Committee Manager/Associate – Agriculture, Food & Beverage industry

Reports to:  Associate Director, Member Services

Job Purpose

Member Services is a dynamic and the largest team at AmCham China, creating value through membership programs and services.  One of the team’s key responsibilities is to operate AmCham China’s industry / issue-based working groups, known as “Committees” – our member-driven working groups that serve as the lifeblood of AmCham China’s policy and regulatory advocacy (A), business insights sharing (B) and professional community development activities (C).  Many of these A, B, and C activities are delivered through our content-rich speaker programs and topic-based seminars, which offer members opportunities to interact with and learn from industry experts and business practitioners’ first-hand information on U.S.-China trade, market access, policy, regulatory and technology development issues across many different industries.  As part of the larger Member Services team, each Committee support staff has a designated portfolio of industry and issue-based Committees and serves as a key point of contact to engage with industries, interest groups, individual member companies, and executives to operate the Committees.

Member Services team is also responsible for a set of business development opportunities at AmCham China, including providing exclusive sponsorship products and promotional services for our membership and non-member clients including both governments and corporations.  Some of these services are provided in collaboration with our Marketing and Communications team and are critical to the success of our year-round signature programs and print and digital publications.  In addition, the Member Services team also drives AmCham China’s training and education programs closely associated with the Committee and business development activities.

As the largest hub of member services and engagement, our team members enjoyed the opportunities to work on a variety of programs and services through very close collaboration with both members and other teams within the organization.  In addition to subject matter knowledge, these have become important pathways to develop professional skills including stakeholder management, resource sharing, driving a project from scratch to success, marketing, business development, and others.

Duties and responsibilities

The Committee Manager/Associate is expected to thrive on the following key responsibilities:

• Developing industry development agenda together with operational leadership and leadership and key members of each Committee, and following up with engagement with key U.S. and Chinese government and industry stakeholders to produce advocacy progress beneficial for U.S. companies’ competitive position in China; (30%)
• Monitoring key regulatory, business, and technological developments corresponding to each Committee, and accordingly creating event programs and or projects with thought leaders to keep sustained dialogues as a key AmCham China service; (30%)
• Working with each other within the Member Services team and with colleagues from other teams to ensure meaningful contribution to AmCham China’s membership recruitment, advocacy initiatives and business development success; (15%)
• Create consistent updates of Committee success stories in advocacy, insights, and business development wins, and ensure proper marketing and outreach to key stakeholders including members, potential members, government counterparts, and other partners; (15%)
• Organizing key companies within each Committee to participate in outreach and promotional events around China to strengthen market access and business development under AmCham China’s brand and creating networking gatherings that would strengthen membership loyalty and togetherness as a professional community. (10%)

Qualifications

Our Committee Manager/Associate are amongst those growing the fastest across the whole AmCham China organization, and are put on a three-phase development path with clear development indicators of business and soft skill goals and performance evaluation, and are often successful in making connections to their next step corporate career in specific industries and functional fields, especially in the fields of government and corporate affairs, marketing and strategy, and public relations and corporate communications.

The basic skills and characters expected of each member of the Member Services team include:

• Detail-oriented, initiative, able to work independently;
• Capable of communicating (written and verbal) effectively in both English and Chinese and excellent in management reporting tools;
• Ability to show the right judgment on problems, and demonstrate the superb ability of prioritization while multitasking;
• Strong sense of community and be able to demonstrate flexibility and willingness to support others.

On top of those, in order to fulfill the job’s responsibilities and expectations, each Committee Manager/Associate is expected to demonstrate the following strong educational background and business and organizational skills:

Minimum two years of work experience in event, business development, government relations, and consulting.  Fresh graduates from college and graduates in these related fields of studies with strong extra-curricular records are also highly preferred;

• Prior in-depth subject matter knowledge of the Agriculture, Food, and Beverage industry is a plus.
• Strong sense of organizational behavior and processes, excellent team and people skills to be able to manage KPI delivery through working with multiple internal and external stakeholders;
• Maintain productive engagement and relationship with key member companies and individual members;
• Be able to manage membership and engagement database corresponding to the designated Committees.
• Be able to learn and understand key subject matter and business knowledge;
• As a team player, leverage skills, expertise, resources, and support from different teams to deliver successful execution of Committee programs.