Associate Director of Creative Resource Management

The Associate Director of Creative Resource Management is a senior, hands-on leader within NVE’s centralized resourcing team, responsible for overseeing strategy and execution exclusively for the Creative department. This role bridges high-level workforce planning with day-to-day staffing decisions, ensuring creative teams (including visual designers, spatial/environmental designers, copywriters, art directors, 3D visualizers, and creative directors) are thoughtfully cast, sustainably balanced, and aligned with both business goals and human needs.

Reporting to the VP, Resource Director with a dotted line to Creative Leadership, this role partners closely with Creative Leadership, Accounts, Strategy, Production, and Finance to translate pipeline and forecasts into actionable staffing plans.

This is a highly collaborative role for someone who deeply understands the nuances of the creative process in experiential marketing, operates confidently in ambiguity, and brings both rigor and empathy to resourcing decisions.

Success in This Role Looks Like:

• Creative resourcing runs smoothly, consistently, and proactively across all agency creative projects
• Creative team members achieve target utilization, billability, and balanced workloads across experiential, branding, and strategic design initiatives
• Leadership has clear visibility into Creative capacity, utilization, skill set alignment, and upcoming bandwidth risks
• Creative team members feel supported, guided, intentionally cast, and aligned in how staffing decisions are made
• Resourcing is trusted as a strategic partner by Creative leadership, ensuring the right creative talent is matched to the right briefs based on expertise, passion, and availability.
• The ability to balance people-first decision-making with creative excellence and financial realities

Role Priorities:

Creative Resourcing Leadership & Strategy

• Own the resourcing strategy for the Creative department, translating agency-wide resourcing frameworks into department-specific execution
• Serve as the primary resourcing partner to Creative leadership, maintaining a deep understanding of team structures, individual skill sets, portfolios, and delivery realities
• Act as the primary escalation point for creative staffing challenges, competing project priorities, and high-impact casting decisions
• Evaluate incoming briefs and project workloads to assign incoming jobs to design and creative resources in collaboration with department management
• Contribute to the development of centralized resourcing best practices and optimization of resourcing systems

Forecasting & Workforce Planning

• Partner with the VP, Resource Director, Creative Leadership, and Finance to build and maintain Creative-specific capacity forecasts
• Identify upcoming gaps, bottlenecks, or overages in creative bandwidth and proactively recommend solutions (rebalancing, freelance support, hiring)
• Support scenario planning for new business pitches, large-scale experiential programs, retainers, and seasonal spikes in creative demand

Operational Excellence

• Maintain accurate, real-time Creative resourcing data and visibility within centralized resourcing systems
• Ensure resourcing standards, processes, and cadences (intake, casting, forecasting) are applied consistently across the Creative department
• Partner with Finance to ensure staffing decisions align with project budgets, scopes, and margin targets
• Track and report on creative utilization, capacity, and resourcing health to inform executive decision-making

Freelance & External Talent Strategy

• Oversee freelance strategy and usage within Creative, ensuring the right balance of full-time employees and external support
• Maintain a robust, diverse, and high-performing bench of freelance creative talent (designers, copywriters, 3D artists, art directors, specialized agencies)
• Conduct proactive outreach to foster relationships with external talent and grow the freelance bench based on forecasted skill set needs
• Oversee freelance onboarding, compliance, rate alignment, and timesheet management in partnership with finance and talent operations

Culture, Wellbeing & Talent Development

• Champion a human-first approach to Creative resourcing, balancing project delivery urgency with sustainable workloads to prevent burnout
• Partner with Creative leadership to align staffing decisions with team members’ career development pathways and skill growth goals
• Promote inclusive, equitable casting practices across all Creative department projects

Requirements:

• 5–8+ years of experience in creative resourcing, resource management, traffic management, or creative operations within an experiential marketing agency or creative agency
• Deep understanding of the end-to-end creative process across visual design, environmental/spatial design, pitch development, branding, and copywriting
• Proven ability to manage complex staffing dynamics, balance competing priorities, and partner effectively with senior executive and creative leaders
• Proficiency in resource management and project management software
• Strong financial acumen regarding project margins, utilization metrics, and freelance budget management
• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and conflict-resolution skills, combining operational rigor with empathy