Director, Transformation and Strategy

🕒 May 12

🏢🏡 Chicago – Hybrid

💵 $101.2k - $126.4k / year

⏰ Full Time

🔴 Lead

👔 Director

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Braven

WebsiteLinkedInAll Job Openings

51 - 200 employees

📚 Education

🤝 Non-profit

🌍 Social Impact

💰 $1M Grant on 2022-10

Education • Non-profit • Social Impact

Braven is a nonprofit organization focused on empowering underrepresented young people, including first-generation college students and those from low-income backgrounds, with the skills, confidence, experiences, and networks they need to transition from college to strong first jobs and meaningful careers. Braven partners with higher education and employers to provide a career-accelerating experience through a semester-long course and ongoing support until graduation. Their mission is to bridge the opportunity gap and ensure economic mobility for promising youths throughout the United States.

📋 Description

• Develop and own Braven’s multi-year strategy for key pilot initiatives — synthesizing insights from program delivery, partner relationships, financial modeling, and student outcome data into a coherent, evidence-based framework • Build and maintain the business case for key pilot initiatives as a scalable Braven offering: model unit economics, cost per student, and revenue potential across partner types; translate findings into recommendations for Braven leadership and, where appropriate, external stakeholders • Establish consistent measurement baselines (including financial, programmatic metrics) so we can make data-driven decisions and meaningful comparisons over time and across pilot partners, surfacing ROI and risks/opportunities on an ongoing basis • Gather updates from across the team and synthesize them into cohesive, well-structured presentations that reflect both progress and honest challenges • Prepare materials, briefings, and talking points for board meetings — distilling complex program activity into clear, compelling narratives for a non-operational audience • Conduct ongoing landscape research to stay current on what is happening in the industry (on university campuses, peer organizations, etc.) and test our assumptions about the model. • Develop a scalable program framework and multi-year roadmap that aligns with Braven’s mission and current model, and enables us to pivot towards new future opportunities • Execute pilots, launching a suite of programming at initial partner sites, and assess what's working and build a clear framework for what can be replicated versus what needs to be redesigned for each new context, culture, and student population • Define what should be consistent across pilot contexts and what must be adapted, honoring institutional differences while staying true to our model and principles • Build authentic relationships with collaborating teams to understand their goals and constraints well enough to be a genuine thought partner (vs. a vendor) • Define how we partner effectively with internal and external stakeholders to strengthen relationships, increase efficiency, and ensure strong outcomes • Build the operational scaffolding behind launch work — the checklists, timelines, communication templates, and handoff documents that make programs sustainable beyond your direct involvement • Create and own project plans across program initiatives — timelines, milestones, cross-functional dependencies — and keep work moving forward with minimal oversight • Conceive, design, and execute specific programs that get participants genuinely excited about the results • Create and own the project plans behind our program initiatives while building timelines, setting milestones, tracking dependencies, and keeping cross-functional work moving forward • Manage all logistics end-to-end: vision, venue, promotion, materials, execution, and follow-up with little hand-holding and strong attention to detail • Debrief every program honestly — what worked, what flopped, what to try next time — and feed those insights back into the overall design • Design and run a data collection campaign to capture key outcomes • Build the forms, trackers, and processes that make data collection feel easy for stakeholders — low friction, high compliance • Synthesize findings into clear, compelling narratives for a wide variety of audiences — from student-facing summaries to Alignment Team briefings to board-level presentations • Ensure data is actionable, not just reported; ensure reports are simple and useful • Develop high-quality memos, briefings, and presentation materials for high-stakes meetings with external key stakeholders • Document learnings from each launch in a way that makes the next one faster and smarter and we add to our institutional knowledge base • Support the broader team in understanding what the data says about the outcomes, and implications for future decisions

🎯 Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent • 7+ years of strong track record of managing multiple complex, cross-functional strategic initiatives and leading others to outcomes – including building or launching a new program, function, or business line from the ground up • Track record of operating in ambiguous environments and creating structure where little exists, requiring constant iteration and resourcefulness • Exceptional ability to collaborate and work in cross-functional teams • Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to draft clear, audience-appropriate communications quickly and with minimal direction • Exceptional ability to synthesize information, identify what should stay consistent, and where adjustments are needed due to various contexts • Demonstrated ability to move between strategic altitude and hands-on execution: you have set the strategy and built the business case, and you have also done the operational work yourself • Track record of influencing and driving alignment across senior stakeholders — including organizational leadership — without formal authority • Strong financial acumen: experience building business cases, modeling unit economics, and translating financial analysis into strategic recommendations for senior leaders • Experience in the education or nonprofit sector • Fluency in Asana, Trello, Salesforce, and Claude, Zoom, and Slack are ideal; ability to navigate myriad technology tools • A genuine appreciation for and enjoyment of the dynamic, fast-paced energy of a college campus, coupled with an ability to connect authentically with diverse stakeholders, ranging from students to university leadership. • Demonstrated commitment to building strong and welcoming cultures that help to develop others • Exemplification of Braven’s core values • Experience that has informed your belief in Braven’s mission and has prepared you to work with, or for, Braven’s student Fellow population • Ability to work in-person in Atlanta (GA), Chicago (IL), Newark (NJ), or New York City (NYC) • Travel 30% of the time.

🏖️ Benefits

• Unlimited vacation time in addition to org-wide holidays and week-long shutdowns in July and the end of the calendar year (this is a minimum of 19 days per year) • Braven supports your path to parenthood and beyond with $25,000 in lifetime Carrot benefits for fertility, family-building, and hormonal health • Match of your 401K contribution up to 5% of your base annual salary, starting your first full month • Coverage of 85% of health insurance premium for employee and dependents • 12 weeks of paid parental leave • A one-month paid sabbatical after 4 years on staff