Job Description

Exceptional Hospitality Starts with You

This role is based at our corporate office in McLean, VA

This is your chance to be part of an in-house Brands team of industry experts in the domains of hospitality, brand management, innovation, food and beverage, wellness, owner relations, and more, for all of Hilton's unique brands!

Hilton is seeking a strategic, commercially and operationally minded leader to serve as Senior Director, Brand Leader – Homewood Suites by Hilton. This role sets and evolves the global direction for Homewood Suites—translating strategy into sustained performance across brand health, guest experience, owner value, and long-term growth. Working within a highly matrixed environment, the Senior Director orchestrates and influences cross-functional alignment and activation to deliver against the brand vision. As a visible brand steward, this leader builds credibility and trust with owners, operators, and internal stakeholders, representing the brand with clarity and conviction.

What you'll do during a typical day:

• Shape and Protect the Brand
  • Serve as the chief steward, storyteller, and advocate for the Homewood Suites brand, ensuring a clear, compelling, and consistently understood brand narrative across internal partners, owners, and hotel teams.
  • Define and deliver a differentiated brand offering for guests and owners, grounded in market insight, competitive context, guest satisfaction, operational reality, and owner profitability.
  • Safeguard brand reputation and long-term value by identifying risks, setting guardrails, and making informed trade-offs.
  • Maintain a deep understanding of the brand's role within Hilton's broader portfolio and its contribution to enterprise strategy.
• Develop and Execute Brand Strategy
  • Define and evolve the global brand strategy to ensure sustained relevance, differentiation, and health over the medium and long term.
  • Set brand aspiration, positioning, and guest and owner value propositions that drive competitive advantage and growth.
  • Stay closely connected to consumer, competitor, and market trends to inform strategic direction.
  • Align cross-functional partners around brand priorities and enterprise initiatives to deliver measurable outcomes.
  • Advocate for appropriate enterprise resources and investment in support of brand objectives.
  • Ensure brand strategies, standards, and investments support strong owner returns and best-in-class profitability.
• Define the Brand Experience
  • Set the vision and strategic parameters for product strategy, including prototypes, design guidance, wellness, and F&B, in partnership with functional teams.
  • Define, maintain, and evolve brand standards across design, service, F&B, and programming to deliver a distinctive, on-brand guest experience while balancing owner economics. Ensure Brand Standards align with brand goals and desired guest outcomes.
  • Ensure physical product and service experiences align with brand positioning, operational realities, and financial targets.
  • Define, champion, and evolve the brand's culture, service ethos, signatures, and rituals, partnering with Operations and Learning teams to embed the experience for guests and team members.
• Drive Brand Performance
  • Leverage performance data and competitive insight to inform strategy and strengthen brand performance over the medium and long term.
  • Proactively identify risks to growth and performance, addressing structural barriers and enabling corrective action.
  • Navigate and lead within a complex matrixed organization, developing and activating cross-functional partnerships to deliver brand imperatives.
  • Oversee brand engagement in key lifecycle and contractual moments, ensuring alignment with brand strategy and long-term portfolio value.
• Enable High-Quality Brand Growth
  • Define and govern a clear global development strategy that balances growth ambition with brand quality and integrity.
  • Establish and articulate the “brand box” to enable Development teams to effectively position and sell the brand.
  • Approve and manage brand exceptions with discipline, in collaboration with regional brand leaders.
  • Ensure regional teams have clear parameters to successfully regionalize and deploy the brand.

How you'll collaborate with others:

• Partner with Marketing to ensure brand positioning, messaging, and voice are consistently expressed across consumer touchpoints, while Marketing leads execution.
• Partner with Development and regional teams to drive high-quality, market-appropriate growth aligned with brand strategy.

Projects you'll take ownership of:

• Own mid- to long-term brand performance outcomes, partnering with Commercial and Development teams to understand results, remove barriers, and unlock opportunities.
• Lead brand-level owner engagement and governance, building strong relationships to support retention, growth, and long-term brand success.

What It Takes to Make the Stay

You have these minimum qualifications:

• Ten (10) or more years of experience in hospitality, brand management/strategy, or a related field.
• Demonstrated experience leading a global or multi-market brand or comparable business.
• Demonstrated experience supporting the development of strategic initiatives—building business cases, securing alignment across a matrixed organization, and driving execution through to implementation.
• Experience leading market assessments, consumer insights work, and competitive benchmarking to inform strategy.
• Direct experience engaging owners, operators, and/or franchise partners.
• Willingness to travel up to 40%.

It would be useful if you have:

• Experience leading extended stay, focused service, or select service hospitality brands. Specific experience in leading extended stay is preferred.
• Background in brand growth, repositioning, or large-scale brand evolution.
• Experience developing annual plans, budgets, forecasts, and multi-year roadmaps.
• Highly proficient in Microsoft Suite.