Director of Strategy & Operations

Inspira Education•New York City, NY

About The Position

Inspira Education Group is one of the fastest-growing edtech startups in the US. We started with a simple mission to democratize access to high-quality coaching so that every student in the world has an equal opportunity to access the best opportunities. As the world’s leading network of top admissions coaches in medical, legal, business, and college studies, we’re building software and services in one place—disrupting long-entrenched application processes with products and experiences that strive to provide an equal platform for candidates from diverse backgrounds worldwide. As one of the fastest-growing edtech firms in the world, we are backed by some of the leading venture capital firms and investors in the world, including Zeev Ventures, Quiet Capital, Craft Ventures and Jeff Fluhr (Founder of Stubhub). The Opportunity Some people spend years becoming experts at diagnosing problems. The best operators do that — and then they fix them. We're looking for someone who combines sharp strategic instincts with the hunger to own outcomes end-to-end. At Inspira, you'll work directly with the founders to identify the highest-leverage opportunities across our business, design the solutions, and build them yourself. No handoff. No waiting for someone else to execute. You move, it moves. The business is at an inflection point. We have strong demand, a proven model, and a global network of counselors helping students get into the world's best schools. What we need now is the operational infrastructure to match our ambition — and the person to build it. That's this role. The Work This is a player-coach role. You'll lead teams and develop people while staying close enough to the work to know when something isn't right — and fix it yourself when it needs to be fixed. We're not looking for someone who manages from a distance. We're looking for someone who sets the standard by living it.

Requirements

5–8 years of experience in strategy, operations, consulting, or a high-growth startup environment — with a track record of moving from diagnosis to execution
You've built things, not just recommended them — processes, systems, and workflows that actually ran in production
A natural player-coach: you develop and lead people without losing touch with the details that determine outcomes
Hands-on CRM experience — HubSpot or comparable — you know what a well-architected workflow looks like and you can build it yourself
The range to go from a founder-level strategy conversation in the morning to getting your hands dirty in a workflow builder in the afternoon
Deep comfort with ambiguity and a bias toward action over deliberation
Low ego. High standards. The kind of person who finds the broken thing before anyone else notices it.

Nice To Haves

Background in consulting, investment banking, or a strategy role at a fast-scaling company is a strong plus
Marketplace or service operations experience is a strong plus — counselors, coaches, contractors, or service providers at scale
A passion for building meaningful, authentic connections
A positive, solutions-oriented mindset with a strong sense of ownership
Curiosity and a desire to learn, experiment, and improve
Resilience and persistence in the face of challenges
Enthusiasm that motivates others and adaptability in a fast-changing environment
High energy, strong follow-through, and a drive to get things done

Responsibilities

Own the student-counselor matching process end-to-end — optimizing it for quality, speed, and scale while staying close enough to spot when individual cases go sideways
Build and iterate on logic-based workflows in HubSpot that reduce manual effort without losing the human judgment that makes matches work
Instrument the process so performance is visible, measurable, and continuously improvable
Lead the recruitment, onboarding, and quality management of our global counselor network — while personally setting the standards that define what great looks like
Oversee high-volume hiring pipelines and hold the bar on who makes it in and who doesn't
Design the infrastructure that lets us scale supply without sacrificing quality — and audit it regularly to make sure it's holding
Lead the escalation team while staying close to the hardest customer situations yourself — you'll know when to delegate and when to step in
Build the SOPs, protocols, and feedback loops that turn reactive fixes into systemic improvements
Own the metrics — NPS, CSAT, refund rates — and drive structural changes when the numbers tell you something is broken
Own HubSpot end-to-end: architecture, workflow configuration, automations, data hygiene, and reporting
Identify what to automate, what to keep high-touch, and build the connective logic between both
Create documentation and operational infrastructure that scales beyond any single person — including you
Partner with founders and leaders across Sales and Marketing on new service launches — owning the operational planning and execution, not just the advisory input
Bring structure to ambiguous problems and a bias toward implementation over deliberation
Be the person in the room who not only identifies what needs to change but leaves with ownership of making it happen