Avp, Experience Design

We are a leading financial services provider committed to making decisions easier and lives better for our customers and colleagues around the world. From our environmental initiatives to our community investments, we lead with values throughout our business. To help us stand out, we help you step up, because when colleagues are healthy, respected and meaningfully challenged, we all thrive. Discover how you can grow your career, make impact and drive real change with our Winning Team today.

**Working Arrangement**

Hybrid

**AVP, Experience Design**

Manulife Investment Management is the global brand for the global wealth and asset management (GWAM) segment of Manulife Financial Corporation. We draw on more than a century of financial stewardship and the full resources of our parent company to serve individuals, institutions, and retirement plan members worldwide, including the US, Canada, Europe and 11 markets in Asia.

We are working hard to not only change ourselves, but to reshape our industry. Our Mission is to make decisions easier and our customers' lives better. We are hard at work transforming our organization into a Digital Customer Leader - evolving our customer interactions into innovative, immersive, and highly functional digital experiences delivering high value. We’re also changing the way we work: foundational to our success is fostering a culture that is inclusive, high-performing, and makes our company a compelling place for talented people to join and build their careers.

You will play a key role in helping drive this exciting transformation. You will be actively building and maturing the Human-Centered Design practice while leading a global team delivering best-in-class solutions. You believe that the discipline of design can be used not only to improve the experiences of our customers, clients, advisors and sales partners, but also to drive tangible business results in adoption, growth, revenue and retention.

You’re a tireless advocate for Human-Centered Design and UX. You’re viewed as a thought leader who can drive change and mature the capability of design in large matrixed organizations. You’ll know that success means meeting the full spectrum of challenges for both external customers and internal collaborators; you’re capable of managing multiple tracks of work on a large portfolio; and you can ensure all projects meet high standards of excellence while dealing with the practical realities of an ever-changing digital landscape and business complexities.

You’ll lead a global team of designers and client experience strategists who are responsible for carrying projects through from early-stage discovery and research to execution. As the AVP, you’ll be seen as the leader in ensuring that the customer is at the heart of all business decisions we make.

With your strong team leadership qualities, you’ll provide vision and mentorship, you’ll recruit & develop exceptional talent, and you’ll have a plan for evolving the team and processes as we scale and take on new challenges.

Reporting to the Global Head of Digital Experience, this is a critical role that balances strategy and execution.

**Key Accountabilities**
- Champion the value of HCD with senior executives, key stakeholders and business partners, help the team drive actionable recommendations, and collaborate with product and engineering to develop best-in-class digital experiences
- Closely partner with the Global Research & Digital Strategy team to ensure research and data-driven insights inform HCD strategy
- Ensure we are consistent in the use of our Design System to promote one brand, one voice and one entity.
- Promote a culture of Test & Learn where new concepts are vetted through Discovery and brand new digital experiences are stress-tested so they meet the highest digital standards from day one
- Provide full complement of services and deliverables, including, but not limited to:

- Experience strategy and research
- Design thinking facilitation
- Content strategy
- Personas & journey mapping
- Prototypes
- Visual designs
- Service blueprints
- Keep abreast of emerging HCD trends and disseminate this information across our teams and partners as effective thought leadership.
- Foster and maintain strong industry relationships.

**Core Competencies**
- **Practice Builder**: An illustrated history of success building and developing an HCD and research function in a space that aligns regional and global priorities.
- **Strategic Thinker**: Balanced approach to industry trends, market factors, and how the organization can capitalize on the information provided.
- **Innovative**: Regularly challenging how work product is delivered to offer the best possible service to the business.
- **Strengths-Based Leadership**: An advocate for the team that recognizes and highlights key differentiators and strengths.
- **New Methods**: Regularly challenges how work product is delivered to offer the best possible servi