SVP, Business Leadership

Overview

We’re on the hunt for a SVP Client Leadership who believes the best client partnerships can
prove that social isn’t simply a channel, it’s one of the most powerful creative and commercial
engines for modern brands.

Based in Toronto, you will lead a client department for a fast-growing, social-first creative
agency operating within one of the world’s largest agency networks. You will shape our client
experience and operating model while helping demonstrate the value of social to senior
marketers, business leaders, and agency partners alike. This isn’t about account management;
it’s about becoming an indispensable business partner to our clients, an advocate for the power
of social, and the connective tissue between our agency and the broader network around us.

What makes this opportunity unique is the environment we’re building within. We have the
speed, entrepreneurial energy, and specialist expertise of a growing social agency alongside the
scale, relationships, capabilities, and complexity of a much larger network. You will help us
harness the best of both—building strong partnerships across agencies and disciplines,
navigating competing priorities with confidence, and creating integrated ways of working that
make our social expertise more valuable, not less distinctive.

We’re a growing agency, which means we need visionary builders, not passengers. You will help
turn early momentum into a scalable business: growing client relationships, strengthening
commercial performance, building the right operating infrastructure, and ensuring quality keeps
pace with growth. Critically, you will help move social upstream—earning our agency a seat at
bigger client conversations and continually demonstrating how social-first thinking can drive
creative effectiveness, cultural relevance, and business growth.

Responsibilities

Client Partnership & Social Advocacy: Build deep, trusted relationships with senior client
stakeholders, serving as a strategic advisor while continually demonstrating the creative and
commercial value of social. Help move social upstream into annual planning, brand strategy,
and integrated marketing decisions rather than allowing it to become a downstream executional
channel.

Commercial Leadership: Own agency revenue, forecasting, scoping, and organic growth
across the client portfolio. Translate the effectiveness of our work into stronger client
investment, expanded mandates, and sustainable long-term growth.

Scaling the Agency: Co-create the operational infrastructure required for a rapidly growing
agency, balancing entrepreneurial speed with increasingly sophisticated resource planning,
governance, financial discipline, and delivery standards.

Creative Stewardship: Protect the ambition and integrity of social-first creative thinking.
Challenge briefs, elevate strategic quality, and ensure social ideas are built for how people
actually behave and participate in platforms—not simply adapted from broader campaigns.
Network Leadership: Build trusted relationships across a complex network of agency leaders
and specialist partners across the Groupe in North America. Navigate overlapping capabilities,
competing priorities, and different operating models with diplomacy and clarity, creating
collaboration models that unlock the strength of the broader network while protecting the
agency’s distinct expertise and accountability.

Integration & Orchestration: Bring together the right capabilities across creative, strategy,
media, influence, data, production, and technology around client opportunities. Establish clear
roles, ways of working, and decision-making structures so integration accelerates great work
rather than adding complexity.

Growth & New Business: Identify opportunities where social-first thinking can solve larger
client challenges, leading organic growth and contributing to integrated network pitches that
expand both the agency’s remit and influence.

People Leadership & Culture: Lead, coach, and develop the client department through
hiring, performance management, mentorship, succession planning, and culture-building while
fostering an environment grounded in accountability, collaboration, and inclusion.
Cross-Functional Integration: Partner proactively with leaders across strategy, creative,
content, community, influencer, production, media, and analytics to create integrated teams,
stronger collaboration, and better client outcomes.

Qualifications

Social-First Leadership: Deep understanding of social as a creative, cultural, and
commercial discipline, with the ability to articulate its value to senior clients and ensure social
expertise influences broader brand and business decisions.

Network Navigation: Proven success operating within a large, matrixed agency or
holding-company environment, with the political acuity, generosity, and confidence to align
multiple senior stakeholders while protecting clear accountability and moving work forward.
Builder Mentality: Experience helping build, transform, or rapidly scale an agency, practice,
or capability, with an understanding of how operating models, talent, commercial discipline,
and culture need to evolve as a business grows.

Executive Track: 15+ years of experience leading client services, integrated accounts, or
agency operations within a creative, social, digital, or integrated agency environment, including
proven success leading senior client relationships and high-performing teams.

Commercial Acumen: Demonstrated success managing agency revenue, profitability,
forecasting, scoping, and organic growth while maintaining a deep understanding of agency
economics and client P&Ls.

Operational Excellence: Proven experience building scalable operating models, improving
delivery systems, and leading organizational change that enhances both efficiency and quality.
Executive Presence: Outstanding communication, negotiation, and storytelling skills, with
the confidence and credibility to influence C-suite clients, senior stakeholders, and executive
leadership teams.

Creative Judgment: Strong instincts for outstanding creative work, with the confidence to
challenge briefs, advocate for ambitious thinking, and ensure the agency consistently delivers
work that exceeds expectations.

People Leadership: An accomplished people leader with a track record of developing senior
talent, building high-performing teams, and creating cultures grounded in trust, accountability,
collaboration, and continuous growth.

Agency DNA: An entrepreneurial, creative and commercially-minded leader who thrives in a
fast-paced, collaborative, and evolving environment. You are proudly accountable, relentlessly
solutions-oriented, and committed to raising the standard of both the work and the business.
You bring calm under pressure, clarity through complexity, and the ability to unite people
around a shared vision

Additional information

Salary

Transparency matters to us. The salary range for this position is between $180,000 to $220,000 per year. Actual compensation within this range will be based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and applicable certifications. This range reflects what we reasonably expect to offer based on current market data.