Account Director, Higher Education

About the Role As an Account Director for Higher Education in AMER, you will own strategic relationships with colleges, universities, and higher education systems as they move from AI experimentation to responsible, institution-wide transformation. You will work with presidents, provosts, CIOs, CTOs, academic and administrative leaders, researchers, security teams, and procurement stakeholders to define priority use cases, build the technical and governance foundation for deployment, and translate institutional goals into a multi-year AI transformation roadmap. You will own the commercial and customer journey end to end—from territory strategy, pipeline creation, and executive alignment through evaluation, procurement, deployment, adoption, consumption, value realization, and expansion. This is a deeply technical, consultative sales role. You will be expected to understand AI capabilities and limitations, integration patterns, data governance, privacy, security, and change management; partner effectively with technical experts; and remain accountable for measurable customer and revenue outcomes after signature. In this role, you will: Own and execute the AMER higher education territory and account strategy, prioritizing institutions where OpenAI can support meaningful, responsible, and scalable transformation. Create pipeline and lead complex, multi-threaded new-business and expansion opportunities from first engagement through procurement, deployment, adoption, and value rea