Director, Mission Discovery & Incubation

Young Life•Colorado Springs, CO

2d•$97,350 - $126,550

About The Position

At Young Life, our mission is to introduce adolescents to Jesus Christ and help them grow in their faith. We invite you to join us in this life-changing work, building relationships and creating spaces where young people feel seen, known, and loved. This role is responsible for leading Mission Discovery & Incubation, defining strategy, operating models, roadmaps, and investment criteria. It involves discovering high-value mission opportunities, leading bounded incubation and experimentation, building evidence for investment decisions, and fostering reusable organizational learning. The role also requires partnering across GMET (Global Mission Enablement & Technology) and building a team of Product Managers, researchers, designers, strategists, and other practitioners.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree from an accredited university or college, preferably in a job related major field of study
Minimum ten (10) years of experience in Product Management, Product Strategy, Innovation, Research, Human-Centered Design, Service Design, or multidisciplinary product leadership, or equivalent evidence of sustained scope and impact. Including leading and managing complex initiatives or programs with outcome-focused deliverables.
Minimum three (3) years of managerial experience years leading Product Managers, researchers, designers, strategists, or multidisciplinary teams.
Demonstrated success leading discovery, experimentation, incubation, new-product strategy, operating-model validation, or strategic investment work.
Strong understanding of modern Product Management, participant research, experimentation, service design, analytics, adoption, organizational change, and responsible AI-enabled product practices.
Demonstrated ability to create clarity from ambiguity and translate evidence into strategy, investment recommendations, and executable transition paths.
Exceptional written, facilitation, storytelling, executive communication, and strategic judgment.

Nice To Haves

Equivalent combination of education and experience

Responsibilities

Lead Mission Discovery & Incubation, defining strategy, operating model, roadmap, investment criteria, and priorities.
Establish clear entry, evidence, governance, transition, and stopping criteria.
Lead the organization through changes in product thinking by shifting conversations from requested solutions toward mission constraints, participant outcomes, evidence, and durable capability.
Discover High-Value Mission Opportunities by translating mission constraints into clearly framed opportunities through participant research, journey analysis, service signals, organizational learning, and cross-functional discovery.
Clarify the participant, current experience, desired behavior change, expected mission value, material unknowns, and evidence required before investment.
Recommend whether an opportunity should proceed to incubation, remain in discovery, move to another accountable capability owner, be deferred, or stop.
Lead Bounded Incubation and Experimentation through focused experiments, prototypes, pilots, and operating-model tests that reduce material uncertainty with the least necessary investment.
Define hypotheses, learning agendas, success criteria, risk boundaries, decision dates, and accountable owners before work begins.
Use approved AI capabilities to accelerate research, synthesis, prototyping, experimentation, localization, and pattern detection while preserving privacy, safety, evidence quality, and human judgment.
Prevent prototypes from becoming unsupported production systems or permanent organizational commitments without explicit approval, ownership, and readiness.
Build Evidence for Investment Decisions by evaluating opportunities using participant evidence, mission value, technical feasibility, global applicability, trust and safety, operational readiness, cost, adoption requirements, and long-term stewardship.
Produce clear written recommendations to scale, transfer, continue learning, redesign, defer, consolidate, or stop.
Define the enduring capability owner, operating model, funding, service model, and transition path before incubation becomes production dependency.
Build Reusable Organizational Learning by converting discoveries, experiments, failures, participant feedback, and service demand into reusable knowledge that strengthens future product strategy, experience architecture, and investment decisions.
Maintain clear decision records, evidence, assumptions, risks, and learning so the organization does not repeatedly rediscover the same insights.
Retire experiments, tools, and pathways that do not justify continued investment.
Lead Across GMET and Build the Team by partnering across GMET (Global Mission Enablement & Technology).
Recruit, develop, and lead Product Managers, researchers, designers, strategists, and other practitioners capable of independently leading consequential discovery and incubation work.
Build mechanisms and leadership capability that allow the function to operate without dependence on individual heroics.