Director - Commercial and Digital

GRI is the independent global standard setter for sustainability impact reporting. GRI provides the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting standards and works with businesses, regulators, investors, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders to advance transparency, accountability, and sustainable development.

Through a multi-stakeholder process, GRI develops standards that reflect global best practice and public interest. With staff in more than 20 countries, we combine global perspective with local relevance, supporting long-term value creation for organizations and society.

As sustainability reporting expectations continue to evolve — including increased digitalization, AI-enabled services, interoperability initiatives, and growing demand for implementation support — GRI is expanding and modernizing how it delivers value to organizations and practitioners globally.

The Director - Commercial and Digital will lead commercial growth, customer engagement, and digital transformation across GRI’s global market-facing services, combining strong commercial leadership, digital experience, and an international perspective.

This role is focused on strengthening and scaling GRI’s portfolio of offerings, including learning and training programmes, practitioner services, digital tools, licensing, partnerships, as well as developing new products. The Director leads GRI toward a more digitally enabled, data-driven, and customer-centric operating model.

The Director leverages strong commercial leadership experience, including demonstrated success growing and scaling international services, digital platforms, or customer-facing business lines. They will understand how digitalization, strategic partnerships, AI-enabled tools, customer analytics, and user-centric service design can strengthen market reach, customer engagement, operational effectiveness, and long-term sustainability.

The role requires a leader who combines strong business acumen with collaborative leadership and a clear understanding of the evolving sustainability and reporting ecosystem.

• Lead the development and execution of GRI’s commercial and digital growth strategy.

• Drive sustainable revenue growth across GRI’s portfolio of learning, training, practitioner support, and digital services.

• Develop scalable commercial models that support both organizational impact and long-term financial sustainability.

• Oversee global business development efforts, including strategic partnerships, channel development, customer acquisition, and expansion opportunities.

• Identify and develop new revenue-generating opportunities, including digital services, subscriptions, platform-based offerings, and strategic collaborations.

• Develop and oversee sales strategies, pipeline management, customer segmentation, and account growth approaches.

• Ensure commercial activities are informed by market demand, customer insights, and measurable return on investment.

• Lead the continued digitalization and scaling of GRI’s customer-facing services and delivery models.

• Oversee the evolution of digital platforms supporting learning, customer engagement, implementation support, and practitioner collaboration.

• Develop and oversee a digital marketing function

• Develop strategic digital partnerships that strengthen reach, accessibility, scalability, and innovation capacity.

• Explore opportunities to leverage AI-enabled services, automation, analytics, personalization, and digital support tools to improve user experience and operational efficiency.

• Drive innovation in how standards-related services and implementation support are delivered globally.

• Ensure digital investments and initiatives are aligned with measurable customer value and business outcomes.

• Oversee sales, customer success, CRM, and key account management functions across GRI’s services ecosystem.

• Support the strengthening of client relationships, including with large reporting organizations, training partners, consultants, and ecosystem stakeholders.

• Develop high-quality customer engagement and retention strategies focused on long-term value creation and customer satisfaction.

• Build a data-driven and user-centric customer experience across all market-facing services.

• Ensure customer feedback and usage data directly inform service development and prioritization.

• Oversee and support the growth and modernization of GRI’s global portfolio of certified training programs, e-learning platforms, practitioner and community programmes.

• Ensure programs are globally scalable, commercially sustainable, operationally effective, and responsive to market needs.

• Identify opportunities to strengthen digital delivery, accessibility, engagement, and partner-enabled growth.

• Embed a data-driven culture across commercial and digital functions.

• Refine KPIs, dashboards, and reporting frameworks to track commercial performance, customer engagement, digital adoption, growth, and return on investment.

• Use customer insights, market intelligence, analytics, and performance data to support strategic decision-making and prioritization.

• Oversee market research and competitive analysis related to sustainability reporting, digital services, customer needs, and emerging trends.

• Support organizational agility through evidence-based planning, monitoring, evaluation and learning.

• Together with the team, drive the redesign of the commercial and digital function in line with future needs.

• Lead multidisciplinary teams across commercial services, digital products, customer engagement, learning, and partnerships.

• Foster a collaborative and high-performance culture focused on innovation, accountability, growth, and continuous learning.

• Work closely with standards, policy, communications, partnerships, finance, and operational teams to support integrated organizational delivery.

• Deliver on GRI’s organizational strategy as a member of the Leadership Team.

• Approximately 10 years of senior leadership experience in commercial, digital, business development, customer engagement, or service-oriented roles.

• Demonstrated success scaling international digital services, learning ecosystems, platforms, subscription models, or customer-facing business lines.

• Strong commercial acumen with proven experience driving growth, revenue development, and market expansion.

• Significant experience leading digital transformation and digitally enabled service delivery, including digital marketing and digital platforms.

• Experience developing and managing strategic digital partnerships and growth collaborations.

• Proven experience leading sales, customer success, CRM, and key account management functions.

• Strong understanding of customer acquisition, retention, lifecycle management, and ROI-focused commercial performance.

• Experience using data analytics, customer insights, and market intelligence to drive business decisions and service innovation.

• Understanding of sustainability, ESG, reporting, disclosure, standards-setting, assurance, or related markets.

• Experience leading cross-functional teams and organizational change initiatives in international and complex environments.

• Bachelor’s degree required in business, technology, sustainability, management, education, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.

• Strong strategic and commercial mindset.

• Demonstrated ability to scale digitally enabled services and organizations internationally.

• Strong understanding of digital business models and customer-centric service design.

• Data-driven decision-maker with strong analytical capabilities.

• Strong relationship-building, negotiation, and partnership development skills.

• Excellent leadership and stakeholder management capabilities.

• Entrepreneurial, adaptable, and execution-oriented approach.

• Ability to balance mission orientation with commercial sustainability and growth objectives.