About AAM: The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) supports all museums across the United States, including aquariums, zoos, historic sites, parks, and gardens. Serving over 30,000 members, including museums, museum professionals, and companies that support the sector, the Alliance is the largest national museum organization in the U.S. The Alliance serves its membership and the museum community through four pillar programs: Learning, Community, Advocacy, and Museum Practice. Maintaining an annual operating budget of $10M with 35 staff members, we are a 501(c)3 nonprofit headquartered in Arlington, VA and an equal opportunity employer.
The Opportunity:
The Assistant Director of Communications plays a key role in advancing AAM’s communications strategy and strengthening the effectiveness of its Marketing & Communications team. Reporting to the AVP of Marketing & Digital Experience, and working closely with the Director, Marketing & Digital, the Assistant Director leads and executes communications strategies and campaigns that demonstrate AAM’s value, elevate the voices and stories of the museum field, and advance key organizational priorities. This role combines communications strategy, writing, storytelling, media relations, and campaign leadership with strong organization and coordination skills. Approximately 70% of the role focuses on communications strategy and campaign leadership, with 30% focused on department-wide planning, coordination, and performance.
Responsibilities:
Communications Leadership & Execution — approximately 70%
Working in close partnership with the Director of Marketing, you will help shape how AAM communicates its work and engages its audiences. While the Director of Marketing leads marketing strategy for core revenue programs and oversees brand as well as optimization and performance across AAM’s marketing channels, you will lead AAM’s communications, editorial, and storytelling strategy, creating communications campaigns across social media, email, web, media relations, and other channels.
Your portfolio will include Museum Practice, Advocacy, Community, and other organizational storytelling priorities. You will serve as a strategic communications partner to teams across AAM, helping translate goals into compelling communications strategies, stories, and content and coordinating execution across channels.
Serve as the strategic communications partner to AAM’s Museum Practice team, including the Continuum of Excellence, Museum Assessment Program, and Accreditation, advising communications strategy, crafting messaging and storytelling, and coordinating execution across AAM’s communications channels.
Provide strategic communications leadership for AAM’s advocacy portfolio, including Museums Advocacy Day, Invite Congress to Visit Your Museum, advocacy actions and alerts, and other priority initiatives, working with the Communications Manager on content development and execution.
Lead communications strategy and storytelling for AAM’s community and connection initiatives, developing compelling stories that showcase museum professionals, member experiences, award recipients, and the value and impact of the AAM community.
Lead day-to-day media relations, including responding to press inquiries, cultivating media relationships, identifying proactive earned-media opportunities, and overseeing the development of press releases, pitches, and other media materials. Partner with the AVP on sensitive, high-profile, or crisis communications.
Develop and execute communications materials for AAM’s executive leadership in partnership with the AVP, including identifying thought-leadership, op-ed, media, and speaking opportunities and overseeing executive content across channels.
Identify opportunities to extend AAM’s stories and messages across web, email, social media, publications, earned media, and other channels.
MarComm Planning, Coordination & Performance — approximately 30%
In this role, you will manage AAM’s integrated marketing, communications, and editorial calendar, aligning organizational priorities, programmatic activities, campaign schedules, and team capacity, including:
Manage established MarComm workflows, intake, prioritization, campaign timelines, and production schedules, coordinating dependencies across teams and proactively addressing shifting deadlines or resource needs.
Partner with the AVP and Director of Marketing & Digital and Director of Marketing & Digital on quarterly and annual MarComm planning and opportunities to improve team workflows and effectiveness.
Working collaboratively with marketing and communications team members, manage AAM’s social media channels, overseeing the social media calendar, monitoring audience engagement, and reviewing performance. Lead the development of social media content focused on AAM’s organizational storytelling, including content that communicates AAM’s impact and elevates the work and voices of the museum field.
Oversee AAM’s weekly newsletter, leading editorial planning and content strategy to ensure it reflects organizational priorities and audience interests. Work with the Communications Manager on content development and production, and regularly evaluate performance to identify opportunities to strengthen engagement, content mix, and audience growth.
Team Leadership & Collaboration
Supervise and support the Communications Manager, providing strategic direction, prioritization, coaching, and professional development.
Work closely with the Director of Marketing & Digital as complementary functional leaders across communications, marketing, digital strategy, and department operations.
Collaborate with colleagues across AAM and with creative and production resources to translate communications strategies into effective, high-quality work.
Team size:
5 Direct reports: 1 FLSA Status: Exempt Location: Hybrid (Arlington, VA) or Remote
Salary:
Starts at $90,000
Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply for jobs unless they meet every single qualification. AAM values a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you are excited about this role but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with all of the qualifications, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other opportunities.
For more information, please visit www.aam-us.org
Qualifications:
At least 5 years of progressively responsible experience in communications, public relations, marketing communications, or a related field, including experience independently leading communications campaigns or projects.
Exceptional writing, editing, and storytelling skills, with the ability to translate complex topics into clear, compelling, audience-centered communications. Demonstrated experience developing, executing, and evaluating integrated, multi-channel communications strategies.
Excellent organizational and project-management skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities, stakeholders, deadlines, and dependencies.
Experience supervising, coaching, or providing meaningful direction to staff or other communications professionals.
Experience managing integrated editorial or communications calendars.
Familiarity with email marketing, media relations, and analytics platforms.
Demonstrated experience developing and executing organic social media strategies with a strong understanding of platform-specific content, measurement, trends, and best practices.
Experience working with museums or other cultural organizations a plus.
