Senior Event Manager

About the Company:Based in San Diego, California, CovalentCreative is a technology and healthcare information company shaping the future of eyecare. Through leading brands like Eyes On Eyecare, Glance, and npiQ, we deliver innovative web applications, accredited education, and data-driven insights to tens of thousands of eyecare professionals. Our mission is to empower the people who care for vision with the tools, knowledge, and connections they need to excel.Eyes On Eyecare®, the #1 provider of leading-edge clinical and career education for the next generation of optometrists and ophthalmologists, is seeking a detail-oriented and organized individual to join our team. Through an all-in-one digital platform, we provide editorial content, industry news, events, CE/CME, courses, clinical content, market research, and talent acquisition.As our virtual events portfolio continues to grow—including large-scale summits, CE/CME-accredited programming, and sponsored webinars—we are seeking a Senior Events Manager to lead and scale our events operation.Position Overview:As Senior Events Manager, you’ll own the end-to-end production of our virtual events portfolio—from strategic planning and program development through execution and post-event reporting. You’ll be the operational backbone of every summit, webinar, CE/CME on-demand Course, and CE/CME event we produce, managing timelines that begin 6+ months before an event and extend weeks or months after.This role sits at the intersection of project management, educational programming, and client-facing event delivery. You’ll coordinate across nearly every department—marketing, design, video production, client services, development, and operations—to ensure every event runs on time, on brand, and on budget. You’ll also manage an Events Coordinator and oversee independent contractors who support event execution.Your job is to turn a date on the calendar into a polished, high-performing virtual event experience that delights attendees, satisfies sponsors, and builds the Eyes On Eyecare brand. If you thrive on complex project management, love the adrenaline of live production, and get satisfaction from building repeatable systems that scale, then this role will feel like home.Key Responsibilities:Strategic OversightEvaluate and evolve event production workflows — identify bottlenecks, redundancies, or manual steps across the event lifecycle and recommend process improvements that increase quality or reduce effortDefine and maintain production standards — establish consistent quality benchmarks for platform builds, livestream execution, speaker coordination, and post-event deliverables so the team isn't reinventing the wheel each cycleAssess and recommend production tooling and vendor relationships — evaluate whether current platforms, contractors, and tech stack are serving the team well or whether alternatives would improve reliability, cost, or scalabilityDrive post-mortem insights into structural changes — go beyond documenting what went wrong to actually redesigning processes, templates, or accountability structures based on patterns across eventsEvent Production & Project ManagementOwn the master timeline and process accountability chart for every event — tracking 200+ tasks across multiple teams from kickoff through post-mortemLead internal team kickoffs, pre-event meetings, all-hands, dry runs, and post-mortem debriefsManage event budgets in coordination with the operations team; track actuals against projectionsBuild and maintain all event pages and landing pages in our custom event builder platform (registration, schedule, speakers, exhibit hall, clinical track, conference bag, CE/CME hub, raffle, FAQ, and post-event pages)Coordinate event platform setup, including navigation, footers, Stripe payment integration, magic link emails, pop-ups, and player notificationsManage event-day operations: livestream coordination, real-time troubleshooting, attendee support, and HubSpot syncingOversee post-event landing page transitions, enduring content coordination, and event reportingEducational Programming & CE/CME CoordinationLead program chair relationships end-to-end: outreach, agreements, proposed agendas, meetings, moderator prep, and final instructionsManage the full CE/CME workflow—speaker invitations, paperwork submissions, ARBO/COPE/VME approvals, pre/post-test coordination, and credit-claiming setup—in partnership with the Events CoordinatorCoordinate speaker selection, session format decisions (pre-recorded vs. live), speaker information collection, and tech check schedulingOversee the creation of moderator event notes, agendas, slide deck templates, and presentation instructions for program chairsManage polling question coordination across CE speakers, internal teams, and moreSpeaker & Faculty ManagementOwn speaker coordination for all internal events—from initial selection through post-event publication hand-offManage speaker timelines, including credential