[Hiring] Account Director @Acceleration Community of Companies (ACC)

Role Description

We are not your typical PR agency. This is not your typical AD role.

• Run accounts like a pro.
• Generate ideas that actually get picked up, not just sent.
• Read culture (and Gen Z) faster than the trend hits your FYP.
• Know what’s legal to say about a THC gummy on Instagram.

This is a senior, client-facing role for a communications leader who thrives in categories other agencies find too complicated, too regulated, or too unconventional. If you know the difference between Delta-8 and Delta-9, understand why the World’s Largest Pot Brownie wasn’t a stunt but a stock-moving event, and have an opinion about where cannabis, wellness, and functional beverages go next — keep reading.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the Work:
  • Own integrated communications strategy across earned media, influencer, creative, and executive visibility for a tight roster of cannabis, CBD, wellness, and adjacent regulated-category clients.
  • Turn briefs into breakthrough ideas, the kind that get the AP to file, land on Colbert, and move stock prices.
  • Build annual comms plans, editorial calendars, messaging platforms, and campaign frameworks with KPIs that actually tie to client business.
  • Navigate platform restrictions, ad bans, state-by-state regulatory complexity, and category-specific legal guardrails with the confidence of someone who’s already been there.
• Generate the ideas:
  • Invent the moments. Pickleball in Central Park, Danksgiving, Way to 420, the World’s Largest Pot Brownie; those weren’t briefed; they were conceived. You’ll be the engine that keeps that coming.
  • Know what’s landing where from Forbes and Bloomberg to High Times, The Fresh Toast, and Rolling Stone and what will land where next.
  • Read culture at velocity. Anticipate trend cycles, cultural tentpoles, and subculture shifts before they’re mainstream, and turn that instinct into pitch angles, PR stunts, and survey-led news hooks.
  • Operate with Gen Z fluency; you don’t just know the platforms (TikTok, Reels, Substack, Discord, even Reddit), you know the tone, pacing, and creator ecosystem well enough to pitch campaigns that resonate there natively.
• Own the client relationship:
  • Be the trusted advisor for CMOs, CEOs, and founders betting their business on how their brand shows up.
  • Lead client meetings with the calm authority of someone who has an answer before the question lands.
  • Provide proactive counsel on issues management, crisis, and high-stakes moments.
  • Spot organic growth inside accounts and help shape new business pitches.
• Drive breakthrough earned media:
  • Oversee press materials, messaging, pitch angles, thought leadership, bylines, and story arcs that make reporters at top-tier outlets actually open the email.
  • Leverage and actively expand relationships with media, cannabis and wellness influencers, and cultural tastemakers — from national news desks to niche trade publications.
  • Partner with creator and influencer networks to extend earned work into social and community spaces.
• Lead the team:
  • Mentor publicists and account staff; review every deliverable with the same care you’d give your biggest pitch.
  • Manage resources across a capped book of business. We curate our roster on purpose, and we expect the same focus from the people who run it.
  • Foster a collaborative, high-performing, fully remote team environment across time zones.

Qualifications

• 9–12 years in PR, communications, or integrated marketing, with agency experience strongly preferred.
• Category fluency: You’ve worked on cannabis, CBD, psychedelics, health and wellness, functional beverage, beverage alcohol, or an equivalently regulated CPG category.
• Cultural fluency: You are plugged in. You have a POV on what’s happening in music, fashion, food, internet culture, and Gen Z behavior.
• Creative brain: You generate ideas: stunts, data stories, partnerships, moments — not just press releases.
• Trend-forward: You’re reading Business of Fashion, Garbage Day, The Cannigma, and MJBizDaily.
• Media relationships: You’ve built them, not inherited them. Top-tier consumer, business, trade, and lifestyle.
• Sharp writing: Decks, messaging platforms, press releases, bylines, crisis statements, executive comms — all at a level that doesn’t need heavy editing.
• Presence: Present to a boardroom without breaking a sweat. Take feedback without breaking stride.
• Operating style: Entrepreneurial. Comfortable with ambiguity, fast decisions, and a roster that demands senior attention every day.
• Humor: Required. This industry takes itself seriously sometimes; we try not to.

Requirements

• Salary range: $85,000 - $100,000
• Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on various factors including market considerations, budgetary considerations, and the employee’s/applicant’s background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.

Benefits

• Equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees.
• No discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, gender or sex, national origin, ancestry, age, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, family and medical care leave status, military or veteran status, marital status, family status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
• Reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities.