Senior Program Director

Who We Are

VML is a global creative company that combines brand experience, customer experience, and commerce to create connected brands that drive growth. Guided by a  Human First philosophy, VML is known for its innovative work for brands and consistently ranks among the world’s leading creative companies, including the WARC Creative 100. VML’s global network spans 55+ markets with principal offices in Buenos Aires, Kansas City, London, New York, São Paulo, Shanghai and Singapore.

VML is part of WPP, the trusted growth partner for the world's leading brands. Powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform WPP Open, WPP unites cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, creativity, production, enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel.

For more information, please visit  www.vml.com and follow along on   LinkedIn  #WeAreVML.

Role Summary

WPP Enterprise Solutions is seeking a Senior Program Delivery leader to run the day-to-day program operating engine for Ford’s AI-enabled Content Supply Chain transformation workstream. This role will own how the program gets activated, governed, sequenced, resourced, tracked, and delivered across a complex ecosystem of Ford stakeholders, WPP capabilities, platform partners, production teams, data teams, technology teams, and agency workstreams.

This is a high-complexity transformation delivery role. The work spans content production, asset lifecycle management, taxonomy, metadata, DAM modernization, AI-enabled production, customer data connectivity, decisioning, workflow, governance, measurement, and optimization. The Program Delivery Lead must be able to convert strategic ambition into an executable program model with clear workstreams, owners, milestones, dependencies, risks, operating rhythms, and decision paths.

The Business Lead will own the overall business agenda and client growth strategy. This role will own the delivery architecture: how the program runs, how work gets organized, how teams stay aligned, how decisions get made, how progress is tracked, and how WPP ensures high-quality execution across every workstream.

The ideal candidate is a senior delivery operator and transformation leader who can build structure in ambiguity, manage multiple integrated workstreams, anticipate risk, drive accountability, and create the conditions for a large cross-functional team to succeed.

Core Responsibilities

Program Delivery Leadership

• Own the integrated delivery model for the Ford Content Supply Chain transformation workstream.

• Translate the overall transformation agenda into a structured program plan with clear workstreams, deliverables, milestones, dependencies, owners, risks, and decision points.

• Design and maintain the program operating system: meeting cadence, governance forums, status reporting, escalation paths, decision logs, dependency tracking, milestone management, and executive updates.

• Ensure the program moves from disconnected initiatives into a coordinated, sequenced transformation roadmap.

• Partner with the Business Lead to turn business priorities into actionable delivery plans.

• Create clarity around what is active, what is planned, what is blocked, what requires decision, and what is ready to scale.

• Drive day-to-day progress across multiple workstreams, ensuring teams are aligned, accountable, and focused on the right outcomes.

Workstream Management & Activation

• Lead the orchestration of all CSC workstreams.

• Establish workstream charters, success measures, delivery plans, timelines, dependencies, and operating models.

• Ensure each workstream has clear ownership, scope, inputs, outputs, and escalation paths.

• Coordinate across Ford, WPP, and partner teams to ensure workstreams are not operating in silos.

• Track the health of each workstream and identify where sequencing, resourcing, decision-making, or dependency management needs intervention.

• Help convert early-stage opportunities and pilots into structured delivery plans with clear objectives, assumptions, constraints, and measurable outputs.

• Ensure workstreams are delivered with consistency, discipline, and appropriate documentation.

Governance, Process & Operating Model

• Build and manage the governance model required to run a large, multi-stakeholder transformation program.

• Define how decisions are made, who needs to be involved, what forums are required, and how issues move from discovery to resolution.

• Establish operating rhythms across core team standups, workstream meetings, leadership reviews, executive readouts, and stakeholder workshops.

• Create templates, tools, and repeatable processes that improve how the team briefs, scopes, tracks, reports, escalates, and delivers work.

• Drive consistency across program documentation, status reporting, action tracking, risk management, and milestone planning.

• Ensure the program has a clear source of truth for scope, priorities, deliverables, decisions, dependencies, and next steps.

• Continuously improve ways of working as the program scales.

Resource Planning & Team Coordination

• Own resource planning across the program in partnership with WPP capability leads, production teams, strategy, data, technology, analytics, account leadership, and finance.

• Identify the people and capabilities required to deliver each workstream.

• Anticipate capacity constraints and surface resourcing needs before they impact delivery.

• Coordinate across dedicated teams and shared resources to ensure the right expertise is applied at the right time.

• Reduce key-person dependency by documenting processes, clarifying ownership, and creating scalable delivery structures.

• Support hiring, onboarding, and role clarity as the team expands.

• Help build a high-functioning program team that can operate across ambiguity, speed, and complexity.

Financial Management & Delivery Health

• Manage delivery financial health across the program, including budget tracking, burn management, resource efficiency, scope alignment, and delivery forecasting.

• Partner with Business Lead, finance, and capability leads to ensure work is properly scoped, estimated, staffed, and tracked.

• Identify financial risks related to scope creep, under-scoping, resource gaps, inefficiency, or unclear ownership.

• Support SOW development, estimate creation, change requests, and delivery assumptions.

• Monitor progress against budgets, timelines, and resource plans.

• Ensure the delivery model is commercially responsible and operationally sustainable.

• Provide visibility into delivery performance, budget health, and operational risks.

Risk, Dependency & Issue Management

• Own risk and dependency management across the program.

• Proactively identify issues before they become blockers, especially where workstreams rely on Ford decisions, platform access, data availability, legal approvals, technical feasibility, production inputs, or stakeholder alignment.

• Maintain a clear program-level risk register and dependency map.

• Escalate issues with recommended resolution paths, not just status updates.

• Ensure teams understand downstream impacts of missed decisions, delayed inputs, unclear ownership, or shifting priorities.

• Create practical mitigation plans and drive closure against open risks.

• Help leadership make informed tradeoffs when timelines, scope, resources, or dependencies conflict.

Delivery Across the Martech and Content Ecosystem

• Guide delivery across a complex marketing technology and content ecosystem, including Adobe, Salesforce, DAM, workflow, analytics, production, AI-enabled content tools, decisioning platforms, and data environments.

• The role does not require deep technical architecture expertise, but it does require strong business and operational understanding of how these platforms are used by people, teams, and processes.

• Understand enough about the MarTech stack to coor