Senior Director, Leadership for Student Success
JOB SUMMARY:
Think Together is a California nonprofit that partners with schools to change the odds for kids. Founded in 1997, Think Together operates the greatest number of expanded learning programs across California, serving ~100K students, and is home to a suite of additional programs that aim to drive systemic change across California’s public-school systems.
Leadership for Student Success (LSS) is a new initiative incubated at Think Together to support public education system leaders –Superintendents and School Boards – to succeed in their roles, and to drive broader systemic change across the state. LSS will provide a set of programmatic offerings, including cohort trainings, executive coaching, and board governance support, for future superintendents, current superintendents, and their school board members. With an ambitious goal to reach a quarter of all districts in California in the next three years, LSS is looking for a self-starting program operations leader to work closely with the CEO and President of LSS to launch and grow the initiative.
The Senior Director, LSS is primarily responsible for supporting the launch and ambitious growth plans of LSS, including managing day-to-day operations and implementing organizational processes. The Senior Director, LSS will work closely with the LSS leadership team, providing a high level of support to program operations, fund development, and partnership management. This position reports to the President of LSS and will initially supervise 1-2 team members (to be hired).
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
Program Strategy and Operations
• Directly support President to manage day-to-day LSS program operations across the core offerings of cohort-based training programs, 1:1 coaching, and board governance support services.
• Support President to identify and deploy necessary resources, develop, and implement processes, and lead internal and external initiatives that support launch and growth of LSS’s programs based on 2024 plan and 3-year benchmarks.
• Lead cross-functional teams, including overseeing collaboration between the curriculum, training, and coaching staff and support teams including development, finance, HR, marketing, and measurement and evaluation.
• Set and track KPIs to measure team success and coordinate goals across teams.
• Prepare annual program budget and conduct budget review with executive leadership.
• Serve as a liaison between LSS leadership and the Think Together executive team to ensure ongoing bi-directional support between LSS and the broader Think Together team. Fund Development
• Collaborate with the Development team to cultivate major donors, including profiling donors and their giving history, preparing meeting materials/ talking points, and coordinating meeting schedules.
• Draft outreach materials and presentations to communicate LSS vision with potential funding partners. Partner Relations
• Support the CEO & President in cultivating and managing external partnerships.
• Research current and prospective partners.
• Develop business model for potential partnerships.
• Prepare meeting agendas and materials for partner meetings.
• Work with Think Together legal team to draft and review formal partnership agreements as needed.
• Serve as a liaison with key partners.
QUALIFICATIONS AND REQUIREMENTS:
• Bachelor’s degree in Bachelor’s degree is required. An advanced degree is preferred.
• 8-10 years of experience, including at least 3 years of experience in roles requiring strategic planning, project management, executive communications, and analytical problem solving
• Experience supporting cross-functional and executive level teams. Experience supporting academic leaders such as superintendents, school boards, and/or other school administrators preferred.
• Education and/or nonprofit professional experience a plus.
• Exceptional organization, time-management, communication, and analytical skills
• Demonstrable passion and commitment to working in the field of education and to Think Together’s mission and vision.
• Highly refined strategic lens and an ability to translate strategy into concrete action plans.
• Ability to draw insights from data and to translate those insights into compelling materials.
• Well-rounded interpersonal skills with the capacity to build strong internal and external relationships and work effectively in a fast-paced team environment.
• Tact, humility, and discretion; able to represent Think Together in a highly professional manner and to serve as a positive role model and collaborator for external and internal stakeholders.
• Passionate about identifying and driving improvements and deploying best practices within an evolving, entrepreneurial environment.
• Must be willing to work evenings or weekends as needed to support delivery of trainings to superintendents and school boards when their schedules allow.
• Must be willing to travel to off-site meetings, trainings, and events.
OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES:
• Maintain highest degree of confidentiality.
• Comply with organization policies and follow procedures.
• Must provide proof of a negative tuberculosis (TB) test within the last 12 months or complete a TB test upon hire.
COMPUTER SKILLS:
• Proficient with Microsoft Office Suite, Outlook, and Teams
• Strong proficiency in the use of Excel, Pivot tables, VLOOKUP, SharePoint, and PowerPoint.
• Exceptional skills with MS Excel, data organization, and MS PowerPoint presentation.
COMPENSATION:
This is the targeted compensation for the position. A range of factors, including but not limited to; location, skills, experience, will be considered. Actual compensation may vary.
Think Together is an Equal Opportunity Employer that does not discriminate on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, religious creed, physical disability, mental disability, age for individuals age 40 and over, medical condition (as defined by state law (for example, cancer or genetic characteristics or HIV/AIDS), marital status, military and veteran status, sexual orientation, genetic information, citizenship status or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. Our management team is dedicated to this policy with respect to recruitment, hiring, placement, promotion, transfer, training, compensation, benefits, employee activities and general treatment during employment.