The OpportunityArizona State University seeks an accomplished, entrepreneurial, and collaborative leader to serve as Associate Vice President of the Academic Enterprise and Executive Director, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (HIDA) and ASU in Los Angeles. The role is part of a broader effort to expand ASU's reach, partnerships, and impact in California, with HIDA positioned to play a leading role through Los Angeles' creative industries.
Based in Los Angeles and working across Arizona State University's campuses, the Associate Vice President and Executive Director (AVP/ED) will lead the growth of the Herberger Institute's presence in one of the world's most important centers for design, fashion, film, gaming, architecture, media, entertainment, music, performance, and creative technology. The AVP/ED will provide the senior, on-the-ground leadership needed to bring greater coherence to HIDA's Los Angeles activity, aligning people, programs, resources, and external relationships around shared priorities and moving initiatives from idea to execution. The AVP/ED will build the partnerships, industry connections, community relationships, and organizational capacity needed to position HIDA, and through it ASU, as an increasingly consequential educational, creative, civic, and industry partner in Los Angeles and Southern California.
The AVP/ED will initially focus on strengthening HIDA's Los Angeles platform, with particular attention to fashion, game, and film. Building on strategies and relationships the Los Angeles team has already developed, the role will align academic, enrollment, marketing, career, student-experience, industry, and community efforts around a clear growth strategy and measurable priorities.
Drawing on ASU FIDM's established presence, museum, and industry relationships, responsible fashion provides an immediate platform for connecting creative disciplines with ASU's broader capabilities in sustainability, technology, business, engineering, materials, and entrepreneurship, at a moment when new California textile regulations are reshaping the industry. Game and Film provide additional avenues for deepening HIDA's engagement with Los Angeles' entertainment, media, gaming, and technology industries, and for reaching the many Los Angeles students who want a creative education but cannot access the region's most selective and expensive programs.
In its first 12 to 18 months, the role will focus on HIDA. Over time, the AVP/ED will build an integrated HIDA Los Angeles ecosystem that connects students and faculty with industry, expands ASU's reach, strengthens experiential learning and career pathways, advances research and creative practice, and attracts corporate and philanthropic investment. Los Angeles will serve not simply as a location for HIDA programs, but as a platform for developing new models of industry collaboration and interdisciplinary innovation that can benefit the Institute and Arizona State University more broadly. As this foundation is established, and as additional ASU colleges launch programs in California, the AVP/ED will increasingly serve as a strategic connector for other ASU colleges and initiatives expanding in Los Angeles, helping ensure that new activity aligns with a broader ASU-in-Los Angeles strategy while individual colleges retain responsibility for their academic programs and execution. This work is already underway, and HIDA's success in Los Angeles is the foundation for it.
The AVP/ED will report to the Senior Vice Provost and Dean of HIDA, with a dotted-line relationship and regular one-on-one meetings with ASU's Executive Vice President and University Provost. The AVP/ED will serve as a member of the Herberger Institute's leadership team and work closely with the Associate Dean for HIDA Operations in Los Angeles, school directors, faculty, central enrollment and brand leaders, university leadership, and external partners working to advance ASU in Los Angeles. The successful candidate will be an entrepreneurial leader who sees potential, brings people and ideas together, builds durable partnerships, and translates ambitious ideas into measurable outcomes for students, the Institute, and the communities it serves. They will be energized by the opportunity to build something significant and enduring in Los Angeles, helping shape a platform that can grow in reach, relevance, and impact for years to come. This is a role for a leader with a clear point of view about Los Angeles, who combines strategic judgment with a strong orientation toward action, moves with urgency, and keeps initiatives moving forward in a complex environment.
Essential DutiesLead HIDA's Los Angeles Strategy- With HIDA's Senior Vice Provost and Dean, and building on strategy work already underway in Los Angeles, set and execute HIDA's strategy for Los Angeles, establishing clear priorities, goals, ownership, and measures of success.
- With ASU's Executive Vice President and University Provost, coordinate across central and HIDA leadership to advance shared priorities and key performance indicators for HIDA in Los Angeles.
- Create greater connectivity across HIDA's Los Angeles schools, programs, and initiatives, identifying opportunities for them to collaborate, share resources and relationships, leverage one another's strengths, and connect with relevant capabilities across ASU.
- Identify and prioritize opportunities for programmatic growth and differentiation that strengthen HIDA's reach and contribute to sustained student enrollment growth and impact in Southern California.
- Serve on the Dean's leadership team and represent HIDA across Southern California, advancing the Institute's interests within ASU's broader California strategy.
- In partnership with ASU's brand and media relations teams, articulate and consistently communicate why ASU is in Los Angeles and what it offers Angelenos, so that HIDA's schools, programs, and partners share one story tailored to the Los Angeles market.
Lead Operations and Alignment in Los Angeles- Serve as HIDA's senior leader on the ground in Los Angeles, bringing structure, focus, and direction to a complex environment and aligning faculty, staff, school directors, central university partners, and external stakeholders around shared priorities.
- Establish clear ownership, operating rhythms, decision-making processes, and accountability, with the authority to resolve cross-functional issues in Los Angeles, move initiatives from idea to execution, and ensure commitments translate into results.
