Director, Research

Company:
Canadian Council for Aboriginals Business

Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB) is a national Indigenous, non-partisan association. Our mission is to promote, strengthen and enhance a prosperous Indigenous economy through the fostering of business relationships, opportunities, and awareness.

Director, Research

As the Director, Research, your principal role is assisting in achieving the ambitious growth plans of CCAB nationwide. Your ability to engage with a variety of stakeholders and manage a passionate research team promotes organizational value to groups, making you a great fit for this position. Our stakeholders include Indigenous leaders, business executives, civil service, elected officials, academics, and entrepreneurs, as well as owners of SMEs.

Key Responsibilities include:

Client Management:

• Responsible for client service, project planning, resourcing, account management, business development, team development, and disseminating knowledge.
• A senior presence at key client interface situations with responsibility for the quality of service provided and business developed on allocated accounts.
• Add value to the client experience and research by providing advice.
• Consultancy and a high level of interpretation and direction.
• The promotion of all CCAB proprietary methodologies to all potential clients.
• The delivery of an agreed value of business from existing and new clients in line with overhead recovery and net profitability targets.
• Understand and clearly articulate value and business case for research and data.

Projects:

• Ensure that all projects are sufficiently and appropriately resourced across the team and that our recommended project management and analysis approaches are being adhered to.
• Assign teams for every project, taking into consideration existing client teams and continuity, skills required for the project, current workloads, and team dynamics/interpersonal skills. Monitor resources for live projects, supplementing/modifying teams as required, and generally acting in the role of troubleshooter to ensure smooth progress of all projects.
• Take an overview of the management of all live projects, ensuring that relevant meetings take place - initiation, mid-project update, product handling, field, data processing, and data analysis briefings, debrief planning, and postmortems. This will involve direct liaison with the appropriate office personnel across the relevant departments.
• Scrutinize proposed timings for projects and discuss them with key team members to ensure that clients' needs are met. Dates change and need to be monitored.
• Consider loss leader projects for brand recognition and positioning.

Process:

• Promote and monitor implementation of correct procedures throughout the team.
• Actively lead a review of the research process, identify areas for change, and manage such change together with the implementation of an ongoing monitoring process.
• Keep abreast of outstanding proposals to foresee and plan workload levels.
• Provide internal consultancy to sign off and manage the costing of all proposals and ensure that overhead recovery targets are monitored, advising the client on a regular basis as to actual results against target.
• Provide internal consultancy and sign off on research design and debrief content.
• Help with the identification and implementation of organizational efficiency improvements, including ways of reducing direct costs.

Business Development:

• Generate new business through warm leads generated by CCAB and from other personal contacts.
• Generate warm leads through promoting awareness of CCAB amongst potential clients and contacts.
• Identify business risks and development opportunities within accounts and implement appropriate solutions.

Team Management:

• Identify future resource needs within the Research Team and submit proposals with costs for consideration within the budget.
• Ensure that the research team recognizes the need for growth and change and are given enough opportunities to develop and succeed within the business.
• Foster an environment that is rewarding, where people have a passion for CCAB and where people enjoy their job (albeit with a high degree of challenge).
• Manage all team members, planning their career development, identifying training needs, supporting them with their own line management responsibilities, and conducting performance reviews.

Skills & Work Experience:

• Public speaking
• Project Management
• Business Development
• People Management
• Ability to work with data to develop narratives.

This is a full-time remote/hybrid position with hours from 9 am - 5:
00 pm, Monday through Friday. Those qualified are asked to submit a cover letter with a resume, outlining experience and suitability for the position to ***. We encourage applications from qualified First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people.

Information regarding CCAB is available at ***. We thank all applicants in advance; however, only those invited to be interviewed will be contacted. Please no telephone calls.