Events and Experience Lead

You are as unique as your background, experience and point of view. Here, you’ll be encouraged, empowered and challenged to be your best self. You'll work with dynamic colleagues - experts in their fields - who are eager to share their knowledge with you. Your leaders will inspire and help you reach your potential and soar to new heights. Every day, you'll have new and exciting opportunities to make life brighter for our Clients - who are at the heart of everything we do. Discover how you can make a difference in the lives of individuals, families and communities around the world.

The Events & Experience Lead (**Waterloo**) oversees our in-office service program to deliver an impressive slate of in-person meetings, hybrid events and employee services, providing expert knowledge to meet corporate objectives, quality standards and business goals. A creative solutions expert, the lead ensures the superb delivery of food and beverage programs, employee experience services and event logistics, leading the operational and administrative coordination of the site team. The lead is responsible for the hospitality operations of our Canadian headquarters at **Waterloo King** as well as at **Waterloo North**, ensuring seamless service delivery across both sites.

The lead takes a hands-on role supporting onsite events and experiences for a range of business partners, and guides team members to collaborate with stakeholders, team members and vendors. The Lead works directly with business partners to offer strategic advice, reserve space, confirm event orders, liaises with vendors and is onsite to ensure the smooth delivery of key activities at this site, ready to support last minute and special requests. The Lead provides direction and supervision for team members, catering partners and other vendor services, establishing and iterating onboarding and training, as well as making recommendations for service improvements.

As a resource for business partners across Sun Life, Broadcast and Event Services provides event management, production, broadcast, AV and multimedia services for a robust portfolio of corporate experiences. Reporting to the Senior Manager, Strategy and Operations, the lead is a key member of the Waterloo experience team, collaborating with partners in Workplace Solutions, Workplace Strategy and other departments of the company.

**What will you do?**
- Onsite daily at **Waterloo King** and/or **Waterloo North**, responsible for all aspects of event/meeting coordination for on-site, meetings, town halls and receptions including advising and detailing event itineraries, managing service and vendors, food and beverage management, set-ups, wayfinding, staffing, safety planning and post-event reporting. Daily presence to fulfil event delivery, directing teams and vendors to ensure the seamless execution of the event agenda
- Leading team members to ensure a smooth experience for all employees and guests, coaching on space use and offering tours. Coordinating hospitality experiences, educating and tracking space usage as well as making recommendations for improvements. Helping to ensure the security and organization of the office environment. Ensuring high levels of cleanliness, safety, and hygiene are maintained as well as identifying hazards and addressing problems if they arise
- Assigning team members to schedules, programs and projects, responding to unique requests and service needs. Onboarding and training team members, coaching and providing feedback to deliver elevated standards of service and an excellent professional working environment. Ensuring the team adheres to professional dress standards and vendor uniform requirements
- Ongoing collaboration with the audio-visual services and technology teams, helping partners troubleshoot self-serve systems and escalating support requests as required
- Onsite coordination of food and beverage programs, working closely with onsite vendors and stakeholders, processing invoices, reconciliations and making recommendations for service improvements
- Administrative coordination of expenses including purchase orders, approvals, chargebacks, reconciliations ensuring any financial processing is completed. Management of site inventory, maintain organization and operational resource systems and verification processes and working closely with team members to ensure site equipment plans, logs and maintenance are properly coordinated
- Health and Safety representative, acting as Fire Warden and able to provide onsite First Aid
- Adhering to company policies and industry best practices for the event planning processes, pre-, during and post-events
- Commitment to continuous improvement with the aim of making processes as efficient as possible, while delivering quality results

**What do you need to succeed?**
- A passion for corporate events and hospitality services. You’re an accomplished event professional, with an inspiring track record of using a wide range of v