Communications Operations Associate

Position(s): Communications Operations Associate

Site: Hybrid: MaRS Discovery Tower (Toronto) + Work from Home

Reports to: Director, Strategic Communications

Status: Permanent, Full Time

The opportunity

We're looking for a proactive, resourceful Communications Operations Associate to help our Communications team stay organized, connected, and on track.

Reporting to the Director, Strategic Communications, you'll work across the Communications team, with colleagues throughout the organization, and external partners.

This is a hands‐on coordination and operations role embedded in the Communications team. On any given project, you might be building a workback plan for a major announcement, put together a presentation or briefing deck, coordinate inputs and approvals, research and book an event venue, work with a vendor, manage a translation request with our agency, keep our project‐management systems current or spot a missing step before it becomes a problem. Your job is to create the structures that help good work happen, making sure that the right people have the right information, decisions happen when they need to, details don't get lost, and projects keep moving from idea to delivery.

What you'll do

• Manage and triage incoming requests: Monitor the team inbox, clarify what is needed, rout requests appropriately, track follow‐up and make sure each request has a clear next step and owner.
• Keep communications projects moving: Build workback plans, timelines and trackers; coordinate inputs, decisions and approvals; and flag dependencies, risks or capacity issues before they become problems;
• Support key moments and events: Help plan and coordinate major events, announces, launches, convenings, meetings and other priority moments, making sure that communications, logistics, materials and follow‐up are well organized.
• Help keep Communications priorities on track: Support the team tracking key dates, deliverables, dependencies and follow ups; surface risks or conflicts early; and ensure that agreed work keeps moving.
• Turn discussions into action: Capture clear next steps, owners and deadlines from meetings and conversations, and follow through to make sure that commitments are carried forward
• Put together decks, presentations and briefing materials: Coordinate content and inputs to ensure that materials are clear, polished, accurate and ready for use.
• Coordinate communications production: Manage the practical steps required to produce materials and assets, including timelines, specifications, proofs, printing, shipping, vendor coordination, delivery and invoicing.
• Keep contracts, invoices and expenses moving: Coordinate the administrative steps that support Communications work, including contracts, invoices, expense tracking and approvals; follow up with internal teams and external vendors as needed to keep things moving.
• Manage recurring operational workflows: Coordinate translation and other recurring processes that support Communications delivery
• Own team systems and tracking: Keep Monday.com, SharePoint and other shared tools current, useful and easy to navigate, including trackers for projects, requests, approvals and recurring work.
• Keep Communications materials organized: Own the ongoing organization, clean‐up and archiving of team files and shared folders, and ensure that templates, decks, boilerplate language, visual assets and other core materials are current and easy to find.
• Improve how the team works: Find practical ways to simplify processes, reduce duplication, improve visibility, and make recurring work easier to manage.

What you'll bring

We're looking for someone who is exceptionally organized, proactive and reliable — someone who gets satisfaction from making complex work run smoothly and who is curious enough to figure things out when the answer isn't obvious.

• Exceptional organization: You can manage multiple moving pieces, keep track of details and deadlines, and create structure where it's needed.
• Strong follow‐through: You close loops, keep commitments visible and make sure important tasks don't quietly fall off the radar.
• Curiosity and resourcefulness: You ask good questions, learn quickly, dig for the information you need and are comfortable figuring out how things work.
• Proactive thinking: You anticipate what will be needed next, spot gaps or risks early and take action before they become problems.
• Diplomatic and proactive communication: You're comfortable following up, asking for what's needed, clarifying expectations and helping keep people to agreed timelines while maintaining positive working relationships.
• Sound judgement: You can assess what is urgent, what is important, what can wait and what needs to be escalated.
• Comfort with systems and process: You like cre