The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Postsecondary Success strategy seeks to transform colleges and universities to dramatically improve credential attainment and the eradication of equity gaps for low income and students of color. This strategy will assist in meeting the nation’s workforce development needs, specifically to produce 11 million more credentials in the United States by 2025, and concurrently to close attainment gaps by race/ethnicity and income.
We are currently seeking an exceptional candidate for Deputy Director of Strategy, Planning & Management (DDSPM) who enjoys the challenge of working on complex problems and collaboratively creating solutions that have the potential for transformational change in the lives of US Postsecondary students and their families. We seek a senior leader with a minimum of 10+ years of experience at the intersection of performance management, change management and higher education.
The DDSPM is responsible for leading the operational and financial aspects of an integrated program area including oversight of strategic planning and budgeting, quarterly portfolio performance reviews, ongoing investment pipeline and portfolio management, business analysis and the coordination of business strategies across the foundation. As an advisor to program leadership, will lead identification and implementation of process improvements, policies and procedures. Will also lead team learning agenda and may facilitate some partner learning and collaboration sessions in addition to:
- Drive alignment of team's work to strategy and implementation plans. Supports team’s formative evaluation of its own work in order to drive continuous improvement of our practices.
- Serve as the coordinator of a number of critical team capability building efforts.
- Ongoing strategy refinement and progress monitoring; responsible for leading annual strategy review process as well as quarterly strategy portfolio reviews
- Develop and execute portfolio management approach that fosters great stewardship, planning and resource allocation (inclusive of annual budgeting process)
- Oversee “Rhythm of Business” across our 40+ person team, aligning team time (inclusive of retreats and cross-org collaboration) to optimize against strategy priorities. This includes leading team learning agenda and may include facilitating cross-team partner learning and collaboration
- Lead prioritized cross-team initiatives as identified by Director
- Participate and lead cross-foundation initiatives focused on strategy and process improvement
- Coordinate Foundation business partner engagements to ensure the Postsecondary team benefits from expertise offered by teams such as Legal , HR, Grants Management, FP&A, etc
- Serve as critical thought partner to Director on issues related to team performance, development and workforce planning
- This role manages people and may be responsible for hiring the talent needed to achieve our goals, ensuring successful employee onboarding, communicating performance expectations, creating goal alignment, integrating project and change management, giving and seeking feedback, providing coaching, measuring progress and holding people accountable, supporting employee development, and recognizing achievement and lessons learned.
The DDSPM must be a visionary, passionate leader who has an outstanding track record of achievement and leadership in roles of increasing responsibility. S/he must be prepared to work across a diverse set of disciplines, bridging a wide range of expertise all the while being a solid team player, frequently driving change via influence in a fast-paced, challenging environment. Additionally, we seek:
- Deep knowledge of strategy execution, design of performance management system of goals, targets and monitoring process.
- Broad knowledge of US Higher Education issues
- Demonstrated ability to craft strategies with a focus on equity (regarding both partner selection and implications of strategies to target student populations)
- Demonstrated ability in portfolio design and management to create optimal investment mix to drive to a set of outcomes.
- Experience in developing and managing strong partnerships and relationships inside and outside the organization, managing conflicts, and building consensus. Interactions involve very senior decision makers within organization.
- Proven strength in structured problem solving and strategic business planning, with the ability to easily identify and communicate framework to analyze issues
- Adept at project management; including critical-path thinking, detail orientation, setting priorities, and planning.
- Demonstrated ability to lead people and teams to effectively achieve clear, yet complex goals and objectives
- Demonstrated passion for the Foundation’s values with a commitment to deliver results against the Foundation’s mission.
Education and Experience
- 10+ years of related experience