The jobholder will bring a positive commitment to joining a leadership team focused on rapid success and growth. He or she will have a track record at building competence and confidence in the strategic use of communications within the organization, and will deliver impactful and credible communications to key external stakeholders, as well as the equally important employee base.

Based in Riyadh, he or she will report to the Communications Vice President, West Arabia. The main mandate of West Arabia Comms is to be responsible for building and advancing, as well as defending and protecting, the reputation of Mastercard, its products, enterprise and brand in West Arabia.

This jobholder position will lead on all communications fronts across West Arabia Division, These fronts are: External and Media Communications, Social and Digital, Internal Communications, CSR and Event Management.

The position will effectively act as deputy for the West Arabia Comms VP and will, as such, provide strategic counsel to the West Arabia senior management team and market managers, and support strategic business initiatives by ensuring best-in-class communications counsel to business leaders and internal clients. He/she will partner with Marketing on brand building with a sophisticated approach to, and execution of, issues and reputation management with West Arabia management teams. He/she will have successfully managed and responded to corporate and media issues and crises. He/she will be expected to draw on a robust corporate or agency experience to bring fresh, proactive strategic thinking to the enterprise.

Responsibilities:

Lead responsibility to tell the Mastercard West Arabia story at a global level, internally and externally:

• Lead Mastercard's communications strategy and media presence across West Arabia. Work with West Arabia Comms VP, senior management, country mangers and business unit leads to devise and implement successful communications programs at local and regional levels, allocate resources and direct execution.
• Manage our PR Agencies including day to day management, development of strategy, overseeing contracts and budgets, continuously scope for better vendors, etc.
• Utilize all existing Mastercard MEA and Global internal communications channels, and devise where appropriate new ones, to make sure the West Arabia division story is well told within Mastercard.
• Plan and execute colleague events and get together like annual party, iftar, team offsites, colleague volunteering events, etc.
• Manage major local events
• Work with Marketing to put in place a solid social media communications platform to ensure optimized share of voice for Mastercard in social networks and effective 2-way communication therein.
• Support to ensure structures, personnel (internal and agency), resources, work flow, and communications processes are in place to deliver an solid West Arabia strategic plan against the business objectives and the MEA Comms strategy.

Experience Required:

• The ideal candidate will have a distinguished track record as a high achieving communications executive with a demonstrated capacity to build and execute communications programs that support business growth within a dynamic and changing corporation.
• Excellent writing skills in English
• A recognized influencer who has successfully advanced a company's growth proposition with special depth in the areas of external and internal communications
• Corporate Affairs experience as it relates to delivering the company's message and implementing events and programs for non-media audiences at international, national and local levels.
• Team player who will work well with senior business and functional leaders of Mastercard
• Keen understanding of the West Arabia scene beyond just media and into culture, economy, socio politics and development agenda
• Educated to degree level, with a minimum of 7 years' experience in corporate communications or primarily in company communications, with other experience that may derive from positions with a national or international public association or public relations agency.

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard's security policies and practices;
• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard's guidelines.