Senior Manager Public Affairs, Head of Brussels

Role Description:
**About Us**

**Role description**

In an increasingly complex and broad regulatory landscape, and with the new institutional mandate just starting, we are looking for an experienced public affairs leader with a genuine interest in travel, tech and the platform economy to help us level-up our presence in Brussels.

This is a great opportunity for a strategic self-starter and hands-on team player wanting to make a real impact as part of a small, global team.

**Key Job Responsibilities & Duties**:

- Represent the company’s interests by engaging with relevant political and regulatory audiences at all levels
- Ensure continuous monitoring and evaluation of relevant legislative discussions, regulatory developments and stakeholder activity on key public affairs / reputational issues and assess their impact on our business
- Draft annual strategies, engagement plans, position papers, consultation responses, presentations and briefings for internal and external meetings, and organize campaigns and events to advance those messages
- Proactively coordinate and communicate internally to align messaging and provide colleagues with a thorough understanding of developments
- Facilitate high-level meetings with key stakeholders to promote and advocate the company’s public policy priorities and brief, prep and advice leadership for these meetings
- Work with relevant external partners such as agencies, trade associations, think thanks and other relevant organizations in the travel and tech ecosystem

**Role Qualifications and Requirements**:

- Masters degree in policy, European Studies, international affairs, or other relevant field
- A proven track record of 10+ years of relevant experience in the EU, ideally in one of the EU institutions combined with inhouse or consultancy experience in the area of public affairs
- Experience with managing a team
- Deep understanding of policy and legal challenges facing the tourism and tech industry and affinity with the travel and platform industry
- Excellent oral communications skills and ability to distill complex information into clear messages that will resonate with political and regulatory audiences, as well as into succinct updates for the business teams
- High quality written skills and practical experience in drafting materials for use by regulators, senior executives or politicians
- Experience developing creative and effective public affairs campaigns that underpin the company’s business objectives
- Outstanding organizational abilities, in particular, the capacity to manage multiple work streams at one time and the proactivity to drive work programmes forward and co-ordinate the involvement of all relevant stakeholders; vendor management and budget management
- Strong influencing skills and ability to inspire confidence, as well as the ability to establish and maintain effective relationships at all levels
- High level of integrity with ability to develop both internal and external credibility
- Self-starter who can work with a high level of autonomy and who is also an excellent team player
- Commercial awareness and experience working in fast-paced, multicultural environments
- Experience with managing sensitive reputational issues and/or crises
- Fluency in English with additional European languages a strong benefit

**Further skills we are looking for**:

- Being curious, flexible, and a creative and pragmatic problem solver
- Confident yet collaborative
- Ability to influence stakeholders across all levels within the organisation
- Being proactive, resilient and having the drive to get things done
- Having sound judgement and the ability to see the big picture and simultaneously appreciate the details necessary to operationalise the strategy
- Having the courage to take positions and make tough judgment calls
- Being a team player, self aware and a good listener - a diverse group will always find the best solution
- Ability to move with agility, prioritise workloads and meet deadlines
- Forward thinking with an interest in emerging issues in legal and policy

**Why join the Legal & Public Affairs Team now?**

**Who we are**:
To match our global footprint and the array of challenges we face, we are proud to highlight the diversity that exists across this group. We are a team of approximately 165 professionals - representing more than 35 nationalities - with lawyers qualified in many different countries, as well as non-lawyers with public policy, economics, compliance and risk backgrounds. Our team’s previous experience spans across a multitude of industries with team members having worked for major global companies (including Amazon, American Express, Google, Nokia and Yum Brands), tech and other startups (e.g. AirBnB, Uber and WeWork), government entities (e.g., the Dutch Competition Authority), reputable international law firms (e.g., Hogan Lovells, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Baker Mckenzie), and Public Affairs firms (e.g., FTI Co