Assistant Director, Client & Field Experience Strategy

About the Job

The Assistant Director, Client & Field Experience Strategy supports the Client & Field Experience teams in shaping, designing, and enabling the delivery of integrated client and field experiences that help advisors, field teams, and clients achieve successful outcomes. This role blends experience design, research, and insight synthesis with strategic and execution support, partnering with domain and delivery teams to translate client and field insights into actionable, experience-led solutions.

Operating within a domain-based delivery model, the Assistant Director plays a hands-on role in research, journey mapping, insight development, and experience design across both client and field touchpoints. The role ensures experience strategies are grounded in evidence, user-centered thinking, and ready for delivery-connecting client and field perspectives to cohesive end-to-end experiences.

What You'll Do

Client & Field Experience Strategy Support

• Support Journey teams in advancing the enterprise-wide Client & Field Experience capability through research-driven insights and experience design.

• Assist in defining experience strategies across client and advisor lifecycles, ensuring alignment between client needs, field workflows, and business outcomes.

• Translate client and field needs into experience opportunities, hypotheses, and experience design inputs for domain teams.

• Support development of problem statements, opportunity sizing, and value hypotheses informed by client and field insights.

• Assist in defining experience-related OKRs and success measures.

• Track outcomes and feedback loops to inform continuous improvement.

Research, Insight & Synthesis

• Plan and conduct experience research to understand client, advisor, and field leader needs, pain points, and behaviors.

• Synthesize insights from Voice of the Client, Voice of the Field, operational data, surveys, and usability testing.

• Identify themes, patterns, moments of truth, and experience gaps across client and field journeys.

• Create compelling insight narratives that translate research findings into actionable guidance.

Experience Design & Journey Enablement

• Lead or support experience design activities for client and/or field sub-journeys, including journey mapping and service design.

• Apply human-centered design methodologies to improve client outcomes and simplify advisor workflows.

• Ensure experience intent and design rationale are clearly documented and embedded into delivery artifacts.

Domain Partnership & Execution Alignment

• Partner with peers, cross-functional partners, domain and delivery teams to ensure client and field experience designs are feasible and scalable.

• Support roadmap reviews, prioritization discussions, and dependency identification from an experience perspective.

• Collaborate with technology, operations, risk, and compliance partners to ensure alignment with enterprise standards.

Co-Creation, Adoption & Change Support

• Participate in client and field co-creation sessions, pilots, and validation activities.

• Support documentation of processes, experience impacts, and adoption considerations.

• Partner with change, communications, and enablement teams to support rollout and adoption.

Team & Culture Contribution

• Contribute to a collaborative, insight-driven team culture focused on client and field outcomes.

• Model curiosity, empathy, and evidence-based decision-making.

What You'll Bring to the Role

• Must have experience creating c-suite / executive level storytelling and presentations

• Must have demonstrated ability to self-manage multiple medium workstreams or large workstreams

• Demonstrate a proactive mindset and willingness to learn and adapt in ambiguity

• Show aptitude for building positive partner relationships

• Must demonstrate preference for research, analysis, and strategic outcomes over solutions and 'the how'

• Bachelor's degree in business, design, human-computer interaction, marketing, economics, psychology, or related field.

• 6-8 years of progressive experience in client experience, field experience, experience research, service design, or journey management.

• Demonstrated experience conducting primary and secondary research and synthesizing insights to inform experience decisions.

• Working knowledge of advisor-led or client-facing business models, preferably in financial services or regulated industries.

• Ability to operate effectively in a matrixed, domain-based delivery model.

#LI-Hybrid

Compensation Range:

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We believe in fairness and transparency. It's why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. The standard pay structure is listed but if you're living in California, New York City or other eligible location, geographic specific pay structures, compensation and benefits could be applicable, click here to learn more.

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Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer who welcomes and encourages diversity in the workforce. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.

We're excited about the potential people bring to Northwestern Mutual. You can grow your career here while enjoying first-class perks, benefits, and our commitment to a culture of belonging.

• Flexible work schedules
• Concierge service
• Comprehensive benefits
• Employee resource groups