Vice President, Media

About the Role:
BWZ is seeking a seasoned Vice President of Media to lead our editorial, SEO, and multimedia teams across our portfolio of brands, publications, and channels. This is a pivotal role where you’ll oversee a talented team of writers, editors, expert content creators, SEOs, and multimedia producers to deliver impactful content that drives both audience and revenue growth.

We’re looking for a visionary leader to drive the creation and delivery of original, engaging, informative, and high-performing content across platforms and formats. You’ll oversee the development of profitable career media publications, building valuable, highly engaged audiences through innovative cross-channel content at scale.

You'll make our career media platforms profitable, famous, and fun. You will drive the growth of bigger, more loyal audiences who are so passionate about the content they’re willing to pay for it. You’ll spearhead efforts to acquire, engage, and retain audiences using cutting-edge multimedia experiences, evolving beyond traditional blog formats to support rapid audience growth.

Reporting directly to Ben Aston, BWZ's CEO, you'll partner with colleagues in sales, marketing, finance, and other teams to develop and execute a comprehensive business strategy to support revenue growth from both ad inventory and audience products. You'll work closely with our design, technology, commerce, and go-to-market leadership to help us build and scale sustainable media brands in a number of career and industry-focused niches.

This role offers the opportunity to shape the strategic direction of BWZ's media platforms, cementing their reputation as the go-to resource in their niches. As VP of Media, you’ll have the freedom to experiment with cutting-edge content formats and lead your team to pioneer industry-leading practices. You’ll not only influence the way BWZ’s brands are perceived but also create a scalable foundation for long-term growth, profitability, and audience engagement.

By focusing on innovative approaches to audience acquisition and retention, you’ll elevate our content production to a new standard, turning BWZ into a household name in career media while ensuring that our platforms are fun, engaging, and financially successful.

Who you are:
You're adept at translating strategic vision to executional capability. You know exactly how to keep the team focused on the right work, and doing the work right. You're as confident developing and evolving publication strategies, as you are staying on top of the production to keep content flowing at an ever increasing quality and performance.

Your leadership inspires and rallies teams, fostering a collaborative and innovative environment. With significant experience managing editorial and SEO teams, brand strategy, and operations across digital, social, video, audio, memberships, and events, you’re a seasoned content leader with a passion for creating engaging, industry-defining media.

You thrive in fast-paced environments and have a proven track record in media monetization, particularly in advertising for B2B SaaS products, paywalls, and educational offerings. Data-driven decision-making is second nature to you, and you’re adept at analyzing market dynamics, identifying differentiation opportunities, and adapting to evolving industry landscapes.

What you'll be doing (responsibilities):

Deliver content performance

• Build the strategy, systems, frameworks and process to produce excellent content at scale with content that engages and ranks, generating monetizable traffic for ads and product.
• Ensure the team creates impactful content that feeds the funnel for inventory and commerce
• Hone content strategy and execution to dominate the publication's ownable SERP
• Develop content that drives Xchannel engagement, subs and brand lovers
• Help the team plan, create, monitor. evaluate and improve performance
• Research, implement, and train content team on the best tools for improving our quality of process & outcome

Make amazing content

• Guide the creation and evolution of differentiated content and formats that attract, engage and retain loyal, engaged audiences, builds brands and transform visitors into brand lovers at scale.
• Develop, document, & align team on content planning, production, analysis, and governance
• Iterate on content concepts to build reputation, clicks, shares and follows
• Show the team what good looks like, and collaborate with them on it
• Review performance and process and optimize to drive efficiency
• Provide feedback and approval on content plans and production plans
• Ensure strategies are concrete, aligned with goals, and implement-able

Develop the team

• Build, train, equip and coach the team to elevate their craft and effectiveness, delivering quantity, quality and performance.
• Identify capacity gaps, forecast content needs, and make appropriate hires
• Catch the things that others don't to improve the quality of our pubs
• Be the guardian and arbiter of quality - adding finishing touches, and making improvements to make the content more effective
• Encourage and guide content team in personal development, new experiments, and fun

How your success will be measured:

