As the Senior Vice President, Recruitment and Admissions, you will lead Teach For America’s efforts to attract and select transformational leaders to fuel the movement to end educational inequity. You will set a multi-year vision for Teach For America’s recruitment and admissions strategy, leading a 250-person team to identify and compel a diverse pool of high-potential candidates to apply to Teach For America and admit and matriculate qualified applicants.
You will work with partners across the organization to provide a positive, inspiring, and coherent experience from the time an applicant learns of Teach For America through their interview, offer confirmation, and pre-corps programming. Examples include working with Marketing + Communications on prospect strategy, digital media strategy, and messaging; partnering with Regional Operations and Executive Directors to confirm and retain corps members; and collaborating with our Teacher Leadership Development team on community building and learning experiences in the time between candidates accepting their offers and beginning their in-person summer training.
You will represent Teach For America with critical external stakeholders (e.g., funders, external thought leaders, etc.) and in key external forums (e.g., conferences, working groups, etc.), speaking on topics such as TFA’s role in the movement to end educational inequity, and innovations and challenges in teacher recruitment.
Your success in this role will be a result of your exceptional skills in the following areas:
- Strategic thinking and setting vision and direction
- Managing the execution of a large, geographically dispersed, multi-function team toward ambitious outcomes
- Cultural leadership to foster a thriving team
- People management and coaching
- Deep commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusiveness
The SVP, Recruitment and Admissions reports directly to the Executive Vice President, External Affairs and serves as a member of TFA’s Executive Leadership Team.
- Drive and evolve the next-era vision for recruitment and admissions at Teach For America, adapting to a rapidly changing external landscape
- Determine the structures and processes that will enable the team to achieve that vision
- Attract, develop, and retain the diverse and distinctive talent that is needed to the propel the work of the team forward
- Lead the team with wisdom, creativity, purpose, and clarity
- Ensure that the team is a welcoming and inclusive environment that draws upon a diverse range of voices and perspectives
- Directly manage 7 vice-president level experts in recruitment and admissions, and coach them toward achieving ambitious outcomes with their respective teams
Mindsets and Approach to Leadership
- You deeply believe education is an essential lever in the effort to expand human and civil rights and believe Teach For America is vital to continued progress.
- You can speak firsthand and with conviction to the power and potential of the individual and collective impact of this leadership force, understand the lessons learned in pursuing our theory of change over time, and can connect these to the trajectory of education reform more broadly.
- You are a goal-oriented and outcomes-driven leader. You assume personal responsibility for progress.
- You are an exceptional problem-solver. You easily identify patterns in various types of data and often identify new and different solutions to challenges. You are data-driven but realize that movement building is people-centered work and know to follow the head and when to follow the heart.
- You enjoy coaching and developing others, and seeing people thrive. You help teams and teammates become the best versions possible.
- You are passionate about continuous improvement and learning and bring both skill and curiosity to our theory of change, recruitment and admissions process design, and continuous improvement efforts.
- You have the passion and skill to drive change across a large, complex, organization.
- You create clarity in ambiguity, embrace tension and challenge as a necessary product of rigorous debate, and can disagree and then commit wholeheartedly. You are effective with varying audiences and constituents; you are comfortable in a classroom in a high poverty community and in a boardroom of a major corporation.
- Prior experience as a member of Teach For America’s recruitment team is strongly preferred
- Minimum of 10 years of professional work experience
- Prior team management experience required, including managing team execution through layers
Skills
- Demonstrated ability to build and foster strong relationships and team culture across many lines of difference
- Success in motivating people and networks to action
- Ability to build an inclusive, collaborative, and reflective performance culture, leading to achieving ambitious goals
- Highly organized, goal-oriented, and responsive
- Effective management of a portfolio of complex projects
Work Demands
- Some weekend and evening work, especially in our peak recruitment and admissions season
- Ability to travel to in-person meetings in various US cities (approximately two times per month)
- Working virtually with colleagues who are based all over the country