Global Alliance Operations Lead

WPP Enterprise Solutions designs, builds, and operates the growth systems that competitive businesses rely on. In a world where Al is reshaping how companies drive growth, we lead clients in business transformation and marketing modernization, connecting strategy directly to execution. Our 12,000 experts in engineering and platforms, commerce, consulting, content transformation, CRM, and CX work within a unified global operating unit across 40+ markets. WPP Enterprise Solutions works alongside best-in-class partners including Adobe, AWS, Braze, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Shopify, as well as innovators in AI, to deliver growth solutions tailored to the needs of our clients’ businesses. VML, part of WPP, supports WPP Enterprise Solutions by helping brands activate transformation through creativity and experience.

WPP Enterprise Solutions · Reports to the Chief Alliance Officer · Global

WPP Enterprise Solutions runs its alliance program as a portfolio of partner alliances, each with its own leadership and its own commercial mechanics guided by the strategy set by the Chief Alliance Officer with support from a direct global team, a layer of regional cross-alliance leadership, and a set of Specialty Company resources who carry alliance or marketing responsibility for specific partners or regions — some reporting directly, some on a dotted line. WPP Enterprise Solutions needs a leader who can bring the direct team, the regional layer and the specialty companies together into one coherent program, so that whichever partner, region or specialty company a client conversation touches, WPP shows up as one company.

Enterprise Solutions is one of WPP’s four operating units — approximately $1.8B in revenue, serving more than 80 of the top 100 WPP clients across 40+ markets. The Alliances function itself is young and still being built out, and it already operates across every WPP region and through resources it does not directly employ. This role exists to make sure that as the program grows, it grows as a system — with one cadence and one standard — rather than as a collection of partner teams, regional teams and specialty companies that each run their own version of it.

You will run the Alliances program day to day on behalf of the Chief Alliance Officer: the leadership and governance cadence across all partner alliances and the Industry & Partner Solutions Commercialization Lead, the materials that represent the function upward, the internal QBR process for every alliance, and the systems of record — starting with Salesforce — that make partner pipeline visible and trustworthy across a structure built from direct reports, dotted-line resources, regional cross-alliance leadership and Specialty Company partners. You will also build and lead a small team of your own — a mix of direct and dotted-line resources, sized to the work rather than fixed in advance, starting small and growing as the program proves itself out. Even with that team in place, most of what this role coordinates sits outside its own reporting line, so authority comes as much from the standard you set as from the team you directly manage. The title says Operations. In practice this is closer to a chief of staff role for the Alliances function — less “keep the trains running” and more “make sure a client or partner experiences one WPP, no matter which partner, region, or specialty company is actually doing the work.”

Program governance and executive support for the CAO (25%)

Pipeline systems and reporting (25%)

One-company alignment: cross-alliance, specialty company and partner marketing coordination (25%)

Global and regional consistency: EMEA, LATAM, APAC and ANZ (25%)

Required

Preferred

This role sits alongside nine partner-facing alliance leadership seats — Adobe, AWS, Shopify, Salesforce, Emerging Partners, Kyndryl, Braze, Microsoft and Google — and the Industry & Partner Solutions Commercialization Lead, but does not own a partner relationship itself. It leads a small, growing team of its own, but most of the direct reports, dotted-line resources, regional cross-alliance leadership and Specialty Company partners that make up the broader program sit outside that team and outside this role’s formal authority. Its job is to make all of it function, and present, as one company. Where the partner-facing roles are measured on the pipeline and revenue a specific partner brings to WPP, this role is measured on whether the system underneath all of them — cadence, data, certification, and one consistent story to partners and clients — holds together across every partner, every region and every resourcing model. It reports directly to the Chief Alliance Officer and is, in practice, the role that lets that function scale.

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. With exceptional talent, trusted data and intelligence and world-class partnerships – all united by our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open – we help clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth. For more information, visit WPP.com.

WPP (VML/WPP Enterprise Solutions) is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers. 

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