Director of FP&A

ABOUT PUBLIC SCHOOL

Public School is a creative studio that helps brands find their way through new audiences and culture. We operate as part of the Czarnowski Collective — a full-service brand experience agency whose homegrown studios include:

• Czarnowski, Event and Exhibit Studio
• Public School, Creative Studio
• Infusion, Digital & Visualization Studio
• Assembly, Temporary Structures Studio

We offer Brand Strategy & Planning, Creative Design & Production, and Talent & Influencer Management.  We do all this to create Branding, Integrated Campaigns, Experiential Engagements & Sponsorship Activities.

POSITION SUMMARY

The Director of FP&A – Public School is the senior finance leader embedded in the Public School studio and the primary financial partner to its leadership team. Reporting to the Head of FP&A, this role owns the studio's forecast, annual operating plan, and long-range outlook, and is accountable for the analytical rigor behind how Public School prices work, staffs it, delivers it, and makes money on it.

This is deliberately a two-sided role. On the agency side, you will manage the financial accountability of  utilization, billable rates, staffing plans, retainer and project revenue recognition, and the economics of creative and strategy labor. On the production side, you will oversee job costing, work-in-process, project margin, change-order discipline, and post-project profitability review. Success means the studio's leaders make faster, better-informed decisions — on which pitches to chase, how to resource them, and where margin is actually created or lost.

This is a business-partnering role first and a reporting role second. You are expected to be in the room for pitch pricing, resourcing debates, and client profitability conversations — not just to publish the variance report afterward.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Planning, Forecasting & Budgeting

• Own the division P&L forecast. Lead the annual operating plan, quarterly reforecasts, and rolling monthly outlook for Public School, consolidating agency services and production revenue into a single, defensible view.
• Build the revenue bridge. Model booked, contracted, pipeline-weighted, and at-risk revenue; translate the new-business pipeline into a resourced, deliverable forecast rather than a wish list.
• Drive the long-range plan. Develop multi-year scenarios that reflect client concentration, category mix, headcount investment, and capability expansion.
• Manage cost and headcount planning. Own the studio's labor model, contractor and freelance spend, overhead allocations, and capital requests.
• Run scenario and sensitivity analysis. Quantify the financial impact of a lost account, a delayed activation, a rate change, or a step-up in headcount before leadership has to commit.

Agency Economics & Utilization

• Own utilization and realization reporting. Track billable versus non-billable hours, target versus actual utilization by discipline and by person, and realization against rate card.
• Support pricing and rate card strategy. Partner with studio and account leadership on rate card construction, blended-rate pricing, retainer sizing, and scope-to-fee alignment.
• Analyze client and account profitability. Produce recurring client-level P&Ls covering fee revenue, pass-throughs, direct labor, and allocated overhead; surface accounts that are structurally unprofitable and recommend remedies.
• Evaluate new business. Model the margin and resourcing implications of major pitches and RFPs, and provide a clear go/no-go financial point of view.
• Monitor staffing efficiency. Connect resourcing decisions to financial outcomes — freelance versus full-time, seniority mix, and capacity against the forward pipeline.

Project & Job Cost Management (Production)

• Own job costing discipline. Ensure estimates, budgets, and actuals reconcile at the job level across creative, fabrication, logistics, and on-site execution.
• Manage work-in-process and revenue recognition. Partner with Accounting on percentage-of-completion, WIP schedules, accrual accuracy, and revenue timing across multi-period activations.
• Enforce change-order and scope-creep controls. Build the reporting and cadence that catches unbilled scope before the job closes, not after.
• Lead post-project reviews. Run structured estimate-versus-actual reviews on major projects, identify the root causes of margin erosion, and feed those findings back into future estimating.
• Track project margin at every stage. Deliver visibility into margin at bid, at award, in flight, and at close — with clear accountability for the variances between them.

Business Partnership & Decision Support

• Serve as trusted advisor to studio leadership. Act as the finance voice in operating reviews, resourcing decisions, and strategic planning for Public School.
• Translate numbers into decisions. Deliver analysis that ends in a recommendation, with the trade-offs and assumptions made explicit.
• Partner across the Collective. Work with peers supporting the Czarnowski, Infusion, and Assembly studios on shared clients, intercompany work, cross-studio pricing, and consolidated reporting.
• Support cash and working capital. Partner with Accounting and Treasury on billing milestones, collections risk, deposit terms, and project cash timing.
• Influence without authority. Build credibility with creative and account leaders who do not report to you and are not primarily motivated by financial metrics.

Reporting, Systems & Process

• Own the division's management reporting package. Deliver monthly and quarterly reporting with variance commentary that explains cause, not just magnitude.
• Define and maintain KPIs. Establish the metric set for the hybrid model — utilization, realization, gross margin by revenue type, revenue per FTE, pipeline conversion, project margin variance.
• Improve systems and data integrity. Drive improvements in ERP, project accounting, time capture, and planning tools; reduce manual effort and reconciliation risk.
• Standardize and automate. Replace one-off spreadsheet analysis with repeatable, auditable reporting that scales as the studio grows.
• Ensure compliance and control. Maintain adherence to GAAP, internal controls, and Collective-wide financial policies and close calendars.

Leadership & Team Development

• Lead and develop the FP&A team. Hire, coach, and grow analysts supporting the division; set clear standards for analytical quality and business fluency.
• Raise financial literacy across the studio. Educate non-finance leaders on job economics, utilization, and margin drivers so better decisions get made without finance in the room.
• Model the Collective's operating principles. Work across studio lines in a "zero silos" environment where collaboration is the operating model, not an aspiration.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field.
• 8+ years of progressive FP&A, corporate finance, or commercial finance experience, including 3+ years at a manager or director level.
• Demonstrated ownership of a divisional or business-unit P&L, including full budget, forecast, and long-range planning cycles.
• Hands-on experience with project-based or job-cost accounting — percentage-of-completion, WIP, estimate-to-actual analysis, and project margin management.
• Working knowledge of services-business economics: utilization, billable rates, realization, and labor-driven margin.
• Advanced Excel and financial modeling capability; fluency with ERP and planning systems and with BI tools such as Power BI or Tableau.
• Proven ability to partner with and influence non-financial leaders, including creative, production, and client-facing teams.
• Strong written and verbal communication — able to present a clear financial narrative to senior leadership.

Preferred

• MBA, CPA, or CMA.
• Experience in experiential marketing, event production, advertising, brand or creative agency, architecture and design, engineering services, or construction — any environment combining professional services with physical production.
• Experience in a multi-entity, multi-studio, or multi-brand organization with shared services and intercompany activity.
• Private-equity-backed or transaction-exposed experience, including lender reporting, EBITDA bridges, and integration or carve-out support.
• Experience implementing or materially upgrading an ERP, project accounting, or CPM/planning platform.
• Familiarity with time-capture and resource-management platforms used in agency environments.

Czarnowski Collective offers a comprehensive benefits package, which includes:

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• 401(k) with company match
• Paid time off and company holidays
• Life and disability insurance
• Professional development support, including certification and continuing education assistanc

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

Czarnowski Collective is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to building a team that reflects the audiences and cultures our work is made for. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Reasonable accommodations are available to applicants and employees with disabilities. 

This job description outlines the general nature and level of work expected of the role. It is not an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, or skills required, and may be modified at any time at the discretion of Czarnowski Collective.