Venture Development Officer

Royal Avenue Investments is a diversified investment and operating group with ventures across hospitality, F&B, retail, e-commerce, tech, fintech, education, healthcare, and entertainment.

Our mission is to partner with ambitious international brands and institutions and scale them across the GCC and beyond.

We are seeking a Venture Development Officer with strong experience in education partnerships, university collaborations, and institutional business development, who can help structure and grow our education-related ventures while contributing to cross-sector opportunities.

What You'll Do

• Support the development of strategic partnerships with universities, academic institutions, and education providers.
• Identify, evaluate, and help structure joint programs, executive education, certifications, incubators, or industry-linked academic initiatives
  
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• Manage the end-to-end partnership lifecycle: outreach ? discovery ? proposal ? commercial structuring ? negotiation ? agreement.
• Act as a key liaison between academic stakeholders and internal commercial teams.
• Prepare business cases, concept notes, proposals, and briefing materials for leadership.
• Coordinate with legal, finance, and operations to ensure commercial viability and scalability.
• Track pipeline progress and provide weekly reporting on leads, opportunities, and deal status.
• Contribute to venture scouting across adjacent sectors when required.

• 57 years experience in business development, partnerships, venture development, or strategy.
• Proven exposure to education, higher education, corporate training, or institutional partnerships.
• Experience working with universities, training institutions, or academic stakeholders is a strong advantage.
• Strong commercial mindset with the ability to translate academic concepts into viable business models.
• Comfortable engaging senior stakeholders (Deans, Directors, CEOs, Founders).
• Highly organized, proactive, and resilient in fast-paced environments.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.