Sr. Director Brand, Identity, & Look

Are you mission-driven and passionate about helping others succeed? Do you strive to lead, follow, and act with integrity? Are you the one who honors your commitments? Is building trusting relationships an integral part of why you do what you do? Do you push limits and challenge the status quo? If you answered YES, keep reading to discover how you can significantly contribute to Team USA's success!

Here's a summary of responsibilities:

The Senior Director, Brand, Identity, & Look leads the strategic development, governance, stewardship, and evolution of the Team USA visual identity system. This role is responsible for establishing and maintaining design principles, standards, and frameworks that ensure a consistent, compelling, and on-brand presence across all touchpoints. As the organization's brand design lead, this position balances creative excellence with operational discipline and partners across teams and stakeholders to apply the brand with rigor while continuously advancing the identity system to reflect the impact and legacy of Team USA.

Here's how you'll have an impact:

Visual Identity System Ownership

Serve as the primary steward of the Team USA visual identity, ensuring its consistent application, interpretation, and ongoing evolution across all brand touchpoints.

Lead the ongoing development and refinement of Team USA's visual identity system, including logo architecture, color, typography, iconography, motion, photography, and design language.

Oversee integration of the LA28 Games visual identity into the TUSA system, ensuring a coherent and distinctive brand expression across co-branded contexts.

Anticipate future needs of the brand – new platforms, formats, partnerships, and audience contexts – and proactively extend the visual system to meet these needs.

Commission and manage original brand design work, partnering with internal designers and external creative studios to produce best-in-class brand expressions.

Brand Standards & Guidelines

Develop, maintain, and continuously improve the TUSA Brand Standards, which serve as a living system that is clear enough to create consistency and flexible enough to enable great creative work.

Build guidelines that span every surface: digital and social, broadcast, environmental, merchandise, events, and partner co-branding contexts.

Ensure guidelines are practical, accessible, and written for real users, including designers, marketers, agency partners, stakeholders, sponsors, and licensees who interact with the brand daily.

Establish a regular cadence for reviewing and updating standards as the brand, platforms, and organizational needs evolve.

Brand Governance & Process

Design and operate the brand governance framework for TUSA, defining clear decision rights, approval processes, and escalation paths for brand-related work.

Build scalable review and approval workflows that enable speed without sacrificing brand integrity.

Create tiered processes for routine vs. high-stakes brand decisions.

Establish and manage a brand asset library: organized, accessible, and version-controlled for all internal and authorized external users.

Track, audit, and report on brand compliance across internal teams and external partners.

Identify patterns and proactively address recurring issues.

Partner with Legal and Licensing teams to ensure brand governance aligns with intellectual property protection requirements and commercial partner agreements.

Internal & External Brand Consulting

Protect brand integrity with conviction while making space for great creative work to flourish within the system.

Connect and align the full visual identity ecosystem, including how elements relate, where the system may need extension, and where tension may signal an opportunity to evolve.

Evaluate creative work with authority and nuance.

Articulate design decisions in terms that resonate with both creative and commercial audiences.

Approach governance as an enabling function, building processes that make it easier to do the right thing than the wrong thing.

Earn trust and drive alignment across functions.

Bring people along through expertise and transparency.

Remain current on market design trends, cultural shifts, and audience behaviors across the industry, while applying strong design principles to inform brand decisions and evolution.

Translate brand complexity into language that non-designers understand and find motivating, serving as a natural educator and brand ambassador.

Act as the primary brand consultant and creative advisor for internal teams across Marketing, Commercial, Communications, Athlete Programs, and Digital functions, helping each function express the brand authentically within their context.

Serve as a strategic brand partner to the Commercial team, helping translate brand assets and standards into materials that support sponsorship sales, partner onboarding, and licensing programs.

Lead brand orientation and education programs that build brand literacy across the organization, from new employee onboarding to partner briefings.

Engage external partners (agencies, sponsors, licensees, and vendors) with clarity, expertise, and a collaborative spirit.

Model the brand culture we want to see reflected back from our external partners.

Represent TUSA's brand standards in partnership negotiations, co-branding discussions, and joint marketing planning sessions.

Team & Creative Culture

Build and lead a high-impact brand management team.

Attract, develop, and retain practitioners who combine design rigor with strategic thinking.

Provide mentorship, coaching, and growth opportunities for team members across technical and operational disciplines.

Foster a creative culture that values accountability, curiosity, collaboration, and continuous improvement, while promoting excellence in craft and attracting top talent to the brand.

Manage relationships with preferred creative agencies and design studios.

Set expectations, provide clear briefs, and create the conditions for their best work.

Model an exploratory, creative mindset to the team and across the organization.

Demonstrate conviction to brand principles while remaining open to new ideas, formats, and expressions.

Perform other duties as assigned.

Here are the skills and experience you'll need to be effective:

Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Communications, or related field

Advanced degree preferred

12+ years of brand management, brand design, or visual identity experience, with at least 3 years in a senior leadership role

Deep, demonstrable expertise in visual identity systems at an institutional or enterprise-wide scale, including their design, documentation, and governance

Experience providing consultation to internal teams and external partners on brand application

Experience managing agency and creative studio relationships, including briefing, feedback, and quality control

Experience in sports, entertainment, media, or purpose-driven organizations with complex brand architectures and diverse stakeholder ecosystems

Familiarity with brand licensing, co-branding, and the commercial contexts in which brand standards are tested most rigorously

Experience evolving or relaunching a major brand identity preferred

Experience building brand education programs or brand literacy initiatives within a large organization preferred

Proven ability to develop brand standards and guidelines that are both rigorous and usable

Skill in making complex design systems accessible to non-designers

Track record of building and operating brand governance frameworks across large, multi-stakeholder organizations

Strong design sensibility and visual literacy, with the ability to evaluate creative work, give incisive direction, and communicate clearly about design decisions

Comfort with transition, ambiguity, and the creative tension of building something new from something established

Comfortable with navigating competing requests and able to hold the brand standard with grace

Working knowledge of design tools (Adobe Creative Suite, Figma) preferred, with the ability to evaluate and communicate about creative work effectively

Ability to earn trust and drive alignment across functions without formal authority

Curious and open while remaining anchored in principle

Strategic thinker with strong operational execution

Strong executive presence and cross-functional leadership skills

Passion for sports and the Olympic & Paralympic movements

Here are the tools, equipment, & conditions:

Standard office equipment

Some domestic and international travel

Non-traditional hours on occasion, including nights and weekends

Regular attendance at work is an essential job function

Here's where you'll work:

Remote

Here's some more information you need to know:

Hiring pay range $200,000 - $220,000 per year. This Full-Time, Exempt position is intended to work 40 hours per week.

Bonus: This position will be eligible for the Annual Incentive Award Program, which has a 20% target. The USOPC may change or eliminate this program at any time at its sole discretion.

Benefits: This position will be eligible for USOPC benefits. You can view a summary here.

This job posting will close 12:00pm MT on 6/14/2026