About MaRS

MaRS Discovery District in Toronto is one of the world's largest urban innovation hubs. MaRS supports promising high-growth companies to scale their businesses globally while tackling key societal challenges in areas such as Health, Cleantech, Finance, Transportation, AI, and others. In addition to helping start-ups launch, grow, and scale, the MaRS community is dedicated to cross-disciplinary collaboration, commercialization of discoveries, and driving ideas to impact.

MaRS is the place where you can play a meaningful role in our innovation economy.

We understand qualifications on a job posting can be daunting. If you're passionate about the role and believe you can make a meaningful impact, we want to hear from you, even if you don't meet every listed qualification. We're always looking for great talent to join our team on planet MaRS.

We actively encourage all candidates, including equity-deserving communities, including those who identify as BIPOC, racialized, women, people with disabilities, and people with diverse gender identities, expressions, and sexual orientations.

We want you to be comfortable being your most authentic self throughout our recruitment process. Please reach out to if there's anything we can do to make your experience more accessible and inclusive, including accommodations. Include 'Accessibility Request' in your subject line.

About Ventures & Ecosystems

This role resides within the V&E group at MaRS. V&E works with over 1400 innovation-driven science and technology startups. V&E helps entrepreneurs commercialize innovations with high business growth potential in Canada and globally by facilitating access to the customer, talent, funding, marketing, and stakeholder connections required to successfully scale their business.

About the Position

MaRS has developed a world-class community of startup founders with deep network effects that span Canada's innovation ecosystem and global markets. The Manager, Member Experience will drive key objectives in portfolio growth, refinement, engagement, and digital transformation to provide a world-class experience for our startup community. This role will lead MaRS' member relationships and proactive engagement through strategic thinking, building partnerships, and a strong commitment to supporting high-impact ventures throughout their journey with MaRS.

The Manager is responsible to work with the ventures being served, ecosystem partners, corporate partners, and all key MaRS resources (Advisors, Impact Area teams, Market Intelligence, Data and Insights, Corporate Innovation, Digital Experience Platform team, and MaRS Ventures & Ecosystems Group leadership) to design and deliver an exceptional experience.

Key Responsibilities

Member Experience:

• Lead the design and implementation of the overall communication and client engagement experience for ventures in the Core portfolio.
• Elevate the value proposition of MaRS via continuous alignment of Member goals throughout the organization.
• Monitor customer metrics, sentiment, and proactively work to identify opportunities to delight and improve the member experience.
• Design and oversee a data-driven member journey map to support effective engagement, ensuring that services are logged and monitored quarterly.
• Strategize and work collaboratively with direct reports and MarComm team members to establish an effective engagement strategy that fosters customer loyalty, promotes good business relationships, and helps Members on issues as needed.
• Conduct onboarding, implementation, and training sessions as required.

Portfolio Management:

• Enable MaRS with venture data and a consistent view of portfolio health and attribution to MaRS impact of their trajectory, including leading and enabling program reporting, management, operations, and feedback.
• Lead the portfolio selection and management, prioritizing program execution and operations throughout the venture journey.
• Manage the assessment process to identify unresponsive or misaligned ventures and implement a structured review process for consistent portfolio refinement.
• Build and maintain partnerships with incubators, accelerators, government agencies, investors, and other organizations as appropriate to grow the MaRS startup pipeline.
• Work closely with the MarCom team to promote MaRS services and brand consistently across multiple channels.

People Management:

• Lead, inspire, and mentor a team to plan, execute, and drive an exceptional client experience through effective coaching and mentorship practices in order to deliver on MaRS' strategic objectives and maintain high employee engagement scores.
• Assess program resourcing needs, draft job descriptions, and recruit as necessary working in collaboration with Director, Core Startup Services.
• Set annual performance goals, metrics, and operating plans; conduct performance reviews; establish regular coaching and feedback with staff.
• Keep the team accountable to accomplish outcomes aligned to MaRS overall strategy.

MaRS Community and Dashboard Growth:

• Lead team and work cross-functionally to develop and implement strategies to attract new members, encourage participation, and promote our community/dashboard value proposition.
• Lead team to create and uphold rituals, a sense of belonging, affiliation/brand affinity for the founder community.

Contract Deliverable Management:

• Oversee the fulfillment of funded contract deliverables, coordinating with internal teams to ensure all obligations are met.
• Regularly monitor contract progress, adapt plans as needed, and maintain close communication with stakeholders.

Qualifications

• 1-2 year diploma/certificate.
• Bachelor degree in marketing, communications, business, or psychology an asset.
• 2+ years in a marketing, customer success, or sales role at a startup.
• 3+ years in portfolio management, customer experience, or community management, an asset.

• Copywriting, public speaking/workshop facilitation, remove/async collaboration, G-suite, knowledge management.
• Product marketing, Product ops, partnership development within startup or innovation ecosystem, strong project management and organizational skills, excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Strong project management and organizational skills.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Applications will close at 5pm EDT on April 17, 2025.

Applicants must be legally eligible to work in Canada and reside in Ontario.

Salary Range: $75,000 - $93,000, up to a 10% discretionary incentive, extended healthcare benefits, lifestyle spending account, GRRSP matching, and paid time-off.