• Advertising revenue: $/m
• Audience revenue $/m
• Traffic (users): #/month
• Organic / SEO traffic: #/month
• Owned / Direct & Subs traffic: #/month
• X channel audience: #subscribers/m
• Open rate: %
• Click-thru rate: %
• New articles: #/month
• Upgraded articles: #/month
• Ave sessions/user: #
• Dwell time: #

Your Skillset Includes:

• Visionary Content Leadership: Proven ability to conceptualize and execute innovative content strategies and formats that engage and retain audiences across multiple platforms and formats building strong, profitable media brands.
• SEO and Digital Marketing Expertise: Deep understanding of SEO best practice, social media engagement tactics, and digital marketing strategies to drive organic traffic, boost visibility, and maximize audience growth.
• Audience-Centric Strategy: Skilled in identifying audience needs and preferences to develop impactful, differentiated content and experiences that foster loyalty and brand love.
• Revenue-Driven Content Creation: Expertise in creating content that supports monetization strategies, including advertising, paywalls, and educational product funnels, ensuring both audience and revenue growth.
• Team Development & Leadership: A track record of building, training, and mentoring high-performing teams, fostering a collaborative and innovative culture to drive success at scale.
• Operational Excellence: Skilled in optimizing workflows, developing processes, and implementing tools to improve content production efficiency and maintain a high standard of quality.
• Performance Optimization: Adept at evaluating data, content and process effectiveness, providing constructive feedback, and implementing strategies to enhance quality and efficiency.
• Organizational and Project Management: Exceptional organizational skills, capable of managing multiple initiatives simultaneously while maintaining focus on detail and deadlines.
• Communication & Stakeholder Management: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, ensuring alignment with internal teams, external contributors, and stakeholders.
• Creative Problem-Solving: Ability to anticipate challenges, adapt to dynamic environments, and implement innovative solutions to overcome obstacles.

Nice to Haves:

• Knowledge of both event and membership-based business models and how content drives membership acquisition and retention.
• Experience in public speaking, representing brands at events, panels, and conferences.
• A robust professional network within media, tech, and content industries for partnerships and collaboration opportunities.

Salary Statement:
This full time position is available as a either a remote or hybrid position, dependent on proximity to our headquarters in Vancouver and your personal work preferences. The role offers an annual salary in the range of $200,000 to $250,000 CAD. The range is a guide for the expected skills, knowledge and experience for new hires based in Canada only. Seniority level and salary ranges are determined through interviews and a review of education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant, equity with other team members, and alignment with market data. This means ranges will vary for candidates based outside of Canada and/or at different seniority levels. In addition to annual salary, full time employees are eligible for a discretionary bonus and a comprehensive benefits package.

About Us:
Black and White Zebra is a rapidly growing, independent media tech company headquartered in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. Since 2012, our portfolio of influential digital publications has been helping millions of people succeed at work.

Our brands cover project management, product management, people management, customer experience, quality assurance and others, with the goal of connecting people with the knowledge, skills and tools they need to succeed professionally.

We got our start in 2011 as The Digital Project Manager blog, founded by our CEO Ben Aston. Since then, we’ve grown into an international team of 70+ creators, strategists, and innovators with a portfolio of more than 14 online publications. We enjoy an impact-driven environment that combines the agility of a startup with the creativity of an agency and the diversity of a global company.

We’ve recently ranked #30 in The Globe and Mail’s Fastest Growing Company list and received a CMI award for Best Digital Publication for The Digital Project Manager—and we’re listed in both Canada's Top Small & Medium Employers, and Best Employers in BC.

All of this growth is driven by our commitment to our mission: In a world of evolving skills, practices, and technology, we’re creating a playbook for the future of work and empowering communities to create it with us.

Diversity Equity and Inclusion:
Black and White Zebra is an equal opportunity employer and considers all candidates for employment regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, marital status, military or veteran’s status (including protected veterans, as may be required by federal law), sexual orientation or any other category protected by law. We celebrate all backgrounds and attributes that continue to help make our team impactful, iterative, adaptable, and fun!