Customer Success, Retention

Pearson•United States,

1d•$120,000 - $140,000

About The Position

The Retention Lead is responsible for defining and driving the end-to-end student retention strategy across partner schools, ensuring a clear, focused approach to improving student persistence and success. This role owns the identification, prioritization, and execution of the highest-impact levers across academic experience, student engagement, onboarding, and school operations. Operating at the intersection of strategy, data, and execution, this role leads a hypothesis-driven, test-and-learn approach to student retention while translating insights into enterprise-level priorities and actionable initiatives. This includes designing and scaling interventions, aligning cross-functional teams, and ensuring retention efforts are coordinated, measurable, and focused on outcomes that drive meaningful improvement. Success in this role requires strong cross-functional leadership and influence, partnering with Enrollment, Academics, School Operations, Product, and School Success to align on priorities, drive accountability, and embed retention into core operating rhythms. Ultimately, this role ensures retention is managed as a strategic, shared outcome, strengthening school success, partner satisfaction, and long-term growth across the organization.

Requirements

8–12+ years of experience in strategy, operations, analytics, or related roles
Background in consulting or comparable environments with strong analytical and problem-solving rigor, along with industry experience—ideally in consumer or customer-centric businesses
Proven track record of driving cross-functional initiatives and influencing senior stakeholders
Experience leading strategy development and execution at scale
Strong analytical foundation with ability to translate data into action

Responsibilities

Define and evolve the end-to-end retention strategy across partner schools
Identify and prioritize the highest-impact drivers of retention
Translate strategy into clear initiatives, roadmaps, and measurable outcomes
Ensure alignment between retention strategy and broader business priorities
Analyze retention, persistence, and attrition trends across partner schools, cohorts, and student segments
Identify key drivers of retention and disengagement, including academic, operational, and engagement factors
Develop dashboards and reporting to provide clear visibility into retention performance and leading indicators
Establish early warning indicators to proactively identify at-risk students and schools
Lead a structured test → learn → scale approach to retention
Develop and test hypotheses on key retention drivers (e.g., onboarding, engagement, academic experience, communication)
Partner with schools and cross-functional teams to design and implement pilots
Evaluate impact and scale successful interventions across partner schools
Drive alignment on where to invest to improve retention outcomes
Influence cross-functional priorities across Enrollment, Academics, School Operations, Product, and School Success
Balance trade-offs and ensure focus on the highest-value initiatives
Act as a strategic advisor to leadership on retention performance and opportunities
Establish clear retention targets, metrics, and success measures
Build and lead an operating rhythm (e.g., reviews, dashboards, performance discussions)
Ensure accountability for retention outcomes across teams and schools
Provide visibility into performance, risks, and opportunities
Enable partner schools with insights, tools, and actionable guidance to improve retention
Identify patterns and replicate best practices across the network
Balance standardization with flexibility to meet local school needs
Leverage analytics to inform strategy and decision-making
Ensure retention insights are translated into clear actions and priorities
Partner with analytics teams to enhance visibility into retention drivers and leading indicators