VP Marketing

Paradigm Publishing Services is the publishing services division of De Gruyter Brill, a leading publisher in the humanities and beyond with a heritage going back to 1683. Paradigm focuses on supporting smaller publishers, societies, and university presses to ensure their digital visibility, financial sustainability, independence, and success.For more information, visit paradigmpublishingservices.com

- Build the Go-to-Market Strategy & Operating Model
• Establish a scalable GTM framework that connects business strategy, customer needs, product/service priorities, marketing, sales, and execution.
• Define GTM principles, processes, governance, decision rights, operating rhythms, and performance measures.
• Translate corporate and portfolio strategies into clear GTM priorities, audiences, value propositions, commercial motions, and execution plans.
• Establish a common GTM language and methodology across functions and business units.
• Create repeatable approaches that can be applied across publishing products, digital platforms, information services, and emerging offerings.

- Drive Commercial Alignment & Strategic Change
• Serve as a strategic connector across Marketing, Sales/Commercial, Product/Service, Editorial/Publishing, Customer Success, Operations, Technology, and executive leadership.
• Identify gaps, dependencies, and disconnects across the customer journey and commercial funnel.
• Establish clear ownership, accountability, decision-making, and cross-functional ways of working without requiring unnecessary organizational restructuring.
• Ensure Marketing and GTM activity is connected to measurable business outcomes—including pipeline, revenue, adoption, retention, expansion, and customer value.
• Challenge established ways of working constructively and bring an objective, outside-in perspective to organizational and commercial challenges.
• Work effectively with senior leaders while maintaining strong relationships with functional teams responsible for execution.
• Translate complex strategic problems into practical frameworks, priorities, and actions.
• Lead through influence, creating alignment across teams that may not have previously operated as a coordinated GTM organization.
• Balance strategic thinking with hands-on execution and a bias toward measurable progress.

- Lead GTM Strategy & Execution for Priority Initiatives
• Develop integrated GTM strategies for major products, services, collections, platforms, launches, relaunches, and strategic growth opportunities.
• Define target audiences, customer segments, buying groups, customer needs, positioning, value propositions, competitive differentiation, and desired customer actions.
• Translate strategy into coordinated Product, Sales, Marketing, Communications, Digital, and Customer-facing workstreams.
• Establish launch readiness, milestones, dependencies, KPIs, and post-launch optimization processes.
• Ensure launch is treated as the beginning of commercialization—not the end—using customer feedback and performance data to continuously improve adoption and growth.

- Build & Modernize GTM and Marketing Capabilities
• Assess current GTM and marketing capabilities using structured maturity models and identify the highest-priority gaps and opportunities.
• Develop practical capability roadmaps across areas such as:
○ GTM strategy and governance
○ Customer and market intelligence
○ Product/service commercialization
○ Marketing and communications
○ Sales and commercial enablement
○ Demand generation, lifecycle, and digital marketing
○ Measurement and optimization
• Develop the frameworks, playbooks, templates, training, and tools needed to enable teams to execute consistently.
• Build organizational capability rather than creating dependency on a single individual or function.
• Help evolve Marketing from primarily an activity- and channel-oriented function toward a customer- and commercially oriented growth function.
• Connect brand, demand generation, content, digital experience, lifecycle marketing, and communications to broader GTM priorities.
• Establish stronger connections between awareness and engagement metrics and downstream commercial outcomes.
• Identify opportunities to improve customer journeys, conversion paths, lead generation, nurture, digital engagement, and measurement.

- Enable AI-Ready GTM
• Assess how AI is changing customer discovery, content consumption, product/service expectations, competitive dynamics, and commercial models.
• Identify opportunities to apply AI to GTM strategy, customer intelligence, marketing, sales enablement, content, personalization, and operational execution.
• Establish practical frameworks for evaluating, piloting, measuring, and scaling AI-enabled GTM opportunities.
• Help leadership distinguish between experimentation that creates meaningful business value and activity that simply follows the AI trend.
• Embed responsible, measurable AI adoption into the organization's evolving GTM operating model.

- Establish Measurement, Governance & Continuous Improvement
• Define GTM KPIs and executive dashboards that connect activity to customer and commercial outcomes.
• Establish regular performance reviews and optimization processes.
• Create mechanisms to identify what is working, what is not, and where resources should be redirected.
• Bring data, customer insight, market intelligence, and frontline feedback into ongoing GTM decision-making.
• Provide executive leadership with clear visibility into GTM priorities, progress, risks, dependencies, and opportunities.

