Assistant Director, Media

Job Description

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has an outstanding opportunity for an Assistant Director, Media to join their team.
About this Opportunity

Reporting to the Director of Communications, the Assistant Director, Media is responsible for managing the Media team and leading media relations work — developing media materials, pitching IHME’s research to journalists, responding to inquiries, and coordinating researcher interviews. This is a fast-paced environment that requires the ability to manage competing priorities, adapt quickly to evolving news cycles, and lead a team with confidence and clarity under pressure.

The role develops and executes strategies to drive global media coverage of IHME’s work, growing earned media and owned platforms including the Global Health Insights (GHI) podcast and newsletter. This requires strong people and project management skills and the ability to cultivate strategic relationships with journalists, media outlets, and — as needed — external communications firms and consultants, to reach policymakers, donors, and other stakeholders worldwide. The Assistant Director, Media identifies, creates, and disseminates high-quality, policy-relevant stories and uses analytics to measure and refine that outreach.

Office is located in Seattle, Washington. This position is eligible to work fully remote; work schedule required to overlap 50% of IHME Office hours between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Pacific Time.
Key Responsibilities

Media strategy – 30%

- Strategically manage and expand IHME’s network of global media contacts, key opinion leaders, policymakers, and other stakeholders; proactively identify opportunities for new relationships and strengthen relationships with journalists to disseminate IHME’s evidence-based research effectively and seek to impact global health policy.

- Ensure inquiries and requests from journalists for findings and interviews with experts in IHME’s research network are handled in a timely and professional way.

- Oversee and provide media training to faculty and staff to help them prepare for interviews.

- Develop and execute creative strategies to build owned media platforms, including podcast and newsletter.

- Manage relationships with communications firms and external consultants when necessary.

- Serve as a spokesperson for IHME if necessary.

- Maintain confidentiality of sensitive information.

Team management – 25%

- Supervise employees, to include hiring and training, assigning work hours, managing workflow, priority setting, contributing to professional growth and ensuring team members have the clarity and guidance needed to be accountable for producing high-quality, accurate work.

- Create and manage work plans for team members, hold regular check-ins to monitor work progress, answer questions, and troubleshoot as needed.

- Provide direction, coaching, and support, ensuring team members have the clarity and guidance needed to be accountable for their work.

- Ensure the team delivers to the highest standards of the organization in terms of accuracy in its work.

- Assess and map project deliverables to resource needs.

Writing, outreach, and analytics – 25%

- Work with faculty and staff to transform complex research into compelling and policy-relevant messages that are comprehensible to targeted non-scientific audiences.

- Oversee the development of all outreach products including press releases, media advisories, pitches, messaging briefs, fact sheets, podcast, and newsletters.

- Manage compilation and reporting of KPIs (key performance indicators) and creation of reports and slides for IHME’s Senior Management Team, Board, and other stakeholders.

Knowledge command – 20%

- Develop in-depth familiarity with media organizations and journalists around the world, including their political and cultural contexts.

- Regularly review the landscape of international media coverage on a range of population health, global de