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Senior Managing Director, Program Partner

This job is no longer available

United States
Full-time

The role of Program Partner is expected to operate at and lead on at least two critical levels:

  • National - From the national/network-wide perspective, Program Partners are to share a common charge in relation to advancing learning and stewarding national programmatic efforts.  Program partners will be expected to have a set of foundational knowledge, skills, and mindsets that will enable them to play the critical role of facilitating learning across the network and provide advice and capability building to regions on matters related to national programming.
  • Home Team - From the home team perspective, Program Partners are to be active members of Home Teams and may be required to hold specific knowledge or expertise that is uniquely valued or required at the Home Team level.  Depending on the particular conditions and needs of a home team portfolio, the Regional Field Executive (RFE) may charge the Program Partner with leaning into certain aspects of learning, advising, capacity building, etc. To this end, Home Teams may seek specialized or unique expertise depending on their strategic learning priorities, current strengths or areas of growth for Executive Directors (EDs), and other factors.

The program partner role will continue to be iterated on and evolve as a flexible role based on learnings and needs from the field and enterprise.

Areas of Responsibility: 

Leadership and facilitation of learning across the network

  • Manage group learning experiences in the home team under the direction of the RFE.  This may include but is not limited to setting vision for the learning cycle experience, designing the protocols and agenda, creating resources that will facilitate the experience, and leveraging operations and logistics support to ensure these are effective and impactful experiences.
  • May help design, monitor, iterate on, and/or facilitate or support others in facilitating three learning cycles a year for their home team
  • Continuously grow expertise in TFA’s position on adult learning, TFA’s point of view on programmatic priorities, learning organizations, and optimal learning cycles
  • In partnership with the RFE, national program and learning leadership, and EDs, identify the most relevant learning questions, and find and leverage resources to advance the learning and ensure the learning question is pursuing unknown answers rather than things we've previously answered
  • Feed learning from their home team back into the national program teams and into the other home teams, serving as a connector to knowledge and resources across the TFA network
  • Partner with fellow Program Partners to share best practices and approaches in home team learning cycles, ensuring that knowledge and resources are shared dynamically and continuously

 Advising and Coaching Regions

  • On a limited and focused basis, Program Partners may also provide direct advice and coaching to regions on matters that pertain to program design, strategy, and execution.  To perform these responsibilities, Program Partners work closely with experts from national program teams to ensure that customized support provided to regions is leveraging expertise and is aligned with national program and learning strategies.
  • Leverage resources developed by national program and learning teams and encourage regions to access and optimally use resources readily available to develop capacity to advance program work at the regional level.
  • Actively provide feedback of insights and information to national programs on resources, knowledge, and skills that are required to be developed in regions so that national programs can in turn develop scalable and high impact programming that can be of benefit across the network.

 Leveraging foundational expertise in Teach For America programs

  • To facilitate learning across the network, advise/coach/consult regions, and steward national program strategies, Program Partners are responsible for continuously developing their knowledge and foundational mastery of program theories, frameworks, strategies, offerings, and other aspects of national programming.  In particular, Program Partners should focus on content that would enable them to facilitate learning, including evolution of learning questions and how to process and make sense of data.
    • To continuously grow and develop program expertise, Program Partners must actively engage with national programs and the Org-wide Learning & Strategy (OWLS) teams, leverage learning experiences provided by program teams, and have a clear plan and approach to build foundational mastery of program work in partnership with program leadership from both the Teacher Leadership Development (TLD) and Collective Leadership & Engagement (CLE) teams.
    • To execute on advising and coaching responsibilities, Program Partners work closely with national programs to leverage deep expertise from TLD, CLE, or OWLS depending on the needs of the region(s).  It is not expected that Program Partners have deep expertise in all aspects of programs.
  • In order to be part of and support knowledge management emerging from learning cycles, Program Partners must have knowledge and functional mastery of TFA’s knowledge management systems and closely collaborate with the OWLS team to ensure that we are not creating redundancies, and are leveraging and evolving our systems to enable and drive learning.
  • Partner with national program and learning teams in supporting the evolution of national points of view, theories and frameworks, informed by their work with home teams and directly with regions.

 Leading in a matrixed role

  • Program Partners report to RFE with dotted line to program and learning team lead(s). Clear expectations of how the Program Partner connects and works with national programs are set so that Program Partners are able to effectively and sustainably manage their time and effort allocations.  Ideally, agreements in priorities and time commitments for an upcoming fiscal year are set after the third learning cycle of each year.
    • National programs are responsible for providing clear lines of communication and engagement to Program Partners so they can pursue their charge with minimal friction or wasted time and effort.  This includes having clear lines of engagement and communication, made consistent or aligned across national programs whenever possible.
  • Program partner holds a mindset in which they see themselves as a deep partner to the region(s) and the home team and also a connector and facilitator of enterprise-wide improvement and learning. Program Partners have two critical clients, the home team and the network/enterprise.

 Contributing to Organizational Leadership

  • Contribute to a strong home team culture and partnership with national programs rooted in the organizational core values and our DEI commitments.
  • Steward the organizational strategy, priorities, and advance impact toward breakthrough results.
Skills/Experience: 

Prior Experience

  • Previous experience within Teach For America (corps member, alumni, previous employee) strongly preferred
  • Design and facilitation experience required
  • 5+ years’ experience in program work or program-related consulting work required

Skills

  • Experience in experiential design and design and facilitation of adult learning experiences and/or product development
  • Having a foundational level of data fluency, ability to analyze and codify learning from data, such that they are able to facilitate data-driven learning efforts with home teams that move metrics and advance impact
  • Expert-level communication skills across phone, interview, and in person
  • Comfort with ambiguity and able to be flexible to changing business needs
  • Demonstrated ability to successfully build and manage relationships across lines of difference, with cultural competence, and with credibility
  • Strong learning orientation; able to quickly take in and act upon new content knowledge as well as make sense of observations in region/team contexts

Work Demands

  • Ability to travel to in-person meetings within Home Team regions required, about 2x/month minimum
  • Occasional weekend or evening work is required.

Organization Info

Teach For America

Overview
Headquarters: 
New York, NY, United States
Annual Budget : 
$100-500M
Founded: 
1993
About Us
Areas of Focus: 
Mission: 

Teach For America is the national corps of outstanding recent college graduates, professionals, or graduate students who commit to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in expanding educational opportunity. Teach For America's mission is to enlist, develop, and mobilize as many as possible of our nation's most promising future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence. In the 2016-2017 school year, 6,900 first- and second-year Teach For America corps members are teaching in 53 regions across the United States. Since 1990, Teach For America corps members have reached more than 10 million students. Teach For America's more than 40,000 alumni are providing critical leadership -- as teachers, school and district leaders; elected officials and policy advisers; and founders and leaders of education and social reform initiatives -- to ensure all children have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.

Listing Stats

Post Date: 
Dec 23 2017
Active Until: 
Jan 23 2018
Hiring Organization: 
Teach For America
industry: 
Nonprofit