- What Success Looks Like
• A defined GTM operating model that establishes common processes, ownership, governance, decision rights, and ways of working—creating a shared GTM language and a coordinated approach across functions and business units.
• Stronger commercial alignment and execution across Marketing, Sales, Product/Service, Editorial/Publishing, Customer-facing teams, and leadership, with strategic priorities translated into integrated cross-functional plans rather than disconnected functional activities.
• Clearer and more repeatable commercialization across products, services, collections, platforms, and new business opportunities, with defined target audiences, customer-focused positioning, value propositions, commercial priorities, GTM motions, launch processes, and post-launch optimization.
• Improved marketing and GTM effectiveness, with Marketing evolving toward a more customer- and commercially oriented growth function and greater emphasis on customer engagement, demand generation, conversion, pipeline, adoption, retention, expansion, and customer value.
• Measurable growth in organizational capability and maturity, demonstrated through structured capability assessments, prioritized roadmaps, practical playbooks and enablement, stronger sales/commercial support, and sustained adoption of new ways of working.
• A more disciplined, AI-ready approach to GTM, moving from isolated experimentation toward prioritized, measurable, and scalable applications of AI across customer intelligence, marketing, sales enablement, content, personalization, and operational execution.
• Stronger executive visibility and continuous improvement, with clear GTM KPIs and dashboards connecting activity to business outcomes and leadership able to understand priorities, progress, risks, investment, and opportunities—ultimately making GTM an organizational capability rather than an informal collection of activities owned by individual functions.

- Required Qualifications
• 12+ years of progressive experience in go-to-market strategy, commercialization, marketing strategy, business transformation, revenue strategy, or related disciplines, with a demonstrated record of translating strategy into measurable business outcomes.
• Proven experience building and implementing GTM strategies and operating models that connect business strategy, customer needs, Product/Service, Marketing, Sales/Commercial, and customer-facing functions around shared priorities, value propositions, commercial motions, and execution.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex, cross-functional transformation, including assessing capabilities, identifying gaps, establishing governance and ways of working, and developing practical roadmaps, playbooks, and enablement that improve organizational performance.
• Exceptional strategic, analytical, and communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex problems, challenge conventional thinking constructively, influence senior leadership without relying solely on formal authority, and build alignment across diverse stakeholders.
• Pragmatic, action-oriented leadership style with a strong bias toward measurable progress and demonstrated success navigating business, market, technology, or operating-model change while building durable organizational capability.
Preferred Qualifications
• Relevant industry experience in academic, scholarly, professional, educational, information, technology, publishing, SaaS, or other knowledge-based services, particularly in organizations navigating changing customer expectations, technologies, and business models.
• Experience leading GTM transformation in complex global organizations, including across multiple portfolios, business units, geographic markets, cultures, and distributed teams, with a track record of building alignment and driving change through influence.
• Experience commercializing digital and knowledge-based offerings—including platforms, subscriptions, collections, data products, information services, or other products and services—with strategies spanning customer acquisition, expansion, demand generation, commercial enablement, and lifecycle engagement.
• Experience applying AI to GTM, marketing, commercialization, or business operations, including governance, experimentation, prioritization, adoption, and the development of practical approaches for scaling AI-enabled opportunities.
• Experience establishing executive-level performance management and organizational capability, including KPI frameworks, dashboards, operating cadences, playbooks, and cross-functional ways of working that connect GTM activity to measurable business performance

- An exciting professional challenge for one of the innovation drivers of the publishing industry

- Family-friendly working time models, flexitime, and flexible home office arrangements to support a healthy work-life balance, alongside a substantial vacation allowance and additional special leave days

- Extensive benefits and allowances for a healthy, balanced life

- Development budget and opportunities for training and personal development

- Passionate colleagues in diverse, international teams; joint team events and company parties
Salary: $140,000 - $170,000

At De Gruyter Brill, we are dedicated to diversity, equal opportunity, and building an inclusive culture where everyone belongs. We believe in individual potential, so please apply even if you don’t meet every requirement—passion and a willingness to learn matter as much as qualifications. We look forward to hearing from you!

Contact

Vontavia Smith
People + Culture
857-303-0165