Vice President, Public Affairs Partnerships
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About the Position
Vice President, Public Affairs Partnerships
Washington DC
Sales / Full-Time / Hybrid
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Lead the category. Build the team. Own the number.
IQM is redefining how modern advertisers navigate complex, highly regulated media environments. Our AI-driven media buying platform is built to deliver smarter decision making, greater transparency, and real performance at scale, where precision matters most. We’re building a team of curious and driven problem solvers who want to make an impact and help define what’s next in advertising.
Job Opportunity
IQM is seeking a VP, Public Affairs Partnerships to lead the next chapter of growth for our Political and Advocacy business. This is a strategic, player-coach leadership role: you will build and develop a growing team of public affairs sellers - setting the vision, structure, and coaching model for the function - while personally owning a book of strategic accounts across public affairs agencies, advocacy organizations, associations, government-focused advertisers, and corporate affairs teams across the country.
For more than a decade, IQM has built technology, data, expertise, and customer relationships around one of advertising’s most demanding markets: politics. We understand complex audiences, compressed timelines, regulatory requirements, high-stakes messaging, and the operational realities that cause general-market platforms to struggle in specialized verticals. Now, we are applying that experience to a much larger opportunity.
As the senior commercial leader for IQM's public affairs vertical, you will own go-to-market strategy, team performance, and revenue outcomes across the full advocacy ecosystem. You'll partner at the executive level with Product, Ad Operations, Customer Success, and Marketing to shape how IQM shows up in this space - while staying close enough to the work to lead from the front on the deals that matter most.
This role is hybrid, meaning team members are expected to work one to two days per week in person at one of the office locations in either NY/DC.
At this time, IQM does not sponsor new applicants for employment authorization for this position.
Why This Role Matters
Public affairs advertising has long been fragmented across disconnected media vendors, data providers, publishers, and technology platforms, leaving agencies and organizations to assemble solutions on their own. IQM offers something different: a coordinated platform that brings audience intelligence, data, programmatic activation, measurement, and vertical expertise together. You will help define that offering in the market, working directly with our revenue, product, marketing, data, operations, and executive teams to win cornerstone customers and establish IQM as an essential partner to the industry.
What You’ll Do
- Build the market: Develop and execute IQM's public affairs revenue strategy, pinpointing the agencies, associations, advocacy organizations, government-focused advertisers, and corporate affairs teams where IQM can create the most value. Decide where to focus, whom to pursue, how to position IQM, and what has to be true for us to win.
- Win strategic customers: Personally build senior relationships, lead discovery, develop tailored solutions, navigate agency and organizational buying structures, and close meaningful new business. This role is for someone who loves to sell, not just manage people who do. You're comfortable opening doors, leading executive conversations, building account strategies, and staying closely involved through activation and growth.
- Translate objectives into solutions: Public affairs customers don't need another generic media pitch. They need a partner who understands what they're trying to accomplish. Translate policy, advocacy, reputation, persuasion, education, and mobilization goals into audience, data, media, and measurement strategies, and move easily between agency leaders, media teams, strategists, data specialists, communications executives, association leaders, and IQM's technical teams.
- Shape the product and go-to-market strategy: Bring the voice of the market into IQM. Surface customer needs, common use cases, competitive gaps, and buying barriers, and turn them into product opportunities, along with the solutions, sales materials, pricing structures, case studies, and operating processes needed to scale. You won't just sell what already exists. You'll help decide what we build next.
- Expand political relationships into year-round partnerships: Build on IQM's footprint in the political ecosystem by extending those relationships into advocacy, public affairs, government, association, and corporate reputation work that continues well beyond election cycles. Uncover new opportunities within existing relationships, and introduce IQM to organizations that may never have considered a political technology company a strategic partner.
- Team Building & Leadership: Lead a team of sales executives and determine the team structure, hiring profile, sales process, and customer coverage model that support the next stage of growth.
Who You Are
- 15+ years of experience in digital advertising, programmatic media, audience data, technology, public affairs, advocacy, or government.
- A sustained record of meeting or exceeding revenue targets, driven by net-new wins rather than inherited accounts.
- Experience selling to both agencies and direct customers, with the credibility to engage strategists and executives while keeping a commercial process moving.
- Fluency in programmatic activation, audience targeting, data, measurement, connected television, and identity, and the ability to connect communications objectives to the right media and data strategy.
- Experience building a territory, launching a vertical, or growing a new market or emerging product, along with experience hiring, coaching, or leading sellers.
- A player-coach mindset: you love to sell, not just supervise people who sell, and you stay involved well after the contract is signed.
- The ambition to build a significant business, not simply hold a senior title.
We’re Excited If You Have
- Relationships across the Washington public affairs, political, advocacy, association, government, or agency ecosystem.
- A background in political or advocacy media sales, public affairs agency partnerships, government advertising, association or nonprofit marketing, or programmatic and DSP sales.
- Experience in audience data, identity, research, or measurement; connected television or addressable media; digital publishing or premium media; public affairs software; political research or polling; or agency media strategy.
Compensation
This role offers ownership of a book of business, a team, and the strategy behind both. Compensation is a base salary plus commission on gross spend. The listed base salary range represents what IQM reasonably expects to pay at the time of posting and applies only to candidates hired to perform work in one of the listed locations.
Base Compensation: $150,000 - $230,000+
In addition to base pay, IQM offers a highly competitive total compensation package designed to reward impact and growth which includes performance-based incentives. Total compensation is an estimate that will vary with performance.
Potential Total Compensation (OTE): $500,000 – $700,000
Working At IQM
At IQM, we believe that happy, healthy employees are the key to our success! That’s why we’ve built a benefits package that’s got you covered from head to toe, and your bank account too.
- 100% Employer-Paid Healthcare: IQM covers 100% of employee healthcare premiums, so you can focus on your work, not your benefits costs.
- Health & Wellness: Stay in top shape with multiple medical plan options, plus dental and vision coverage. A healthy smile and clear vision go a long way.
- Future Proof Your Finances: Our 401(k) program comes with a 3% company match, and you can save anywhere from 1% to 80% of your paycheck, whether retirement means a beach, the mountains, or something in between.
- Total Well-Being: From physical health to mental wellness and financial peace of mind, we offer resources to support every part of your journey, so you can feel great and do your best work.
At IQM, we’re not just building a team, we’re creating a workplace where you can thrive.
About IQM
IQM is a global media buying platform that empowers political, healthcare and other specialty advertisers in highly regulated verticals to use and enhance their data to make better ad buying decisions.
Our platform enables advertisers to construct precise audience segments that align seamlessly with their desired target audience base, using their own data, top-tier third-party data sources, and IQM’s proprietary AI-driven audience intelligence engine. This leads to more accurate forecasting, budgeting and targeting, as well as delivering campaigns that perform better across screens and formats.
Over the past year, IQM has been awarded:
- Best New Product: IQM Power Segments - Reed Awards, 2026
- Engineering Team of the Year - CampaignTech Awards, 2025
- Best Customer Service | Tech Vendor - CampaignTech Awards, 2025
- Best Demand-Side Platform - MarTech Breakthrough Awards, 2025
- Best Demand-Side Technology - AdExchanger Awards, 2025
- Best Use of Online Targeting | U.S. House/Senate - Reed Awards, 2025
Highlighting IQM's leadership in innovation and excellence in programmatic advertising.
For more information, visit iqm.com.
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At IQM, your safety matters. We will never ask for payment, banking details, or passwords at any stage of the hiring process. All official communication will come from an IQM email address. If you believe you’ve been contacted by someone misrepresenting IQM, please do not respond and report the activity through the platform where you encountered the message.
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.
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