Position Summary
This role is part of our returnship (Return to Corporate) program, designed to provide experienced professionals re-entering the workforce with an opportunity to re-engage, refresh, and contribute meaningfully. Participants will receive mentorship, onboarding, and exposure to senior stakeholders. Typically, Return to Corporate consultants are on a 6 month contract and work part time, 3 days a week, in our DC or NYC office.
The Creative Director Consultant is responsible for overseeing and implementing Carlyle's visual identity across all external marketing and communications channels. Reporting to the Global Head of Content, this consulting opportunity focuses on how Carlyle's brand is expressed visually, ensuring consistency, clarity, and integrity across touchpoints.
With a firmwide brand refresh launching shortly, alongside a new website redesign, a refreshed content strategy, new sponsorships, and growing engagement in the wealth channel, this role is critical to advancing and protecting Carlyle's brand.
The Creative Director Consultant will assume full ownership of Carlyle's visual system, art direction, and design standards. While the Head of Content delivers the firm's content strategy and leads the content marketing team in execution, the Creative Director defines how the brand is conveyed visually and ensures that execution aligns with Carlyle's values, audience expectations, and regulatory requirements.
This consulting opportunity is designed for an experienced creative leader returning to a corporate environment in a part-time capacity, bringing senior judgment, hands-on art direction, and disciplined brand stewardship.
The ideal candidate will complement the reactive, tactical responsibilities of this role with a proactive, owners' mindset that brings structure and governance to our visual identity - while also providing art direction when needed, as well as delivering strong brand judgment and visual storytelling skills.
Core competencies include:
- Disciplined, detail-oriented approach to design governance.
- Clear point of view on creative quality and consistency.
- Ability to translate complex business and investment concepts into refined visual expressions.
- Collaborative mindset with a strong sense of ownership and accountability.
Primary Responsibilities
Brand Stewardship and Visual Identity
- Own and protect Carlyle's global visual identity following the transition from external brand partners.
- Serve as the firm's internal authority on brand expression, art direction, and design quality across all marketing and communications.
- Ensure consistent application of the brand across regions, channels, and audiences, including institutional, wealth, and retirement-oriented communications.
- Provide guidance and approvals on creative execution to maintain alignment with Carlyle's brand standards and editorial voice.
Design System and UX Standards
- Lead the development and documentation of a comprehensive design system, expanding beyond the existing style guide.
- Define and document UX standards and visual patterns to ensure consistency, accessibility, and usability across digital properties.
- Partner with digital marketing, video, website, and technology teams to embed brand standards into workflows and platforms.
- Ensure the design system evolves thoughtfully as business needs, audiences, and channels expand.
Creative Direction and Execution
- Provide hands-on art direction and creative leadership across priority initiatives, balancing direct contribution with review and guidance.
- Set creative direction for major firm initiatives, including brand campaigns, website experiences, advertising, sponsorships, and flagship content series.
- Translate strategic objectives and messaging into clear creative frameworks and visual concepts.
- Help teams creatively ideate on a wide range of branded deliverables from videos, to animated GIFs, to brochures, to social posts, and more.
- Review and elevate creative output across channels, providing clear, constructive direction to external design and UX partners.
- Balance innovation with brand discipline, ensuring creative work is differentiated but appropriate for institutional and wealth audiences.
Vendor and Stakeholder Leadership
- Serve as the primary creative lead for internal stakeholders, providing clear direction, prioritization, and partnership.
- Support the oversight of external design, UX, and creative vendors, with a focus on quality, efficiency, and consistency.
- Collaborate closely with the Head of Content to align visual execution with content strategy.
Governance and Compliance
- Ensure all creative work aligns with Carlyle's brand guidelines, editorial standards, and regulatory requirements.
- Partner with Legal and Compliance teams as needed to ensure visual communication supports approved messaging and disclosures.
- Maintain disciplined review and approval processes for creative assets.
Requirements
Education & Certificates
- Bachelor's degree in design, visual communications, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Experience
- Two or more years removed from a corporate environment
- Ten or more years of experience in creative direction, brand design, or visual communications, preferably within financial services, asset management, or similarly regulated industries.
- Demonstrated experience owning and evolving a complex brand across multiple channels and audiences.
- Strong understanding of digital design systems, UX principles, and modern web standards.
- Experience leading major brand transitions, redesigns, or platform launches.
- Ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on creative leadership.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence across senior stakeholders.
- Comfortable operating in a fast-moving environment with evolving priorities.
Benefits/Compensation
The compensation range for this role is specific to Washington, DC, and takes into account a wide range of factors including but not limited to the skill sets required/preferred; prior experience and training; licenses and/or certifications.
The anticipated monthly rate will be around $12,500.
Due to the high volume of candidates, please be advised that only candidates selected to interview will be contacted by Carlyle. Please attach a short cover letter explaining your career break and why you are interested in getting back to a corporate setting.
Company Profile
The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) is a global investment firm with $474 billion of assets under management and more than half of the AUM managed by women, across 660 investment vehicles as of September 30, 2025. Founded in 1987 in Washington, DC, Carlyle has grown into one of the world's largest and most successful investment firms, with more than 2,400 professionals operating in 27 offices in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. Carlyle places an emphasis on development, retention and inclusion as supported by our internal processes and seven Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Carlyle's purpose is to invest wisely and create value on behalf of its investors, which range from public and private pension funds to wealthy individuals and families to sovereign wealth funds, unions and corporations. Carlyle invests across three segments - Global Private Equity, Global Credit and Carlyle AlpInvest - and has expertise in various industries, including: aerospace, defense & government services, consumer & retail, energy, financial services, healthcare, industrial, real estate, technology & business services, telecommunications & media and transportation.
At Carlyle, we believe that a wide spectrum of experiences and viewpoints drives performance and success. Our CEO, Harvey Schwartz, has stated that, "To build better businesses and create value for all of our stakeholders, we are focused on assembling leadership teams with the strongest insights from a range of perspectives." We strive to foster an environment where ideas are openly shared and valued. By bringing together teams with varied expertise and approaches, we enjoy a competitive advantage and create a stronger foundation for long-term success.
