Senior Director, Business Development Programs

Senior Director, Business Development Programs

Perm/contract: Permanent
Status: Full-time
Reports to: Senior Vice President, Economic Opportunity

The Commercial Club of Chicago works to shape Chicago’s future to make our region a better place for everyone to live, work, and do business. Since 1877 we have helped shape Chicago into one of the world’s greatest cities. The Commercial Club of Chicago is a membership organization of senior leaders in the region. Our members span the business, education, civic, cultural, and philanthropic sectors - unified by excitement for the future of Chicago.

We believe cooperation and an open exchange of ideas are fundamental to success. Today, the Commercial Club continues to address social and economic issues of importance to the Chicago region.

In 1983, the Civic Committee was formed as an entity within the Commercial Club to identify key issues facing the State of Illinois and the greater Chicago region and providing leadership, high-quality research, long-term policy recommendations and programmatic actions for the benefit of the city and region. The Civic Committee is composed of the leaders of the Chicago region’s leading private sector employers and works with public officials and other civic organizations on transformational initiatives to promote our region's social and economic well-being.

The Civic Committee generally serves as the Commercial Club’s lead on policy and initiatives in public safety, business diversity, transportation and infrastructure, and state and local finance.

We also work alongside, and partially fund, the organizations established by us to tackle key issues head-on:

• Civic Consulting Alliance: Civic Consulting Alliance has an effective model for addressing systemic problems and achieving lasting change. We leverage the power of public-private collaboration through a unique approach to management consulting, to channel Chicago’s proud history of civic engagement.
• Kids First Chicago: Kids First Chicago’s mission is to dramatically improve education for Chicago’s children by ensuring high-quality public schools are accessible to all families. We believe a healthy education environment where kids, schools, and communities thrive is the key to a world-class city. We believe that those closest to our students - families, community members, and educators - are best equipped to design policies and systems that will improve equity and lead to stronger outcomes for our students, communities, and city.
• P33: Our ambition is to transform Chicago into a tier one technology and innovation hub and promote inclusive economic growth.

This is a full-time position with benefits, reporting to the Director, Membership and Events. Initial employment will be on a introductory basis, with detailed evaluations and feedback at the 30-, 60-, and 90-day marks.

The Civic Committee launched the Chicago Business Opportunity Initiative (CBOI) with a vision to make Chicagoland the most economically prosperous and inclusive region in the country. We are primarily focused on economic growth for all in the Chicago region with specific goals of supporting the growth of Chicago based businesses operating in high growth sectors, increasing jobs on Chicago’s South and West sides, and creating an ecosystem of organizations working collectively to sustain change over time.

We have organized CBOI into two pillars (business growth and business ecosystem) through which we will execute plans. A senior executive Task Force steers CBOI’s strategic plan.

The successful candidate will be a strategic and execution leader with demonstrated subject matter expertise in business development and procurement with a proven track record of accelerating growth for under-scaled, underrepresented, and highly capable businesses. This role will lead an assigned portion of CBOI strategy with a focus on accelerating growth and development of businesses operating in Chicago. This role will interface frequently with Civic Committee leadership, the CBOI Task Force and other key…