- Serve as the connective point among HIDA's Los Angeles teams, HIDA and university leadership in Arizona, and central ASU functions, ensuring information flows both ways and efforts move forward in a coordinated way.
- Mobilize and leverage existing talent, expertise, and resources across HIDA and ASU, clarifying ownership and engaging the right people and teams to move priorities forward, while respecting school leaders' ownership of their programs.
Expand Student, Faculty, Industry, and Community Engagement- Build Los Angeles-based career pathways for HIDA students, including employer relationships, internships, and experiential learning that connect students to jobs in the region's creative industries.
- Create stronger pathways for faculty to engage with industry through research, creative practice, partnerships, and applied projects.
- Identify emerging workforce and professional-learning needs and connect them with HIDA schools and partnerships like LACMA and JACCC.
- Build durable partnerships with cultural institutions, libraries, media organizations, community-based organizations, and neighborhoods across Los Angeles, starting from what ASU can contribute to the city.
- Position ASU's Los Angeles buildings, including the ASU FIDM Museum, as public-facing venues for programming that draws the community in, and use major regional moments, including the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games, as platforms for engagement.
Leverage ASU's Scale and Capabilities- Identify areas where ASU's scale, interdisciplinary capacity, and ability to innovate can create distinctive value in Los Angeles.
- Connect HIDA's Los Angeles priorities with ASU expertise in technology, sustainability, engineering, business, law, entrepreneurship, materials science, and other areas.
- Use fashion, film, and game as initial platforms for demonstrating how HIDA and ASU capabilities can combine to address emerging industry needs and challenges.
- Partner closely with ASU's central enrollment and brand marketing teams, and with HIDA marketing, to translate university-wide enrollment and brand strategies into coordinated local execution, strengthen ASU's visibility, and create the conditions for enrollment growth in California.
Build Long-Term Capacity and Investment- In partnership with ASU's fundraising and ASU Foundation teams, cultivate corporate, philanthropic, foundation, and sponsored investment to support HIDA's Los Angeles priorities, sequencing requests to follow visible, sustained commitment to the region.
- Build the relationships, resources, and external support required to sustain and scale successful initiatives.
- Develop scalable models for partnerships, industry engagement, and external investment that can be applied across HIDA and, where relevant, ASU.
What Success Looks Like in the First 12 to 18 Months- A shared HIDA Los Angeles strategy, with clear priorities and owners, that school leaders, central partners, the Dean, and the Provost can each describe the same way.
- A consistent, compelling answer to why ASU is in Los Angeles, used across schools, events, and partnerships.
- Formal, regular mechanisms for HIDA's Los Angeles schools to plan and execute together, replacing last-minute, ad hoc coordination.
- Visible progress on the drivers of enrollment, including career pathways, community college and K-12 recruitment partnerships, and a growing portfolio of community, cultural, and industry partners that benefit multiple schools.
Minimum QualificationsBachelor's degree and ten (10) years of progressively responsible experience appropriate to the area of assignment/field, including five (5) years of senior-level leadership experience; OR, any equivalent combination of experience and/or training from which comparable knowledge, skills and abilities have been achieved.
Desired Qualifications- Deep knowledge of Los Angeles and Southern California, including its creative industries, cultural institutions, communities, civic and political landscape, funding ecosystem, and networks. Established relationships and credibility in the region are strongly preferred. Strong operational leadership in complex, decentralized, or matrixed environments, including bringing structure, direction, and accountability to work involving many stakeholders and competing priorities.
- Proven ability to build creative, long-term partnerships with corporate, philanthropic, cultural, media, civic, community, and industry organizations that go beyond transactional deals and become embedded in how an organization operates.
- Ability to assess opportunities quickly, focus on the highest-value priorities, move with urgency, make sound decisions with imperfect information, learn from what works and what does not, and adapt without losing momentum.
- Executive-level leadership experience in higher education, creative industries, arts and design, business, civic or nonprofit organizations, or another comparably complex and stakeholder-rich environment. An advanced degree is welcome but not required.
- Ability to understand and adapt to the distinct culture of a market or community while connecting local priorities to the expectations and capabilities of a larger institution.
- Track record of developing and implementing strategies that advance institutional growth, external engagement, enrollment, revenue, and/or new program opportunities.
- Experience working directly with presidents, deans, executive leadership, faculty, and other senior stakeholders to advance institutional priorities.
- Ability to lead complex, cross-functional initiatives through influence, build sufficient alignment, make decisions without requiring unanimous consensus, and move work forward across multiple organizational units.
- Experience leading and developing multidisciplinary teams and fostering collaborative, high-performing cultures, with the ability to balance autonomy with shared accountability.
- Exceptional communication, relationship-building, negotiation, and executive-presentation skills, with a clear point of view and the ability to serve as a credible public voice and convener for ASU in Los Angeles.
- Maturity, political savvy, sophistication, and executive presence, with the ability to earn trust across different constituencies and operate effectively with senior university and external leaders.
Compensation and BenefitsThe anticipated salary range for this position is $180,000 to $250,000. Final compensation will reflect the selected candidate's experience and qualifications. Exceptional candidates whose experience warrants compensation above this range are encouraged to apply. ASU offers a comprehensive benefits package.
