Director, Transformation and Strategy

Braven • Chicago, IL

2d • 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. Together, our ambition is to help rebuild the middle class and revitalize the American Dream. Braven is hiring a Director, Transformation and Strategy, to join the newly formed Transformation team. Transformation is charged with ensuring we see around corners and are prepared to maximize strategic opportunities in our future. The role is to incubate and then hand off initiatives that are critical to the organization's success. The individual will do the work of launching pilot projects, figuring out what should be consistent across the organization, and determining what has to be unique to meet the needs of the student population and/or local landscape to scale. The role requires a broad toolkit: designing and executing programs, articulating and assessing the business case for initiatives, analyzing data and learnings, and building the operational foundation that makes the initiative sustainable and scalable. While the role does not manage anyone directly, it requires managing across many internal stakeholders, and the ability to move people toward shared outcomes without direct authority is critical to success. The role is energized by ambiguity, takes initiative before being asked, thinks in systems, and genuinely loves figuring out what "cutting edge" means for an organization that is paving the way. The individual enjoys bringing structure to ambiguous problems without flattening the complexity, and knows when to slow down and define the question before rushing to answer it. This role calls for adaptability as Braven's transformation agenda evolves, and the scope will grow with it. To start, the individual will play a pivotal and dynamic role in deepening career partnerships with universities, helping to explore and launch an evolution of the core model. Strong contributors here thrive in a startup environment where job descriptions are starting points, not ceilings, and are willing to roll up their sleeves to support whatever the mission needs. This is a small team 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
• 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

Nice To Haves

• 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

Responsibilities

• 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
• Conducts 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

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)
• $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