IPW Program Director

Summary

The IPW Program Director’s full-time focus is the success of U.S. Travel’s IPW, U.S. Travel’s signature annual event that drives $26.1 billion in travel to the United States, serves as a valuable member benefit and provides essential funding to the association. This role coordinates across all workstreams—including event strategy, event operations and delivery, marketing and digital, communications, member engagement, sales and sponsorship and buyer/media recruitment—each owned by a dedicated team that remains accountable for its results. This role ensures IPW operates from one integrated plan, with cross-functional milestones, decisions and dependencies clearly defined and proactively managed across every contributing team. The role also ensures that risks are surfaced early enough to be mitigated and that executive leadership has clear, current visibility into overall event readiness, financial position and areas needing focus without having to seek out individual teams for updates. The Program Director creates accountability and alignment across workstreams while serving as a coordinating partner who removes friction, facilitates resolution and helps teams deliver successfully.

This is a program-management role built for influence rather than authority. It borrows the cross-functional governance and reporting discipline of a program manager and the schedule, milestone and risk-tracking rigor of a project manager, applied to a single high-stakes annual event rather than a portfolio of projects.

Responsibilities

Program Tracking & Governance

• Lead the development and oversight of an annual business plan for each IPW, including the elicitation of assumptions, event goals and key performance indicators.


• Lead the development and monitoring of a master IPW schedule that consolidates milestones and supporting tasks owned by every contributing team, ensuring it remains visible to all teams.


• Maintain visibility into agreed-upon IPW scope and major program requirements, ensuring material changes are documented and communicated across affected teams.


• Maintain current visibility into the overall IPW budget and flag the cost or resource implications of proposed scope, timing or deliverable changes to the executive sponsor, the senior leader ultimately accountable for the event.


• Identify the appropriate stakeholders and convene and facilitate regular cross-functional meetings with those responsible for the various workstreams to track progress.


• Identify dependencies and sequencing conflicts across teams before they impact the schedule.

Decision, Risk, Issue and Escalation Management

• Collaborate across the organization to develop and maintain a Decider, Accountable, Responsible, Consulted, Informed (DARCI) matrix for all IPW requirements.


• Establish and enforce agreed-upon program management standards across IPW workstreams, including milestone reporting, risk identification, decision documentation and recovery planning.


• Maintain running decision, risk and issue logs spanning every workstream, with clear ownership and target resolution dates.


• Escalate formally to the executive sponsor when a contributing team is at risk of missing a milestone, rather than relying on informal follow-up.


• Facilitate alignment when contributing teams have competing priorities on scope or sequencing.

Executive & Stakeholder Communication

• Produce a recurring IPW status update for the executive sponsor covering progress, risks and decisions needed across all workstreams.


• Act as the primary point of contact for cross-team questions about IPW scope, timeline and ownership.


• Present a complete picture of IPW readiness in leadership forums.

Strategy

• Lead the development of the multi-year IPW strategy that supports the evolution of the show, including critical areas like purpose, target audiences and paths for growth.


• Establish success metrics for the strategy and monitor progress against key indicators.


• Manage the project plan, timeline, milestones and deliverables for the strategy work, coordinating across internal teams and governance bodies.


• Manage the relationship with the outside strategy vendor as a collaborative extension of the internal team.

Relationship Management

• Build and maintain trust-based working relationships with the leads of every contributing team.


• Adapt communication style, tone and touchpoint frequency to each team’s working norms, so that meetings feel useful and collaborative.


• Act as a neutral, credible broker between teams with competing priorities, maintaining strong working relationships while driving alignment.


• Maintain regular, informal contact with team leads outside scheduled meetings to surface concerns early and reinforce the role as a coordinating partner.


• Cultivate a close working relationship with the executive sponsor to ensure escalations are heard promptly and acted on with appropriate urgency.


• Onboard new or rotating team leads to the IPW coordination model and existing working relationships, preserving continuity of trust as contributing teams’ personnel change from year to year.

Key Attributes

• 7+ years in program or project management roles requiring coordination across multiple departments without formal reporting lines to those departments.


• Demonstrated success managing complex, multi-workstream programs or large-scale events involving several independent teams or vendors.


• Strong command of program-tracking fundamentals: master timelines, milestone tracking, RAID logs (risks, assumptions, issues, decisions) and status reporting.


• Demonstrated experience facilitating interdisciplinary teams through decision-making processes.


• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with experience briefing senior executives.


• Proven ability to build trust and drive alignment among peers with competing priorities and no reporting relationship to this role.


• Deep curiosity and a passion for interdisciplinary work and for making connections between teams.


• Experience designing or operating within a formal escalation framework.

Preferred Education, Experience and Skills

• PMP, PgMP or equivalent program/project management certification.


• Experience with trade shows.


• Experience in travel, tourism, hospitality or association environments.


• Familiarity with event registration and exhibit-sales technology platforms.


• Experience managing outside vendors or agencies functioning as an extension of an internal team.

Other:

• Position is required to be in Washington, D.C. U.S. Travel staff work in the office Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays with the option to work remotely on Mondays and Fridays.


• Some travel is required (up to eight times a year).


• Salary: $130K-$140K with bonus potential.


• Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Benefits:

• Comprehensive healthcare package with fertility coverage


• Generous paid leave including family leave


• Routine staff functions and opportunities for social connection


• Transportation and cell phone benefits


• Robust wellness initiatives and Employee Assistance Plan (EAP)


• Education and professional development assistance