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About the Role

The Senior Manager, External & Client Communications leads Central 1’s external and client-facing communications, helping shape a strong, trusted, and compelling voice in the Canadian financial services ecosystem. This role drives clear, consistent, and timely communications aligned to corporate priorities, brand positioning, and regulatory expectations—partnering closely with client-facing teams and key relationship owners to tell Central 1’s story, strengthen stakeholder confidence, and protect its reputation.

Responsibilities

Own and lead the external and client communications function across the organization, setting strategy, standards, and priorities that advance corporate objectives and protect reputation.
Define and maintain a clear external and client communications framework, including audience segmentation, messaging hierarchy, channel strategy, and governance.
Ensure all client-facing and external communications are strategic, consistent, high-quality, and aligned to corporate positioning, brand, and regulatory requirements.
Act as the central point of accountability for how the organization communicates externally — balancing proactive storytelling, client clarity, and reputational risk management.
Establish clear success metrics and regularly evaluate the effectiveness of external and client communications efforts.
Lead enterprise-level corporate communications activities, including corporate narrative and positioning, executive and enterprise announcements, issues management and reputational risk support, and crisis communications planning and response.
Manage cyclical client / member touchpoints including quarterly client briefings and bi-annual Peer Group meetings.
Partner closely with Finance, the Corporate Secretary office, Legal, Risk, Regulatory Affairs and senior leadership to manage sensitive, high-impact, or time-critical communications.
Ensure external communications reinforce trust, credibility, and confidence among clients, partners, regulators, and industry stakeholders.
Provide strategic communications leadership for Central 1’s core lines of business — Payments, Treasury and Corporate — applying the enterprise external communications strategy to portfolio-specific needs.
Translate line-of-business priorities, initiatives, and changes into clear, client-focused communications that support understanding, adoption, and engagement.
Provide communications leadership to portfolio leaders on messaging, sequencing, and risk considerations, ensuring alignment with broader corporate communications.
Balance portfolio needs with enterprise priorities, proactively managing trade-offs and expectations.
Lead annual and quarterly external and client communications planning, ensuring resourcing and sequencing align with enterprise priorities.
Establish and manage intake, prioritization, and approval processes for external communications, ensuring strong capacity management for the external & client communications team, and effective communication volumes to clients.
Serve as a strategic advisor and decision-maker, not an order taker, on what, when, and how the organization communicates externally.
Provide leadership, coaching, and direction to communications team members and contractors supporting external and client communications.
Build strong relationships with senior leaders, enabling effective influence without direct authority.
Collaborate with Marketing, Treasury, Payments, Sales/Business Development, and Client Relations teams to ensure coordinated execution across channels.

Requirements

Post-secondary education in Communications, Journalism, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
10+ years of progressively senior experience in external or corporate communications roles.
Experience in B2B organizations is an asset.
Significant change management / change communications experience.
Demonstrated experience developing and executing stakeholder communications strategies to support business outcomes for organizations.
Exceptional storytelling ability, with strength in translating business strategy into clear, engaging, external stakeholder-focused messaging.
Experience managing communication channels and driving continuous improvement in reach and effectiveness.
Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to build relationships across all levels of the organization.
Experience working collaboratively with cross functional teams and senior leaders.
Strong project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines.
High emotional intelligence, sound judgment, and the ability to navigate sensitive or confidential issues.
A collaborative, proactive and solutions-oriented mindset aligned with Central 1’s values.

Skills

External communications
Client communications
Corporate communications
Reputation management
Crisis communications
Stakeholder management
Change management
Project management
Storytelling
Messaging
Channel management
Influencing skills
Collaboration

Location

Hybrid work environment

Work Type

Hybrid
Full-time

Experience Level

Senior Manager
10+ years of experience

Education Level

Post-secondary education in Communications, Journalism, or a related field
SCMP, ABC or APR preferred
Prosci certification is an asset

Salary/Compensations

$110,000-$135,000

Benefits

Work-life flexibility
Variable annual incentive plan
Generous annual vacation allotment
Top-notch flexible benefits plan including family building and gender affirmation
Retirement Plan, matched contributions at 6%
Access to a learning platform and educational assistance support
Access to a virtual wellness platform
Career development opportunities
Wellness Flex Fund to support personal interest and activities
Day off to volunteer in your community and other paid time off options
Corporate discounts

About the Company

Central 1 cooperatively empowers credit unions and other financial institutions to deliver banking choice to Canadians.
Central 1 provides critical services at scale to enable a thriving credit union system.
We do this by collaborating with our clients, developing strategies, products and services to support the financial well-being of their more than 5 million diverse customers in communities across Canada.

Equal Opportunity

Central 1 is an equal opportunity employer and committed to building an inclusive workforce by creating an environment where everyone feels like they belong and has the opportunity to be successful.
We welcome all applicants to join our diverse workforce and we will provide an accessible candidate experience including, but not limited to accommodations to interview sites and alternate formats upon request to our Recruitment team.