Director, Global Public Affairs & Crisis Communications

About the Role

You will be Schneider Electric’s global lead for high‑stakes communications and stakeholder engagement. This role sets the strategy and operational readiness for crisis response, issues management, reputation, and public affairs—anticipating and shaping external dynamics across markets, advancing policy and advocacy priorities, and protecting trust during moments of scrutiny. The Director acts as a senior advisor to corporate affairs leadership, orchestrates rapid crisis response, drives proactive risk identification, and leads public affairs strategies with policymakers, regulators, NGOs, industry bodies, and community partners, translating complexity into clear guidance and equipping leaders to communicate credibly at scale. The role requires overseeing a global crisis communications strategy, readiness model and escalation framework, serving on crisis management teams, designing executive simulations, leading media relations during crises, identifying emerging risks, and continuously improving playbooks through post‑incident reviews. In public affairs, the Director develops and executes strategies that engage policymakers and stakeholders on energy transition, sustainability and digital infrastructure, partners with Government Affairs to shape policy narratives, builds stakeholder maps and coalitions, and coordinates outreach during heightened regulatory scrutiny. The position also supports community and international engagement, strengthens relationships with validators and academic institutions, and elevates executive visibility at global policy forums and multilateral platforms. Reputation stewardship involves monitoring drivers across media, policy and stakeholder channels, surfacing emerging issues, embedding narrative development into major announcements, and advising senior leaders on message strategy and risk trade‑offs. Team leadership includes providing direction and development for direct reports, ensuring coordination between crisis response and public affairs workstreams, and moving the function toward proactive risk leadership. • Own and implement the global crisis communications strategy, readiness model, and escalation framework. • Lead cross‑functional crisis management teams, providing counsel and coordinating response during critical incidents. • Design and conduct executive simulations, tabletop exercises, and training to enhance decision‑making under pressure. • Manage media relations in crises, delivering statements, briefings and press conferences with accuracy and empathy. • Identify emerging risks, conduct issue assessments, and develop mitigation plans with continuous improvement of playbooks. • Develop and execute public affairs strategies that engage policymakers, regulators, NGOs and industry bodies on priority issues. • Partner with Government Affairs globally to shape policy narratives, advocacy materials and executive positioning. • Build stakeholder maps, coalitions and issue‑based campaigns to advance Schneider Electric’s agenda and credibility. • Support community and international stakeholder engagement, strengthening relationships with local organizations, NGOs and academic institutions. • Monitor reputational drivers across media and policy channels, surface emerging issues and advise senior leaders on messaging and risk trade‑offs. • Provide direction, prioritization and development for direct reports, ensuring coordination between crisis response and public affairs workstreams.

Key Responsibilities

• ▸crisis strategy
• ▸media relations
• ▸risk identification
• ▸public affairs
• ▸stakeholder mapping
• ▸team leadership

What You Bring

Required qualifications are a bachelor’s degree (MBA preferred), 12–15+ years of progressive public affairs and corporate communications experience with global crisis communications, proven success leading multi‑market crisis responses, strong stakeholder engagement skills, excellent writing and analytical abilities, and familiarity with crisis communication platforms and media monitoring tools. • Meet qualifications: bachelor’s (MBA preferred), 12‑15+ years in global public affairs and crisis communications, proven multi‑market crisis leadership, strong stakeholder engagement, excellent writing and analytical skills, familiarity with crisis communication platforms.

Requirements

• ▸mba
• ▸12+ years
• ▸crisis communications
• ▸stakeholder engagement
• ▸writing
• ▸media monitoring

Benefits

The company offers a competitive salary and bonus, 28 days annual leave plus public holidays, holiday buy‑sell, pension, employee share ownership, health and wellbeing options, gym flex, internal mobility opportunities, shopping and dining discounts, and a learning portal.

Work Environment

Hybrid