Operations / Administration Manager or Senior Manager
Job Description
Position: Manager or Senior Manager
Location: Flexible, Indiana preferred
Preferred application deadline: June 3, 2021
Position Summary
Reporting to one of Empower’s Partners, you will work closely with your teammates to help drive sustainable innovation within districts and support the design, launch, and success of empowered district school systems and Empowerment Zones.
If public health conditions make travel possible then applicants must be willing to travel up to 30% of the time (primarily within Indiana) to support the growth of our partnerships and on-the-ground support in communities across the state. As part of this role, you will receive coaching, mentorship, and guidance from experienced leaders inside and outside of our organization.
Who We Are
Empower Schools works with local communities across the country to help design, launch, and support empowered district school partnerships and Zones. We believe that schools and communities thrive when educators are empowered and held accountable for making key decisions that are best for students.
Our approach centers around the following focus areas:
- Establishing Partnerships: We execute foundational and operational necessities for the launch of new networks—from complex, multi-stream project management to crafting governance agreements/contracts, to navigating state and local policy pathways.
- Supporting Leaders: We bring deep expertise and strong support skills to help school, system, and community leaders design and launch networks of empowered district schools. We help build capacity in network and district leaders to implement and sustain the work.
- Convening Practitioners: We host convenings and organize learning cohorts for school, network and district leaders pursuing empowered school strategies.
- Spreading the Word: We identify and narrate bright spot successes and best practices in empowered public school models and innovative, sustaining governance structures.
Empower’s work is informed by our experience as the design and launch partner of several public school improvement and innovation efforts across the country including, most recently, Colorado and Texas where we have built on the ground teams to drive state-specific work. To date, we have supported the design and launch of fourteen empowering partnerships across five states, serving more than 28,000 students attending 60 schools.
Our core work is most often focused on partnering with districts and developing context-specific partnerships between district schools and nonprofits. We are supported by an ecosystem of partners and stakeholders in each community, often organized at a state-level in partnership with state agencies. Developing both site and state-specific strategies and relationships is key to our work.
Who You Are
- You are committed to centering racial and socioeconomic equity in your work. You understand the impact of systemic and implicit racism and challenge yourself and others to support transformational outcomes for students across race and class.
- You are a fast learner with a thirst for knowledge and are excited by developing creative solutions to challenges encountered at the school and system levels.
- You are familiar with the challenges facing K-12 urban education and have applied your analytical and creative problem-solving skills to address them in previous roles.
- You are able to take ideas and solutions from brainstorms to fruition, while engaging and incorporating the perspectives of others.
- You enjoy working individually and as part of a team and are able to quickly and effectively build strong relationships and influence others with your ideas.
- Your strong project management skills allow you to develop and implement complex projects involving multiple stakeholders and tight deadlines to high standards.
- You make time to reflect on your work in order to continually improve your effectiveness, you know how to self-advocate in order to get the support that you need, and you can keep it all in perspective with a sense of humor.
- In short, you are a rock star generalist with a broad skill-set, who can support a wide range of projects.
How You’ll Help
You will support an array of important initiatives and relationships, playing a key role in enabling schools in the state to make the best decisions for students in communities across Indiana. Your work will vary based on the needs over time and will include the following:
- Support partnership development and execution of state and district partnerships
- In collaboration with teammates, develop and cultivate relationships with potential state and district partners in Indiana and across the country
- Build a productive and professional working relationship quickly with various stakeholders
- Support development of project proposals, project plans, and partnership documents
- Support cultivation of potential philanthropic supporters for local partnerships
- Research district context and community dynamics to support the development of new initiatives
- Support execution and project management of Zone design and launch partnerships
- Create custom community-focused presentation and communication materials for various stakeholders (e.g., district partners, school-based staff, community members, state policy champions, etc.)
- Lead the creation of clear and compelling written deliverables to enable Zone and partnership approval and facilitate strategic planning (e.g., application documents for district or state authorization, concept papers, needs assessment data analysis, strategic plans)
- Serve as project manager for specific project workstreams; successfully manage and track workflows and activities of staff, consultants, and partners as required for successful execution
- Work with teammates to support the design and implementation of programmatic strategy in new Zones, including supporting Zone leadership teams, supporting recruitment of Zone staff, cultivating school improvement partners, and communicating progress
- Additional support as needed
- Provide leverage and capacity on additional growth projects outside of Indiana as needed
Qualifications
- At least 3-5 years of work experience
- Educational expertise required
- Consulting and strategic planning work preferred
- Demonstrated interest in and strong alignment with the goals of Empower Schools
- Strong, demonstrated commitment to anti-racism, diversity, equity & inclusion
- Track record of taking initiative to successfully manage complex projects and initiatives involving multiple components
- Dynamic and effective prioritization skills, enabling strong, ontime completion of multiple projects with shifting timelines
- Must be articulate, tactful, and able to successfully manage stakeholder relations with partners, external organizations, policy makers, and education leaders
- Possess an entrepreneurial mindset (i.e., flexible, resourceful, and creative) and deep motivation to drive toward high-quality outcomes with a consistently positive attitude
- Excellent written and oral communications skills, including the ability to translate ideas into clear, compelling documents (e.g., in PowerPoint and Word formats)
- BA/BS or advanced degree preferred
Salary and Benefits
The salary for Manager starts at $65,000 and Senior Manager starts at $80,000 per year. Empower Schools offers a comprehensive benefits package, including health and dental insurance, retirement benefits, life and disability insurance, and flexible spending accounts.
