Director, Business Strategy, Advisor Services

Your Opportunity

In Advisor Services (AS) we have built our business on serving the needs of RIAs and advancing an industry that helps the advisor and their clients thrive.  We understand their needs, and work side by side providing them the support to help them manage their firm and meet their goals.  AS supports more than 16,000 independent advisory firms, representing over $5 trillion in client assets, and is a key contributor to Schwab’s overall growth in client assets and net new asset flows.

The RIA industry is at a strategic inflection point, with artificial intelligence rising to be a transformational tool in enabling advisors to scale operations, while also enabling deeper and more personalized relationships with clients.  The custodian who enables this transformation will emerge as a differentiated market-leader.  The newly formed AS Artificial Intelligence and Partner Ecosystem organization will lead this charge on behalf of AS – defining how AS can both directly bring AI to life for advisors, but also how we power the broader fintech ecosystem serving RIAs.

We are seeking a high-leverage, senior individual contributor operating at director level with enterprise scope and executive visibility to join this team. In this role, you will help define and drive the forward-looking AI strategy for Advisor Services, shaping how Schwab delivers AI-powered capabilities to advisors and scales through the fintech ecosystem. This role will shape and drive decision-making across the AS AI portfolio, enabling prioritization, tradeoff decisions, developing build/buy/partner strategies, and executive-level reporting across all advisor-facing AI initiatives.   You will define and continuously refine the AS AI “big bets” and associated investment thesis, ensuring alignment with business priorities and market opportunities.  This role will serve as the central integrator, ensuring alignment across a complex, federated operating model spanning enterprise and corporate strategy, product, ecosystem, data, and governance domains.  You will track and drive realization of AI strategy outcomes, partnering with finance and product leaders to connect strategy to measurable business impact.

What You’ll Do:

• Drive strategy and structured problem solving: Lead the development of a 3-5 year strategy across advisor-facing platforms and initiatives, defining opportunities, structuring work, conducting fact-based analysis, and developing strategic frameworks to guide decisions grounded in measurable outcomes.
• Drive strategic insights and decision frameworks: Analyze market, client, and competitive trends; complete industry benchmarking. Translate insights into clear, actionable recommendations. Develop and continuously refine core AI strategy artifacts, including the AI strategy charter, big bets portfolio, prioritization frameworks, and executive reporting materials
• Own development of data-driven business cases: Evaluate opportunities through market/opportunity sizing, scenario analysis, financial and impact assessment, tying to measurable advisor and firm outcomes including adoption, productivity, NNA, and revenue.  Identify and frame key tradeoffs across competing initiatives, investments, and timelines
• Influence and align stakeholders: Drive alignment and decision-making across senior AS leaders and enterprise functions using strong judgment and collaboration, including preparing recommendations and materials for executive forums and governance bodies
• Communicate with clarity: Create compelling presentations that synthesize complex issues into clear, concise narratives that articulate strategic rationale and recommendations
• Lean into adaptability: Adapt to evolving priorities and drive progress in face of ambiguity, and complex, fast-paced environments

What you have

• Minimum 10+ years of total work experience, including 5+ years in business strategy, management consulting, corporate strategy, or a related strategic leadership role
• Strong acumen in financial services and wealth management
• Deep intellectual curiosity about AI technologies
• Proven ability to lead complex strategic initiatives from problem definition through analysis, narrative development and recommendations, alignment and decision-making across all levels of the enterprise
• Curiosity and a love of exploring market research, industry trends, competitive intelligence, client insights, operational inputs; Ability to synthesize these into clear recommendations
• Strategic thinker with strong business judgement and analytical skills, including financial modeling
• Highly resourceful, adaptable, and creative problem solver who can thrive in a dynamic environment, drive progress in the face of ambiguity, and meet evolving business needs
• Exceptional executive communication skills, including the ability to craft compelling presentations, board-level materials, and concise narratives for senior audiences
• Exceptional executive presence, emotional maturity, collaboration and influencing skills
• Experience partnering across product / offer management, sales, service, finance, technology, legal, risk, compliance, operations, and other enterprise functions