what’s possible and then execute on it without prompt. Strong presence, confidently leading meetings, facilitating discussions, and influencing stakeholders to align on clear decisions and next steps. Keen business acumen, critical thinking, and influential written and verbal communication skills throughout the engagement. Skilled with using frameworks and visual models to help convey thoughts and strategy. Successful track record of leading/mentoring and overseeing project teams with agility as well as strong communication, collaboration, and organizational skills. Thrives in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and brings a proactive, entrepreneurial mindset.