Group Transformation – AI Programme & Adoption Manager

Group Transformation – AI Programme & Adoption Manager

Location: London, minimum 4 days per week onsite across Herne Hill and Carter Lane, with travel to other Group offices as required
Salary: Competitive, dependent on experience plus company benefits
Contract: 18-month fixed-term transformation contract, with potential to extend

At Mark Allen, we create specialist content, events, data and insight for professional communities across sectors that matter.

As AI Programme & Adoption Manager , you will be part of our four-person AI Implementation Pod, a multidisciplinary, agile team at the centre of Mark Allen Group, supporting our wider Group transformation programme.

You will run the delivery engine of the programme, maintaining the integrated delivery roadmap, project plans, dependencies, resource coordination, reporting and adoption plans that keep a complex portfolio of work coordinated, on track and measurable.

Reporting to the AI Strategic Implementation Lead , who is accountable for programme direction, priorities and outcomes, you will work alongside an AI Technical Implementation Lead and Transformation Fellow to connect business needs, technical delivery and sustained adoption.

Working closely with managing directors, functional leaders, our development and data teams and colleagues across the wider business, you will combine strong programme-management discipline with a significant people and change remit. You will help ensure transformation translates into sustained adoption rather than isolated pilots, coordinating learning and training, supporting teams through changing ways of working and building an active AI Ambassador community across the Group.

This is an opportunity to work at the centre of a Group-wide transformation, bringing structure and momentum to a fast-moving programme while helping colleagues build the confidence and capability to embrace new technologies and more effective ways of working.

What you’ll be doing

Keep the Group transformation programme moving

- Maintain the integrated roadmap for Group transformation delivery, translating agreed strategic priorities into clear project plans, milestones, and delivery schedules across the programme.
- Manage milestones, workstreams, interdependencies and sequencing, ensuring agreed priorities, responsibilities and delivery progress remain visible across the programme.
- Coordinate internal and external resources and maintain visibility of programme resource requirements.
- Track actions, risks, issues and decisions, identifying delivery bottlenecks and escalating appropriately.
- Coordinate activity with external consultants, partners and suppliers, ensuring their work is aligned with programme priorities, delivery plans and timelines.
- Maintain clear programme documentation and governance.
- Prepare concise programme reporting for the AI Strategic Implementation Lead, Group COO and ExCo.

Coordinate resources, priorities and dependencies

- Coordinate delivery capacity across the AI Implementation Pod and wider teams.
- Track dependencies on Development, Data, HR and other functions.
- Ensure activities are appropriately sequenced and properly resourced.
- Identify competing demands and resource constraints, providing clear options and recommendations to support prioritisation decisions by the AI Strategic Implementation Lead.

Turn implementation into sustained adoption

- Develop and manage adoption plans across different disciplines.
- Work with the Talent Director and HR to embed AI capability into People First and wider development pathways.
- Coordinate foundational and discipline-specific training, ensuring learning focuses on solving real business problems rather than simply teaching tools.
- Support teams and managers through workflow and behavioural change.
- Identify barriers to adoption and ensure these inform programme priorities.

Build and activate our AI Ambassador network

- Recruit and actively community-manage the Group AI Ambassador network.
- Provide Ambassadors with additional training, resources and visibility of the wider programme.
- Create regular forums for colleagues to share learning, practical examples, concerns and ideas.
- Use the Ambassador network as a two-way connection between the central AI team and colleagues across the Group.

Measure whether the programme is creating value

- Work with the AI Strategic Implementation Lead to establish programme KPIs and meaningful baseline measures, maintaining the reporting needed to track progress, adoption and realised benefits.
- Track and report the equivalent value generated by the programme.
- Distinguish between hard realised financial value, validated capacity value, structural value, commercial pipeline and risk reduction.
- Monitor adoption, usage, productivity and realised benefits.
- Ensure claimed benefits are evidenced and appropriately quantified.

Capture and share what works

- Ensure lessons from pilots and discipline-level transformation work are captured and shared.
- Work with the AI Transformation Fellow to maintain internal resources, case studies and guidance.
- Help create a culture in which practical AI learning is shared across organisational boundaries.

What you will be here to achieve

Over the first 18 months, your focus will be to:

- Establish a disciplined but lightweight programme-management structure.
- Maintain momentum and accountability across all major workstreams.
- Create clear visibility of priorities, dependencies and resourcing.
- Build and activate the AI Ambassador network.
- Launch and embed the Group AI learning programme.
- Establish meaningful reporting of adoption, implementation progress and equivalent value.
- Ensure pilots translate into sustained ways of working.
- Help build consistent AI capability across the organisation.

Success means the programme has pace, discipline, visibility and adoption . People across Mark Allen should know what is happening, who owns it, what the dependencies are, what value the programme is generating and how they can participate.

Must-haves:

- Strong programme or project-management experience.
- Experience managing complex, cross-functional transformation programmes.
- Excellent planning, coordination and organisational skills.
- Confidence managing multiple stakeholders, workstreams and dependencies.
- Experience supporting adoption, behavioural change or capability-building.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Good analytical and numerical capability.
- Experience tracking benefits, KPIs or commercial outcomes.
- The ability to bring structure and momentum to ambiguous situations.
- Curiosity about AI and emerging technology.
- A proactive and collaborative working style.

Nice-to-haves:

- A recognised project or programme-management qualification such as PRINCE2, AgilePM, APM, PMP or equivalent , or equivalent experience gained within a management consultancy, transformation office or complex cross-functional change environment.

If you do not meet every requirement but bring transferable skills, sound judgement and fresh thinking, we encourage you to apply.

Why join Mark Allen Group?

Mark Allen is a specialist media business with more than 40 years of experience building trusted brands for professional audiences. You will join us at an important point in our wider Group transformation, helping turn opportunities in AI, automation and improved ways of working into practical, lasting change across the business.

What makes this role particularly interesting is the combination of programme delivery and people change . You will not simply maintain plans and report progress. You will help coordinate the work, identify and address barriers to delivery, measure whether it is creating value and help turn new approaches into sustained ways of working across the organisation.

You will work closely with the AI Strategic Implementation Lead, Group COO and colleagues across the business, alongside the AI Implementation Pod and specialist external partners.

We offer:

- A central role in a Group-wide AI transformation programme.
- Exposure to senior leaders and teams across the organisation.
- The opportunity to combine programme management with adoption, learning and organisational change.
- Company benefits .
- Exposure to specialist markets and loyal professional audiences.
- A culture shaped by our values - Passionate, Creative, Nurturing and Fair .

How to apply

Apply through our careers site with your CV, including a cover letter sharing what attracted you to the role and what you would bring to it.

A video introduction is completely optional and will not disadvantage your application.

Right to work: Applicants must have the legal right to live and work in the UK . Unfortunately, we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role.

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