Director, Mission Discovery & Incubation

Young Life•Colorado Springs, CO

18h

About The Position

Young Life's mission is to introduce adolescents to Jesus Christ and help them grow in their faith. This role is responsible for leading Mission Discovery & Incubation, defining strategy, operating models, roadmaps, and investment criteria. The position involves translating mission constraints into opportunities through research and analysis, leading focused experiments and prototypes to reduce uncertainty, and building evidence for investment decisions. The role also focuses on converting learnings into reusable knowledge and building a team of Product Managers, researchers, designers, and strategists. A key aspect of this role involves adhering to Young Life's exclusive Christian purposes, requiring employees to profess a belief in Jesus Christ and align with the organization's ministry functions and biblical standards.

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.
Experience leading and managing complex initiatives or programs with outcome-focused deliverables.
Minimum three (3) years of managerial experience 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.
Profess a belief in Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and Lord.
Subscribe to the statements and policies required of all Young Life staff, including the Young Life Statement of Faith.
Be ready, willing and able to fulfill ministry functions as may be required by the organization.
Refrain from conduct and statements that detract from the biblical standards taught and supported by Young Life.
Abide by all policies and practices of Young Life including, without limitation, those related to religious belief or ministry activities.

Responsibilities

Lead Mission Discovery & Incubation, defining strategy, operating model, roadmap, investment criteria, and priorities.
Establish clear entry, evidence, governance, transition, and stopping criteria for innovation.
Lead the organization through changes in product thinking, focusing on mission constraints, participant outcomes, evidence, and durable capability.
Translate mission constraints into clearly framed opportunities through participant research, journey analysis, service signals, organizational learning, and cross-functional discovery.
Clarify participant details, current experience, desired behavior change, expected mission value, material unknowns, and required evidence before investment.
Recommend the progression of opportunities (incubation, discovery, deferral, or stopping).
Lead focused experiments, prototypes, pilots, and operating-model tests to reduce uncertainty with minimal investment.
Define hypotheses, learning agendas, success criteria, risk boundaries, decision dates, and accountable owners for experiments.
Utilize approved AI capabilities to accelerate research, synthesis, prototyping, experimentation, localization, and pattern detection while ensuring privacy, safety, evidence quality, and human judgment.
Prevent prototypes from becoming unsupported production systems or permanent commitments without explicit approval.
Evaluate opportunities based on participant evidence, mission value, technical feasibility, global applicability, trust and safety, operational readiness, cost, adoption requirements, and long-term stewardship.
Produce clear written recommendations for scaling, transferring, continuing learning, redesigning, deferring, consolidating, or stopping opportunities.
Define the enduring capability owner, operating model, funding, service model, and transition path before incubation becomes a production dependency.
Convert discoveries, experiments, failures, participant feedback, and service demand into reusable knowledge to strengthen future product strategy, experience architecture, and investment decisions.
Maintain clear decision records, evidence, assumptions, risks, and learning.
Retire experiments, tools, and pathways that do not justify continued investment.
Partner across GMET (Global Mission Enablement & Technology).
Recruit, develop, and lead Product Managers, researchers, designers, strategists, and other practitioners.
Build mechanisms and leadership capability for the function to operate independently.