Accelerator Program Manager

**Accelerator Program Manager**

**Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship (COVE)**
**Halifax, Nova Scotia**

**Who is COVE?**
Since our launch in 2018, the Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship (COVE) has been on a mission to connect people, ideas, resources, and assets to propel solutions and sustainable growth for Canada’s marine sector. COVE has been central to the creation of a large cluster of companies and in generating a best-in-class start-up ecosystem. COVE provides strategic network-building opportunities, connections, and thought leadership amongst the global ocean tech community and runs programs to foster the development of the workforce, the acceleration of ocean tech product releases, and the success of new ventures by start-ups, scaleups and SMEs. These programs and COVE’s ability to nationally harness multi-disciplinary skills and capabilities within the marine ecosystem is an enabler in solving industry challenges, generating economic benefits, and providing value to investors.

COVE is expanding rapidly, and we are continuing to build our team to support our transformative impact on the marine sector. With over 60 companies on site and its global network of 2,000+ organizations that are engaged in ocean tech, it is on the precipice of becoming a global centre of excellence for industry-led innovation. We know our journey is only achievable by having a great team who shares ideas, tries new things, and learns as we go.

**The Opportunity**
As the Accelerator Program Manager, the work you do will be impactful to the success of the business community which includes scale-ups, small-medium size businesses, and COVE’s broader innovation ecosystem. You will be responsible for implementing and executing the seamless delivery of COVE’s Market Readiness initiatives such as the newly launched COVE UK Ocean Scale-Up Accelerator to encourage growth and global success of companies. You will also lead industry challenges engaging the innovation ecosystem and business community to identify novel solutions to real-business issues. This is an exciting opportunity to gain international profile, work directly with companies to scale businesses, and deliver solutions to foster a stronger blue economy. You will build on your team leadership skills and business acumen, and thrive in a growth-oriented organization.

**What you will be doing**:

- Planning, overseeing, and managing the development and execution of programs including preparing formal project proposals, engagement with businesses, and the delivery and facilitation of workshops.
- Scaling and standardizing COVE’s Market Readiness programs through designing processes, playbooks, and policies to continually revise and maintain a flexible curriculum that is aligned with current best practices and ensuring we understand critical needs of cohort businesses.
- Designing and administering surveys and other assessment tools to capture and analyze data for program planning, decision-making, and reporting.
- Building relationships and partnering with industry experts, external vendors, and government agencies to improve the quality, scope, and delivery of programs and to ensure engagement and participation.
- Working with the COVE leadership team to identify ways to integrate the Market Readiness program into other business lines.
- Managing relationships and opportunities with our multiple corporate partners, identifying opportunities for clients to collaborate, and facilitating those partnership discussions.
- Managing events in line with our business objectives such as webinars, challenges, and B2B meetings.
- Setting and tracking progress and budget against project milestones, holding others accountable for assigned tasks and recommending steps from start to finish, including identifying barriers to successful program execution, mitigating and/or escalating as appropriate.

**What you will bring**:

- Degree in Business, Science, Engineering, or a closely related field and/or a combination of education and experience.
- 5-7 years managing or executing programs with strong organizational skills to manage multiple priorities concurrently.
- Ability to think creatively to solve problems and to work without being closely managed.
- Ability to speak confidently in settings ranging from large group events to meetings with senior government, industry, and business leaders.
- An understanding of innovative technology in the marine sector.
- Ability to facilitate collaboration among multiple parties with disparate views and objectives and align the group toward a cohesive outcome.
- Understand how to effectively derive and measure program results and how to learn and iterate the program from those results.
- Be a community builder to establish relationships with multi-faceted stakeholder groups and key partners.
- Demonstrated ability to recognize risk and proactively mitigate.
- Ability to work well independently and as part of a team.