In this position, you will report to the Deputy Director, Strategy Planning & Management. To be successful in this role, you must be a excellent strategist who can guide multiple teams in developing their strategies in support of the overall K-12 strategy with a demonstrated commitment to serving Black, Latino, and low-income students. Your analytic and quantitative skills will be leveraged not only in strategy development but in implementation and monitoring of team strategies. Current and former management consultants are highly encouraged to apply for this position.
Before diving into your responsibilities, here are some key terms that are important to understand:
- Investments: Individual grants or contracts
- Bodies of Work: A collection of grants or contracts held by a team. Each body of work develops an investment portfolio only after developing their strategy, including a Theory of Change, Theory of Action, and investment plan.
Areas of Responsibility:
Strategy Development and Execution Support
- Provide critical leadership support to the Strategy Operations team and embedded Deputy Director(s) in translating strategy goals into coherent body of work level theory of action and investment plans, working with program officers.
- Guide program officers to ensure that portfolio investments are strategically aligned, and outcomes are defined that will lead to impact on key strategy goals. May consult with program officers on the early stage development of program investments.
- Facilitate the processes involved to define success metrics for body of work level grants including design of resources to track progress and learning in strategy implementation.
Investment Support
- Provide oversight of strategic planning, annual planning and budgeting, ongoing pipeline and portfolio management, business analysis, and the coordination of portfolios across the K-12 team.
- Conduct ongoing research, provide background data and information, and prepare analytic models in support of program teams.
Operations and Staff Productivity
- Facilitate process definition and improvement efforts in support of staff productivity. Work with program staff to identify process gaps and inefficiencies that impedes effectiveness. This role promotes efficiency and productivity on the team by providing leadership and support in process development and improvement, implementation and improvement of infrastructure, analysis and reporting, and change management.
- Ensure smooth implementation of operational initiatives through rigorous assessment, planning and execution of project management, and change management strategies.
Educational Background:
Advanced degree (MBA degree preferred) with 7+ years of experience (10+ years of experience/3-5 years strategy consulting experience in education/non-profit preferred) or equivalent experience (in K-12 and/or higher preferred)
Skills/Experience:
Strategy & Leadership
- Problem Solving and Insight Generation: Ability to work on complex problems as a strategist. Experience creating analytical models/resources and ability to communicate results to inform sound strategic and tactical decisions.
- Leadership: Demonstrated excellence in influence and guidance, ability to strengthen trust, is a team leader and player who motivates and educates other team members and understands the value of interpersonal relationship building.
- Decision Making: Ability to act autonomously to determine methods and procedures on assignments. Exercise self-guided judgment within broadly defined practices and policies in selecting methods, techniques and evaluation criteria for obtaining results. Decisions may require deep analysis and consideration of strategic, financial, and organizational interactions.
Project Management & Teamwork
- Change Management: Able to identify shifts in mindsets, operating assumptions and behaviors that are necessary to implement change and in defining and implementing a change management plan to facilitate the shifts
- Project Management: Ability to develop multiple projects simultaneously. Includes measuring project results, creating dashboards, planning and scoping the work, establishing governance and stakeholders, organizing and tracking financial and business operations in support of team priorities, organizing work meaningfully, designing appropriate solutions, implementing the solutions, managing change, communicating, and monitoring for ultimate impact/effectiveness.
- Complexity & Ambiguity: Comfort and ability to work in a matrixed environment with ambiguity, and in that environment, have the ability to make decisions requiring prioritization of team needs and concerns.
Communications & Persuasion
- Presentation and Persuasion: Ability to serve as an advocate by skillfully and reliably exercising sound judgment on behalf of your constituents. You are expected to assess needs, solution options, and issues and risks inherent in the options. Based on that assessment, you will be expected either to present a recommendation for review and approval by stakeholders or, in some cases, to make a choice on behalf of stakeholders.
- Written Communication: Ability to produce professional materials (reports, presentations, memos) based on analysis surrounding education issues, hypotheses, conclusions, and recommendations for implementing change.
Technical
- Finance/Budgets: Ability to develop and monitor budgets and understand the overall team impact.
- Process/Structures: Ability to create structures and develop frameworks to increase clarity and transparency of decisions, trade-offs and impact on financial and organizational resources.
- Software: Expertise in PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Outlook, SharePoint, and related software.
Job Function:
Organization Info
Listing Stats
Post Date:
Jan 25 2018
Active Until:
Feb 25 2018
Hiring Organization:
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
industry:
Nonprofit