Director of Events Management

About the Role

We are looking for a Director of Events Management, reporting to the Global Head of Events, to lead the event management arm of our team. You'll oversee a diverse portfolio, from flagship conferences and developer programs to executive gatherings, research events, and policy and media engagements. This is a people manager role leading an approximately 10-person, high-performing, high-agency team.

In this role, you will:

• Lead, mentor, and develop the team through clear goals, candid feedback, career support, and company context.
• Make tough calls on priorities and performance when needed, while maintaining trust, agency, and high standards.
• Partner with the Global Head of Events to prioritize projects, assess new requests, and allocate capacity across the portfolio, surfacing tradeoffs and recommending what to pursue, sequence, or defer.
• Build efficient, consistent operations through clear intake, briefs, project plans, approval paths, and reusable tools and playbooks that reduce duplicated effort and make ownership visible.
• Manage agency partnerships, including selection, scopes of work, onboarding, and performance reviews.
• Set clear expectations for quality, cost, and accountability in partnership with Procurement, Legal, and production leads.
• Build a deep understanding of each audience's needs and expectations, and guide the team in translating those insights into thoughtful hospitality, accessible experiences, and relevant content.
• Become an expert in OpenAI's brand and what people should leave events thinking and feeling.
• Align cross-functional partners across Marketing, GTM, Product, Research, Global Affairs, Communications, and executive teams on event goals, audiences, messaging, and decisions.
• Partner with Creative Production and Technical Production leaders on clear responsibilities, handoffs, and shared plans, ensuring event management needs are integrated into delivery.
• Maintain visibility into budgets, timelines, dependencies, and risks across the portfolio.
• Establish practical measures of event outcomes and operational health.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 14+ years of experience in event management, including leading complex event portfolios and managing teams.
• Bring substantial experience leading complex event portfolios across audiences and formats, with a track record of building capable teams and delivering through others.
• Are a thoughtful people leader who builds trust, coaches with care and candor, handles difficult conversations constructively, and creates a collaborative, low-ego team culture.
• Have a systems-oriented approach to operations, with strong judgment about which processes create clarity and efficiency and where flexibility serves the team better.
• Know how to build effective agency relationships and manage scopes, budgets, and performance while protecting quality and using resources responsibly.
• Communicate clearly and influence across functions and seniority levels, bringing calm judgment to ambiguity, competing priorities, and high-visibility work.
• Are curious about AI and motivated by OpenAI's mission, with a strong instinct for storytelling, hospitality, and experiences that respect the needs of different audiences.