Executive Director, CEO Initiatives

College Board•New York, NY

2d•$190,000 - $220,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Executive Director, CEO Initiatives serves as the CEO’s deputy and is responsible for translating enterprise priorities into focused, effective CEO leadership, informed by internal context, external realities, and emerging opportunities. The role orchestrates the CEO’s day-to-day engagements, decisions, and follow-through with discipline and intent—ensuring the CEO’s time and attention advance the organization’s agenda while strengthening the College Board’s external reputation, influence, and future positioning. The Executive Director reports to the Chief of Staff, with a dotted-line relationship to the CEO. In close partnership, the Chief of Staff and Executive Director ensure that the CEO’s daily decisions and engagements reinforce long-term strategy, leadership expectations, and enterprise priorities. The Chief of Staff stewards enterprise priorities, leadership rhythms, and execution discipline; the Executive Director ensures those are reflected in the CEO’s daily decisions, engagements, and leadership signals, while feeding external insights and emerging opportunities back to shape future work. As the CEO’s primary day-to-day partner and first point of contact on strategic, operational, and external matters, the Executive Director operates with delegated authority to drive decisions, direction, and follow-through—bringing speed, judgment, and integration across internal leadership and external engagement. The Executive Director manages a team of three in support of the CEO. The ideal candidate brings strong judgment, deep experience working with senior leaders, and a demonstrated ability to operate effectively in complex, high-stakes environments. They are externally oriented, highly organized, and able to translate strategy into action through others. This role requires comfort supervising senior leaders, shaping strategy in real time with the CEO, and ensuring disciplined execution across multiple fronts.

Requirements

10–15+ years of experience operating in complex, high-stakes environments alongside senior executives
Proven success supervising senior leaders and setting direction across multiple functions
Demonstrated ability to bring order, focus, and momentum to ambiguous or fast-moving situations
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to convey complex ideas clearly and concisely
Experience managing external relationships and engagements with intention and measurable impact
Excellent organizational, prioritization, and project management skills
Strong problem-solving skills, including the ability to use data and judgment to inform decisions
Ability to build trust, influence outcomes
Ability to navigate sensitive dynamics as well as private and confidential matters with the utmost discretion
A leadership style that sets clear expectations, develops talent, and models inclusive, values-driven behavior
Willingness to travel 5–10 times per year on College Board business
Proficiency in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel
Bachelor’s degree required
A passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work
Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and comfort with learning and applying new digital tools independently and proactively.
A learner's mindset and a commitment to growth: welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously improving through iterative learning and user input.
A drive for impact and excellence: solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing what matters most, and continuously improving through learning, user input, and external benchmarking.
A collaborative and empathetic approach: working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success
Authorization to work in the United States

Nice To Haves

MBA preferred

Responsibilities

Direct CEO Support (40%)
Strategic advisor and problem solver. Act as a primary thought partner to the CEO on strategic, operational, and reputational matters, particularly when the CEO is directly engaged. Help frame issues, develop options, pressure-test thinking, and recommend paths forward.
Senior leadership supervision and direction. Directly supervise senior leaders reporting into the CEO’s office, including SVPs and their VP and Executive Director teams across Communications and Marketing, Government Relations and Policy, External Relations, Sales, Higher Education, Membership, and Advocacy. Set priorities, drive decisions, and hold leaders accountable for execution aligned to CEO direction.
CEO preparation and focus. Ensure the CEO is consistently prepared, well-briefed, and focused on the most consequential decisions, conversations, and external engagements. Shape agendas, pre-reads, and framing so the CEO’s time is spent on the highest-value work.
CEO proxy and integrator. Represent the CEO in meetings and decision-making as appropriate, ensuring that direction given, decisions made, and commitments taken on reinforce enterprise priorities, leadership expectations, and the College Board’s external credibility—coordinating closely with the Chief of Staff.
Meeting and workflow orchestration. Staff CEO meetings, senior leader syncs, and priority forums to ensure clear objectives, productive discussion, and strong follow-through. Track decisions, risks, and interdependencies and ensure momentum continues after the meeting ends.
External Affairs and Engagement (25%)
Systematic management of external engagement. Oversee the CEO’s external engagement portfolio across education, policy, philanthropy, higher education, government, business, and the faith-based community. Ensure outreach looks beyond siloes, advances the organization’s strategic priorities, strengthens key relationships over time, and reinforces the enterprise narrative. Partner with the Chief of Staff to ensure external commitments accelerate and inform the organization’s agenda.
Measurement and impact assessment. Develop and maintain a disciplined approach to tracking external relationships, engagements, and outcomes, including goals, follow-up actions, and impact. Use this information to continuously refine where the CEO invests time and attention.
Network stewardship. Maintain visibility into the CEO’s key external relationships across highly diverse groups and stakeholders, including university and business leaders, elected officials, artists, and others. Ensure relationships are actively managed, supported, and leveraged appropriately over time.
CEO voice and positioning. In close partnership with the VP of Communications, shape the CEO’s voice across speeches, remarks, talking points, and external messaging. Ensure consistency, clarity, and alignment with College Board’s priorities and values.
External preparation and follow-through. Ensure the CEO is thoroughly prepared for external meetings and appearances and that commitments, insights, and next steps are captured and acted upon internally.
Leading the Office of the CEO (20%)
Office leadership and operations. Lead the Office of the CEO as a high-functioning team, setting clear roles, expectations, and operating norms. Build and steward technology-forward systems to ensure the office manages daily workflow, correspondence, and coordination with precision and discretion.
Direct people management. Formally manage three direct reports, providing clear direction, feedback, and development. Set a strong standard for how the office represents the CEO and interacts with senior leaders across the organization.
Schedule and calendar stewardship. Ensure the CEO’s calendar is strategically staged and actively managed to reflect priorities, energy management, and preparation needs, not just meeting volume. Coordination with the Office of the President.
Partner closely with the Office of the President to ensure alignment, effective collaboration, and clear ownership of shared issues. Structure regular touchpoints, surface issues early, and support productive joint decision-making.
Special Projects (15%)
Crisis management. Convene and coordinate senior leaders in response to emerging issues or crises that pose reputational, operational, or strategic risk. Ensure clear leadership, rapid alignment, and effective communication.
Legal and risk coordination. Serve as a key point of contact for the General Counsel and Chief Risk and Legal Officer on sensitive or high-impact matters involving the CEO.
High-stakes communications and relationships. Support media engagement, Board interactions, and other critical communications or relationship-driven efforts requiring senior-level judgment and coordination.
Other priority initiatives. Lead or support special projects as identified by the CEO and Chief of Staff.