Senior Director of Guest Experience

Senior Director of Guest Experience

Full Time

Did you know there’s a planet in our galaxy where it rains glass? Or that light bounces around inside the Sun for 175,000 years before shooting off into space? If you think that’s freaking awesome, and you’re passionate about STEM, community outreach, education, and working in a welcoming environment, this might be the place for you!

The Adler Planetarium is seeking a Senior Director of Guest Experience to join our dynamic team located on Chicago’s Museum Campus.

The Position

The Senior Director of Guest Experience is responsible for implementing initiatives directly impacting the experience of guests to the Adler Planetarium. Reporting to the Vice President of Guest Experience, this person oversees the entire portfolio of guest experience initiatives, including exhibit design, exhibit fabrication, creative, theater production, program development, and program facilitation, to create outstanding guest experiences in line with the Adler’s brand and mission.

This individual will also be responsible for:

  • Serving as the vision keeper for “the Adler Way” and insuring that all aspects of the guest experience, including exhibits, events, special programs, fulldome shows, point of sale procedures, personally facilitated interactions, and interpretation are all aligned to brand and mission

  • Overseeing, evaluating, and actively driving all high-level experience projects and works across the institution toward a goal of a unified guest experience and consistent guest-focused service mentality

  • Providing mentorship to Director-level reports; Working with team to identify professional development opportunities while building a team culture focused on learning, growth, and collaboration

  • Overseeing and managing institution-wide projects including the implementation of the Adler’s Master Plan

  • Overseeing development and management of work plans, including estimates, schedules, staffing, and tasks for all Guest experience activities ; Negotiating and vetting outside resources as necessary

  • Working closely with the Vice President of Guest Experience and other Executive Leaders to determine resource needs and establish annual budgets

  • Forming and developing strategic partnerships with external groups

The Person

We’re looking for a dynamic professional who is excited about the opportunity to pitch innovative ideas, implement new strategies, and take the next step in their career. This person is a true leader, mentor, and cheerleader for their team, always looking for ways to help their department learn and develop professionally.

This is a person is an expert project manager, able to launch programs scaling from one-on-one facilitated conversations to large-scale public events.  Someone who has excellent communication skills, and is a innovative thinker. This person will need to have the ability to multi-task effectively in a fast-paced environment, and is happy to work on a team in an organization of tremendously talented people.

Required Qualifications:

  • Bachelor’s Degree, or equivalent experience

  • 7-10 years progressive experience in cultural attractions, parks, museums, themed entertainment or related industry

  • Understanding and awareness of industry trends in customer experience and service delivery, museum, theater, interpretive programming, etc.

  • Demonstrated commitment to excellence in guest experience

  • 5 years of management experience; Experience successfully leading, motivating and developing managers, directors and teams

  • Basic proficiency in MS Office Suite, Google GSuite, web searching, collaborative software

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Advanced degree; project management certification

  • 5 years in a Senior Leadership role (Director or equivalent)

  • Additional experience/training in several of the following: theater, interpretation, customer service (including box office/POS systems), staff training, informal learning, exhibition production, logistics

  • Experience in large project/portfolio coordination, such as in traveling exhibitions or exhibition production/sales

  • Direct experience in a mid to large sized institution serving 500,000+ guests annually

  • Demonstrated record of cross departmental work/alignment

  • Experience working with project management software, design software, 3D/CAD, or other specialized technologies

The Team

The Guest Experience Team at the Adler Planetarium is responsible for just about everything our guests see and do. We create and maintain exhibitions, develop programs, hold events, and create and deliver dynamic theater shows. We are sharply focused on our audience and do out work so that everyone who comes through our doors feels welcome to explore space with us. We do all of this in service of inspiring exploration of that mind-blowing things we call our Universe.

The Adler Planetarium is dedicated to complying with its obligations as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Our recruiting and hiring procedures are free of discrimination based on race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin, disability, covered veteran status, including disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, other protected veterans, and Armed Forces service medal veterans or any protected group status as defined by law.