Director, Transformation and Operations

Braven • Newark, NJ

6d • $95,900 - $119,600 • Hybrid

About The Position

Braven is a national nonprofit that prepares promising college students to secure a strong first opportunity after college graduation through a career-accelerating program. We work with higher education and employer partners to offer a life-changing experience that begins with a semester-long course for college students, followed by support that lasts through graduation. In order to achieve its ambition of serving 80,000-100,000 Fellows over the next decade, Braven is hiring a Director, Transformation and Operations, to join the newly formed Transformation team. Transformation is charged with ensuring that we are seeing around corners and prepared to maximize the strategic opportunities in our future. Your role is to turn the ideas that matter most into reality. You'll lead the design and execution of key transformation initiatives. Currently, the primary focus is the operational build-out of an expanded partnership pilot with one of our higher education partners, one of the most important strategic bets in Braven’s at our current inflection point in growth. This role has no direct reports, but you'll work across many internal teams. Your success depends on your ability to move people toward shared outcomes without formal authority. You're energized by ambiguity, you think in systems, and you genuinely love figuring out what "cutting edge" means for an organization that is paving the way. You enjoy bringing structure to ambiguous problems without flattening the complexity, and you know when to slow down and define the question before rushing to answer it. This role is intentionally scoped around execution, systems, and project management; the business case for the partnership and the most senior external relationships sit with other members of the Transformation and regional teams, which lets you go deep on making the work real. You will play a pivotal role in standing up and managing the operations of our pilot and in shaping what makes the model repeatable at future partner sites. The person in this role thrives in a startup environment where job descriptions are starting points, not ceilings, and is willing to roll up their sleeves wherever the mission needs them. This is a small team with a culture where everyone pitches in, shares credit, and stays focused on student impact. This role is part of the Office of the Chief Executive Officer and reports directly to the Head of Transformation.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent
• 5+ years of strategic operations experience with the proven ability of managing complex projects and lead others to outcomes

Nice To Haves

• Exceptional ability to collaborate and work in cross-functional teams, ideally in a matrixed, cross-functional environment or scaling consulting or mission-driven organization
• 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 the most important thread, and move forward without needing every detail resolved
• Experience in the education or nonprofit sector, or in consulting
• Comfort and fluency with AI tools (e.g., Claude) and a curiosity about how technology can drive mission-aligned work; ability to navigate myriad tech systems (e.g., Asana/Trello, Salesforce, Zoom)
• Track record of operating in ambiguous environments and creating structure where little exists
• 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

Responsibilities

• Create strategic plans that translate vision into execution for special initiatives owned by the Transformation team (inclusive of multi-year roadmaps, short-term project plans, stakeholder communications maps, risk mitigation strategies, learnings from market intelligence, etc.)
• Synthesize insights and recommendations for senior leaders to guide ongoing strategy
• Manage the execution of a wide variety of teammates towards success, adapting strategies and frameworks as needed
• Initial projects within your scope will include building out Braven’s expanded partnership pilot end-to-end, and preparing the model systems, staffing logic, and playbooks to extend to future higher-education partner sites
• Lead and influence cross-functional teams in a matrixed environment (i.e., teams will not directly report into this role) to bring initiatives to life, fostering a culture of excellence, continuous learning, collaboration, and innovation
• Build internal buy-in as projects evolve, meeting people where they are and making the unfamiliar feel approachable
• Embrace the reality that we're figuring this out as we go and help the team feel steady while we do, serving as an internal resource for “what’s possible”
• Create and fully own the project plans for key transformation initiatives you lead: building timelines, setting milestones, tracking dependencies, and keeping the team on track
• Turn big-picture organizational priorities into specific, sequenced actions with real owners and real deadlines, and follow up on them without oversight from your manager
• Create lightweight but durable operating systems: the trackers, templates, and check-in rhythms that give a small team visibility into a lot of moving parts
• Ensure these integrate with and streamline/simplify organizational processes, vs. create additional complexity
• Flag risks and potential blockers early; bring proposed solutions, not just problems to keep the work moving forward
• Develop high-quality memos, briefings, and presentation materials to support executive-level decision-making and external stakeholder engagement
• Ensure alignment with broader organizational strategic objectives
• Serve as the connective tissue between Transformation-led initiatives and Braven’s broader data and technology infrastructure, ensuring the choices we make to ensure our solutions work as one system or separate are intentional and aligned with our ambition
• Serve as a trusted advisor to internal stakeholders on how data and technology choices affect the partnership’s scalability, offering recommendations grounded in evidence
• Translate technical trade-offs into plain language for non-technical stakeholders and vice versa across stakeholders
• Develop, launch and/or maintain the tools for our expanded partnership pilot (e.g. surveys, data trackers, digital platforms)
• Build and maintain a shared view of student, alumni, and outcomes data across the partnership so Braven and partner-site staff are always working from the same picture
• Determine where we use existing tools, where we prototype something new, and/or when we it’s handed off or managed by another team
• Determine and document pathways to integrate Braven’s systems with partner-institution tools (e.g., Handshake, Simplicity), so student, alumni, and outcomes data flow cleanly across both
• Partner with Braven’s Systems and Product teams to decide what belongs in a lightweight, partnership-specific build vs. what should graduate into Braven’s broader technology roadmap
• Track the relevant technology and data infrastructure peer institutions use in supporting student career outcomes, and translate that into recommendations for Braven’s own build-vs-buy decisions
• Flag data and technology risks or gaps early before they become blockers to launching or scaling a partner site
• Other duties as assigned.

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 20 days per year)
• $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

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director