Chief Brand Officer (Manager II)

Job Description and Duties Join the Covered California team! Join Covered California as the Manager II and Chief Brand Officer, shaping how consumers across California discover and stay connected to quality health coverage. Lead bold, inclusive marketing and outreach campaigns that reflect the state’s diverse communities and advance member acquisition and retention. Turn research, performance data, and market insights into strategic direction, innovative initiatives, and measurable results across advertising, digital outreach, communications, and analytics. Guide a talented multidisciplinary team and oversee key contractor partnerships, budgets, contracts, and administrative operations that keep the Marketing Division moving forward. If you are a strategic leader who thrives at the intersection of creativity, analysis, and public service, help make health coverage more visible and accessible to Californians. At Covered California, we recognize our employees are our most valuable asset. We have a variety of career fields that help make a difference in the lives of Californians, and we’re looking for talented and enthusiastic individuals to join our team! Learn more about why you should join the Marketing Division This position is headquartered at 1601 Exposition Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95815. Business travel may be required, and reimbursement considers an employee’s designated headquarters office subject to regulations and bargaining unit contract provisions. Travel expenses associated with commuting to the employee’s office headquarters location are not reimbursable, other than authorized transit subsidies. NOTE: To be considered for this job opportunity, applicants must be reachable on an employment list, have transfer eligibility, or have reinstatement eligibility. If you are new to California State service and you do not have list eligibility, you must take the exam for this classification. To gain employment list eligibility, please click here to access the exam bulletin. Possession of minimum qualifications will be verified prior to interview and/or appointment. If it is determined an applicant does not meet the minimum qualifications, the applicant's name may be removed from the eligibility list. Covered California does not provide visa sponsorship and is not an E-Verify employer. Effective July 1, 2025, in response to the budget deficit, the Department of Human Resources (CalHR) has implemented the Personal Leave Program 2025 (PLP 2025). PLP 2025 requires that each full-time employee working their assigned work schedule receive a 3 percent reduction in pay in exchange for 5 hours of PLP 2025 leave credits monthly through June 30, 2027. You will find additional information about the job in the Duty Statement. Special Requirements Statement of Qualifications (SOQ) Instructions: A SOQ is required to apply. The SOQ will be used as a pre-interview screening tool. Applicants who do not follow the SOQ instructions and/or do not answer the prompt as stated below may not be considered. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools can be useful in the development of written responses; however, it is important to use these tools responsibly and ethically. Where assistive tools may be used, responses within the SOQ should be your own original work. Applicants must write in their own words and avoid plagiarism. Failure to comply may be cause for disqualification. The SOQ must be a narrative discussion, not a resume or bulleted summary. Applicants must answer each question in the order listed, identify each response with its question number, and use specific examples that explain their individual role, actions, and results. Responses should be single-spaced, in 12-point Arial, and no more than three (3) pages. Applicants must write in their own words. A resume is a required application document; it does not replace the SOQ. • Strategic leadership. Describe how your experience prepares you to serve as Chief Brand Officer. Include years of relevant experience, team size, and examples of leading marketing strategy, media planning, agencies, budgets, or complex programs. Note relevant government, healthcare, or regulated-environment experience and results. • Data-informed media planning. Describe how you used research, media performance, enrollment, pricing, sales, or other internal data to identify and prioritize an audience. Explain your media strategy and tactics—including channels, targeting, budget, placement, timing, and measures—and how you optimized results. • Multicultural marketing and creative. Describe a campaign you led for a multicultural audience. Explain how audience insight shaped the brief, messaging, creative, language, and channels; how you tested and refined the work; and how you balanced cultural relevance with brand cohesion. Include your role and results. • Agency leadership. Describe a campaign or project you managed with an agency or contractor. How did you set expectations, manage scope, timelines, budget, approvals, and performance, and address challenges? What were the results? • Team leadership and collaboration. Describe how you led and developed a team through change or competing priorities. Include team size, how you built capability and accountability, and how you collaborated across divisions or with partners. What did you achieve? Desirable Qualifications In addition to evaluating each candidate's relative ability, as demonstrated by quality and breadth of experience, the following factors will provide the basis for competitively evaluating each candidate: • Strategic advertising and media planning leadership. Demonstrated ability to translate organizational priorities into integrated, multi-channel advertising strategies that support enrollment, retention, and other defined outcomes. Skilled in audience prioritization and in developing media strategy and actionable plans, including channel and platform selection, geographic and audience targeting, budget allocation, placement, timing and flighting, reach and frequency, and ongoing optimization across paid, owned, and earned channels. • Data-informed marketing and performance improvement. Ability to bring together consumer and market research, media and campaign performance, enrollment trends, pricing and rate information, sales insights, and relevant information from other divisions to guide audience prioritization, campaign strategy, resource allocation, and evaluation. Skilled at turning analysis into practical recommendations while protecting confidential and sensitive information. • Multicultural marketing, creative strategy, testing, and brand stewardship. Demonstrated experience developing or directing multicultural and culturally and linguistically relevant marketing for diverse audiences and communities. Ability to translate audience insight and campaign strategy into focused briefs and creative direction; guide message, asset, and channel development; and use research and testing at multiple stages to improve the work. Ability to champion a cohesive Covered California brand while tailoring communications to distinct audiences, communities, and places. • Agency leadership, governance, and client partnership. Experience directing creative, media, research, or other contractors and agencies through clear scopes, roles, decision rights, timelines, deliverables, approvals, budgets, performance expectations, and issue resolution. Ability to establish consistent governance across staff and leadership levels, give timely and actionable feedback, and build a constructive, accountable client-agency partnership that makes the work stronger. • People leadership, operational rigor, and collaboration. Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary teams of six or more FTEs, build staff capacity and capability through delegation, coaching, clear expectations, feedback, and development—not by shielding staff from meaningful work—and manage competing priorities and resources. Ability to foster an inclusive, agile, learning-oriented, innovative, and creatively ambitious culture and build productive partnerships across Marketing, other divisions, executives, vendors, and community stakeholders. Five or more years of progressively responsible experience in marketing, advertising, or communications leadership, preferably in government, healthcare, or another highly complex or regulated environment is desirable.