Manager, Activations - Fandango (People Leader)

VERSANT (Nasdaq: VSNT) is an industry-changing media and entertainment business and home to trusted brands that shape culture, inform audiences, and build lasting connections. It operates across four core markets: political news and opinion, business news and personal finance, golf, and sports and genre entertainment. These markets are served through a powerful portfolio of iconic and innovative brands, including CNBC, MS NOW, USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Versant's sports division USA Sports, along with complementary digital assets including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and GolfPass.

VERSANT is seeking an Activations Manager to lead the Fandango1 Activation team and own the full activation lifecycle, from capacity planning and pre-sale consultation through implementation, go-live, stabilization, and handoff to Support.

This role operates in a high-growth, high-complexity environment supporting larger, multi-location partner launches and an expanding activation pipeline. As Fandango1 continues to scale, this leader will be responsible not only for managing day-to-day activation delivery, but also for building the processes, standards, workflows, and team capabilities needed to support long-term growth.

The Activations Manager will partner closely with Sales, Customer Experience, Product, Technology, Customer Success, Support, Creative, Sales Operations, and Account Management to ensure commitments made during the sales process translate into successful implementations and strong partner outcomes. This leader will also serve as a senior escalation point for complex activations and help represent the voice of the partner in product and operational decisions.

Why This Role Matters: This leader will help shape how Fandango1 Activation operates as the product and partner base continue to grow. The role requires an experienced people leader who can manage increasing activation volume and complexity while simultaneously building a more scalable operating model. Success will mean anticipating demand, strengthening Sales-to-Activation handoffs, improving launch readiness, developing Activation Specialists, reducing manual work, and creating a consistent partner experience from initial planning through ongoing support.

What You'll Do

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Activation Specialists, including workload management, performance feedback, career development, and day-to-day support, while building deeper Fandango1 and Indy expertise across the team.
• Own the activation pipeline and capacity strategy by reviewing the Sales pipeline, forecasting upcoming circuit and cinema demand, balancing assignments based on specialist capacity and expertise, and identifying staffing or scheduling constraints before they impact launches.
• Partner with Sales before the sale on complex opportunities, advising on implementation requirements, timing, dependencies, risks, and resource needs to ensure commitments can be operationally supported.
• Lead the Sales-to-Activation handoff and activation lifecycle from planning through post-launch stabilization, including confirming scope, products, locations, integrations, timelines, ownership, launch sequencing, readiness, and structured transition to Support.
• Provide direct oversight for complex, strategic, multi-location, or high-profile partner activations and serve as the senior escalation point for implementation blockers and client concerns, coordinating Product, Technology, Sales, Support, and other stakeholders through resolution.
• Build and scale Activation processes, including implementation standards, readiness criteria, playbooks, documentation, partner communications, training resources, performance reporting, automation, and AI-enabled efficiencies that improve consistency, visibility, team capacity, and onboarding timelines.

What We’re Looking For

• Bachelor’s degree and/or equivalent experience, plus 5+ years of people leadership experience, with a proven track record leading complex or enterprise implementations, scaling teams and processes, and managing strategic clients and senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to coach and develop employees, manage performance and workload, and build an inclusive, high-performing team.
• Proven experience leading through growth and complexity, including evolving workflows and implementation programs as business demand increases.
• Strong project and operational management skills, with the ability to forecast capacity, manage multiple concurrent implementations, balance competing priorities, identify dependencies and risks, and drive work through completion.
• Strong cross-functional leadership skills and demonstrated ability to partner with Sales, Product, Technology, Support, Customer Success, Creative, and other teams to solve complex problems and improve the end-to-end partner experience.
• Strong analytical, planning, organizational, and problem-solving skills, with sound judgment in managing escalations, ambiguity, and evolving business needs.
• Experience building scalable processes, playbooks, documentation, and operating standards, with an interest in using automation and AI to improve efficiency, visibility, and team capacity.
• Ability to translate recurring partner feedback, implementation challenges, and training needs into actionable product, process, and adoption improvements.
• A commitment to Versant’s How We Do It behaviors: Trust, building credibility with partners and colleagues through sound judgment and follow-through; Teamwork, connecting teams and driving shared accountability across functions; Transparency, communicating risks, priorities, and decisions clearly; Agility, adapting quickly as partner needs and business priorities evolve; and Entrepreneurial Spirit, identifying gaps, building solutions, and continuously improving how Activation operates.
• Ability to travel as needed.

Bonus points for:

• Experience in a SaaS or technology-enabled platform environment.
• Experience leading enterprise, multi-location, or technically complex client implementations.
• Familiarity with cinema, entertainment, ticketing, or related digital platforms.
• Experience implementing automation, AI, or workflow tools to increase operational efficiency and scalability.

Why You’ll Love It Here

This is an opportunity to lead a critical function at an important stage of Fandango1’s growth. You’ll have the ability to shape how Activation scales, strengthen the experience for partners and internal teams, develop a growing team, and work across the organization to turn recurring challenges into lasting operational and product improvements.

This position has been designated as hybrid, generally contributing from our Orlando, FL office a minimum of three days per week.

This role may require evening, weekend, or holiday work during critical projects and may include on-call support during major implementations.

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT Media's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to [email protected].

VERSANT Media is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We include a good faith pay range for each position to comply with applicable state and local pay transparency laws and to promote equity across our organization. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, experience, and location and may include additional forms of compensation and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, etc.

VERSANT Media is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at VERSANT via-email, the Internet, or in any form and/or method without a valid written Statement of Work in place for this position from VERSANT's Talent Acquisition team will be deemed the sole property of VERSANT. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by VERSANT as a result of the referral or through other means.