Executive Creative Director in Manchester

This is a rare and transformative opportunity to set the creative agenda for an engagement and experience design powerhouse. Inizio Engage XD combines insight, expertise and creativity to design and deliver world‑class experiences that engage people, change mindsets and enrich cultures. We are looking for an Executive Creative Director to lead the creative future of Engage XD.

This senior, global leadership role is responsible for setting creative vision, raising standards, and inspiring teams across experiential, employee engagement, and learning and capability programmes. You will bring strong creative judgement and deep expertise in at least one of our key disciplines, with the ability to lead through complexity and shape ideas that drive meaningful behaviour change. Sitting at the intersection of creative excellence, people leadership, and business growth, you will help convert creative ambition into commercial impact while building trusted, senior client relationships.

With a strategic, future‑focused perspective on innovation, creative technology, and AI, you will help teams use new tools to enhance creative thinking, craft, and efficiency in thoughtful, practical, and compliant ways—ensuring Engage XD remains relevant and future‑ready.

What you'll be doing

• Set and lead the global creative vision: Define and champion a clear, compelling creative vision for Engage XD. Take overall responsibility for creative quality, elevating thinking and stepping in at critical moments. Provide creative stewardship across Emota, Forty1, and Nazarè, maintaining high standards while respecting each brand's distinct identity.
• Lead, inspire, and grow a global creative team: Lead a multidisciplinary team across the UK and US, embedding collaborative ways of working and building leadership capability. Create a culture of high performance, inclusion, and progression, while attracting, developing, and retaining exceptional creative talent.
• Shape ideas across experiential, engagement, and learning programmes: Guide teams through complex, multi‑audience challenges from early strategy through to delivery. Collaborate closely with film, digital, and delivery teams to create integrated solutions that balance creative ambition with clarity, feasibility, and governance requirements.
• Champion innovation, technology, and AI‑enabled creativity: Apply a forward‑looking approach to creative technology and AI, encouraging experimentation while ensuring work remains secure, practical, and compliant. Help future‑proof the agency's creative capability and ways of working.
• Act as a senior creative partner to clients: Represent Engage XD confidently in senior client meetings, pitches, and workshops. Build long‑term relationships by translating strategy and behavioural insight into compelling creative narratives.
• Contribute to agency leadership, growth, and reputation: As a senior leader within Engage XD and the wider Inizio network, support new business and organic growth, and act as an ambassador for the agency through thought leadership, awards, and external engagement.

What you'll bring

• Proven experience leading high‑performing creative teams delivering standout work, with deep expertise in at least one discipline.
• Strong creative judgement and storytelling skills across verbal, visual, and narrative formats.
• Experience leading and developing global teams and creative cultures.
• Confidence working with senior clients and guiding complex creative journeys.
• A strategic perspective on innovation, creative technology, and AI.
• The ability to balance creative ambition with delivery, compliance, and commercial impact.
• High personal standards for craft, clarity, and creativity as a driver of behaviour change.

Benefits

• 25 days' annual leave plus public holidays, company closure over Christmas plus a personal day.
• Volunteering leave.
• Private medical insurance.
• Life insurance.
• Pension scheme.
• Group income protection.

A bit about us

Inizio Engage is a strategic, commercial, and creative engagement partner that specialises in healthcare. Our passionate, global workforce augments local expertise and diverse mix of skills with data, science and technology to deliver bespoke engagement solutions that help clients reimagine how they engage with their patients, payers, people and providers to improve treatment outcomes. Engage XD is an unusually shaped communications group that creates experiences that inspire lasting change. We partner with clients to provide employee engagement, learning and training solutions, scientific engagement and capability building, all underpinned by applied behavioural science. We engage internal and external audiences through the creation and delivery of live & virtual experiences, film, digital, and immersive content.

Our family of brands is made up of: Emota, Forty1 and Nazarè. We believe in our values: We empower everyone | We rise to the challenge | We work as one | We ask what if | We do the right thing, and we will ask you how your personal values align to ours. We promote opportunities to learn, grow, train and get involved in broader workstreams that add to our work culture as well as a number of reward and recognition initiatives.

No meet every job requirement? That's okay! We are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. If you're excited about this role, but your experience doesn't perfectly fit every qualification, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right person for this role or others. As set forth in Inizio's Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.