Head of Events

HEC Paris in Qatar

Strategy and governance

• Lead the annual event strategy aligned to program, partnership, and brand objectives. Translate goals into a balanced portfolio with clear audience, purpose, and success metrics.
• Own the intake process for event requests. Prioritize scope, and approve or decline based on capacity, impact, and alignment.
• Maintain the master calendar and ensure visibility across leadership, marketing, sales, and academic teams.
• Create and maintain playbooks, run of show templates, checklists, briefing packs, and a shared repository of assets and debriefs.
• Champion the approved tech stack, including Salesforce and registration platforms, and ensure data governance and consent practices.
• Proactively propose new events throughout the year to maintain high engagement and align with institutional objectives.

Portfolio planning and delivery

• Oversee concepting, design, and delivery of on-campus, off-site, hybrid, and virtual events, including C-level roundtables, open houses, graduations, partner activations, and VIP visits.
• Manage end-to-end logistics, including permits, venue, staging, AV, translation, accessibility, livestream, photography and videography, transport, accommodation, catering, and protocol.
• Lead risk assessment and contingency planning, including HSE, crowd management, fire safety, incident response, and VIP security coordination.
• Apply sustainable event practices, including waste reduction, responsible sourcing, and reuse of assets.

Stakeholders, protocol, and partnerships

• Serve as the focal point for VIP and government engagement with sensitivity to local protocol, culture, and security requirements.
• Coordinate with the Dean s Office, faculty, partners, alumni, and sponsors. Provide high-quality briefings, seating plans, scripts, and escorting.
• Manage speaker sourcing, agreements, travel, and hospitality.

Budget, commercial, and vendors

• Own the events budget. Build business cases, forecasts, and reconciliations. Track purchase orders and invoices with Finance and Procurement.
• Build and manage preferred supplier panels and framework agreements. Negotiate rates, scope, and service levels.
• Develop sponsorship assets for selected flagship events and manage sponsor fulfillment.
• Source, brief, and manage venues and suppliers. Monitor delivery against service levels and run structured post-event reviews.
• Oversee asset inventory, including booths, backdrops, and signage, with planned storage, maintenance, and refresh cycles.

Marketing integration and performance

• Partner with Marketing and Sales on audience definition, value proposition, and messaging for each event.
• Build promotional plans and timelines across email, social, website, partners, and PR, ensuring brand standards at every touchpoint.
• Ensure consistent data capture at registration and onsite. Integrate with Salesforce campaigns and journeys.
• Define and report on KPIs, including registrations, attendance rate, cost per attendee, satisfaction score, net promoter score, leads captured, and pipeline value. Share insights and improvement actions after each event and quarterly.

Team leadership

• Lead and develop a team of event professionals. Clarify roles and goals, run regular one-to-ones and stand-ups, and provide coaching and feedback.
• Plan capacity and allocate resources across concurrent projects. Engage trusted freelancers when needed within budget.
• Set working norms for calm, excellence, safety, and continuous improvement.