Project Manager

The Project Manager for Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) plays a critical role in the daily operations of the department. The Project Manager is responsible for coordinating, administering, and supporting projects and initiatives within the department. The position provides leadership in the areas of stakeholder communications, and project workflow processes and systems. This role will use project management principles and tools to review, prioritize and source projects to meet business objectives and timelines throughout Pepperdine. The Project Manager reports to the Director of Operations for Integrated Marketing Communications. Integrated Marketing Communications is directly tasked with supporting the University's mission and strategic plan by building brand equity, elevating the University's national reputation, providing strong and consistent institutional message leadership, and implementing effective integrated marketing and communication strategies. The Project Manager fulfills a central role in helping the department accomplish its goals. **Duties** - Project Intake, Planning, and Administration - Serves as an administrator and coordinator of the department's project management platform and project intake processes. - Creates and maintains project records, ensuring all requests contain complete and accurate information, defined objectives, timelines, deliverables, approvals, and stakeholder contacts. - Reviews incoming requests for completeness, facilitates project scoping conversations, assists stakeholders in identifying project requirements, and ensures projects are properly categorized and prioritized according to departmental standards. - Monitors project schedules, deadlines, dependencies, and milestones to support efficient project execution across the department. - Provides user support, training, and guidance to faculty, staff, and project teams regarding project submission processes and system functionality. - Project Workflow and Resource Coordination - Coordinates project workflow and traffic management across Integrated Marketing Communications. - Works closely with department leadership, project managers, creative teams, writers, digital specialists, print production personnel, and external partners to facilitate efficient project movement through all phases of development. - Assists with workload balancing, resource allocation, timeline management, and prioritization of projects to maximize departmental capacity and effectiveness. - Identifies workflow bottlenecks, scheduling conflicts, and resource constraints and collaborates with team leads to develop solutions. - Maintains production calendars, project schedules, and milestone tracking to ensure projects remain on schedule and aligned with stakeholder expectations. - Stakeholder Communications and Vendor Management - Serves as a primary point of contact for project-related communications with internal and external stakeholders. - Provides proactive updates regarding project status, timelines, deliverables, approvals, and resource availability. - Facilitates communication between stakeholders and IMC team members to ensure project objectives, expectations, and deadlines are clearly understood. - Coordinates vendor outreach, requests for quotes, production schedules, and project deliverables. - Maintains positive working relationships with external vendors, consultants, freelancers, and campus partners while ensuring adherence to University policies, contractual obligations, and project requirements. - Escalates issues, risks, or delays as appropriate and recommends solutions to maintain project momentum. - Reporting, Analytics, and Process Improvement - Develops, maintains, and distributes project status reports, workload reports, resource utilization reports, and other operational metrics used by department leadership. - Analyzes project data and workflow trends to identify opportunities for improved efficiency, service levels, and resourc…