Events and Program Manager

Events and Program Manager

Chennai | In-office + Travel | Full-time

Who we are:

LevelUp Learning is India's largest alternate education ecosystem. We build programs for filmmakers, Founders, Professionals, Builders, editors, writers, designers, photographers, and creators who are serious about their craft. Not casual learners. People with actual ambition.

Across three verticals, we run:

• Masterclasses taught by India's best: directors like Nelson Dilipkumar and Karthik Subbaraj, award-winning editors, photographers, and composers
• LevelUp LIVE, cohort-based online programs where students learn cinematography, direction, screenwriting, video editing, and content creation from working industry professionals
• The Forge, our invite-only offline creative residency bootcamp

300,000+ Instagram followers. 200,000+ community members. We're not an ed-tech company. We're a creative movement.

What is The Forge:

The Forge is where learning meets travel meets community. It's an invite-only creative residency where a small group of selected filmmakers, writers, and creators travel together to a new city, live together, create together, and leave with something real: a short film, a finished script, a body of content, and a group of people they'll know for life.

Every edition is designed to be immersive. Participants don't just attend sessions. They're dropped into an environment built entirely for creating: the right city, the right mentors, the right people around them, and a schedule that pushes them from idea to finished work in 7 to 10 days.

We've run editions across India and we're now expanding to destinations like Dharamshala, Goa, Coorg, Dehradun, Kuala Lumpur, Sri Lanka, and Bali. Each location is chosen intentionally for the energy it brings to the creative process.

The Role:

We need someone who can run the entire Forge experience from start to finish. Not just the event on the ground. The full arc: the online preparatory program, the curriculum build, the logistics, the hosting, and everything in between. Think of this as a showrunner role. You own it end to end with our Chennai team.

What you'll own:

• Managing the complete program lifecycle: online prep sessions, participant communications, curriculum and schedule curation, and the offline residency itself
• End to end logistics across every edition: venue, travel, accommodation, meals, equipment, local vendors, and on-ground operations across cities and countries
• Being the host at every residency. The first face participants see, the person keeping the energy right, making everyone feel at home, and handling whatever comes up quietly and quickly
• Coordinating with mentors, videographers, editors, and external partners across every location
• Running online cohort sessions before each residency with the same ownership and energy as the offline program
• Working closely with the founders and the Chennai team on shaping the experience, schedule, and curriculum of every edition

What this role actually gives you:

This is not a typical event manager job. Most event managers execute someone else's vision. Here you'll be building it.

Every Forge edition runs across a different creative discipline: filmmaking, screenwriting, content creation, and more as we expand. You'll be working directly with the mentors running each program, sitting in on sessions, understanding the craft, and helping shape how it's taught and experienced. Over time you'll become a genuine subject matter expert across every domain we work in, not just someone who knows the schedule.

You'll work directly with the founders and the core team on curriculum design, participant experience, and what each edition should feel and accomplish. That kind of access is rare in any role, let alone one this early in a company's journey. If you're curious, if you genuinely love creative people and creative work, and if you want to build something that hasn't been built before in India, this will be one of the most interesting jobs you've ever had.

You're a fit if:

• You've managed events or programs end to end and you know what it feels like when something goes wrong at 11pm in an unfamiliar city and you've fixed it without anyone noticing
• Your English communication is excellent. Knowing additional languages is a big plus given the cities and countries we operate in
• You're a natural host. You walk into a room and make people feel welcome immediately
• You're operationally sharp: logistics, timelines, checklists, vendor calls, none of it overwhelms you
• You're genuinely curious about creative fields and excited about the people working in them
• Travel is not a compromise for you. It's part of why you want this role
• You want to be involved in the thinking, not just the doing

You're not a fit if:

• You see event management as just coordination and not as hospitality and experience design
• You're not comfortable being away from home for extended stretches
• You need a lot of hand-holding to make decisions on the ground
• You treat participants like attendees and not like people who've invested real money and trust into an experience they'll remember

The role is based in Chennai. You'll work from our office with the team between residencies. When a Forge edition is running, you're there.

Compensation: Based on experience