Senior Director, Quality Coaching – Technology Innovation and Impact

Strada Education Foundation•Washington, DC

10d•$143,800 - $168,250•Onsite

About The Position

Strada Education Foundation's Quality Coaching team is working to expand access to quality education-to-career coaching. Its work is organized around three change drivers: Transition Coaching, strengthening guidance as learners move from high school into postsecondary education and employment; Postsecondary Education Quality Coaching, strengthening coaching within postsecondary institutions; and Statewide Quality Coaching Models, helping states expand access to quality coaching at scale. Strada's Principles for Quality Education-to-Career Guidance emphasize outcomes, student agency, universal access, relationships, and the use of data and evidence. New technologies like AI offer cross-cutting capabilities that can strengthen these principles by expanding access and personalization, improving the use of labor market and outcomes information, and augmenting – rather than replacing – the human relationships central to quality coaching. We are looking for a Senior Director who will lead Quality Coaching's Technology Innovation portfolio, building on Strada's existing research, investments, and partnerships to advance human-centered technology that augments human-connected coaching. The portfolio focuses on three key questions: (1) where and how technology can most effectively augment career coaching; (2) what quality standards and benchmarks should guide career navigation tools; and (3) what data systems and infrastructure are needed to support quality coaching at scale. As a member of the Quality Coaching leadership team, you will also strengthen the entire portfolio by overseeing the team's Project Manager and providing strategic oversight for grants, impact measurement and learning, and teamwide project management. You will bring rigorous analysis, synthesis, and judgment to complex strategic questions and help translate strategy, evidence, and innovation into measurable impact.

Requirements

At least 8 years of progressively responsible experience in education technology, innovation, career coaching, student success, workforce development, philanthropy, strategy, and consulting, including significant responsibility for independently leading complex strategic initiatives.
Demonstrated experience developing and executing technology- or AI-enabled strategies and translating innovative ideas into practical pilots, partnerships, investments, and scalable approaches, preferably involving education, coaching, advising, career navigation, or other learner-facing services.
Strong portfolio leadership and execution skills, with experience overseeing complex portfolios, grants or investments, project-management systems, and progress monitoring from strategy through implementation, measurement, and learning.
Highly independent strategic thinker and self-starter who can create structure amid ambiguity, frame and analyze complex questions, synthesize qualitative and quantitative information, assess alternatives and tradeoffs, distinguish signal from noise, and translate analysis into actionable recommendations.
Exceptional synthesis, writing, communication, and presentation skills, with demonstrated ability to translate complex information into concise, compelling memos, analyses, recommendations, presentations, and board-level materials for technical and nontechnical audiences.
Demonstrated experience defining measurable outcomes and learning questions and partnering with research or evaluation experts to use evidence to inform strategy, investment, adaptation, and scale.
Demonstrated experience managing and developing staff and leading complex, cross-functional work by building trusted relationships and successfully advancing shared priorities in a distributed leadership team environment and in a matrixed organization.
Experience managing consultants, grants, vendors, and external partnerships and leading teams and complex initiatives through influence, with a demonstrated commitment to developing others and strengthening team performance.
Knowledge of responsible AI practices and the opportunities, limitations, and risks associated with using technology to serve learners, including privacy, accessibility, transparency, student agency, data interoperability, evidence, and the appropriate role of human relationships in coaching and career navigation.
Demonstrated ability to cultivate, grow, and manage positive, mutually beneficial relationships at all levels of an organization and with partners outside the organization, with strong communication, interpersonal, and relationship management skills, underscored by strong judgment and emotional intelligence.
Commitment to providing equitable pathways to opportunity through postsecondary education and training, particularly for individuals who have faced significant barriers, and demonstrated alignment with Strada's guiding values
Demonstrated commitment to contributing to a collaborative, inclusive, and mission-driven culture: you value diverse perspectives and lived experiences, seek input from those affected by your work, collaborate effectively across organizational boundaries, and demonstrate curiosity, accountability, agility, stewardship, and continuous learning
Personal attributes including: strategic problem solver, disciplined and creative mind, player-coach mentality, takes initiative and works independently, embraces ownership and responsibility, secure in sharing and receiving feedback, elevates the success of others, finds fulfillment in teaching and mentoring, eager learner, contagious enthusiasm, high integrity and commitment to accuracy, and committed to improving individual lives and our society

Nice To Haves

An advanced degree, with training in education, technology, innovation, business, public policy, social science, data and analytics, or a related field

Responsibilities

Develop and lead Quality Coaching's Technology Innovation strategy and portfolio, defining priorities and use cases, investments, partnerships, measures of success, and other pathways to scale.
Advance the Technology Innovation learning agenda by building evidence and actionable guidance about how technology can augment human-connected coaching and career navigation.
Determine the quality standards and technical benchmarks that should guide technology-enabled career coaching tools.
Understand the systems, data infrastructure, and appropriate roles for AI needed to support quality coaching at scale.
Assess the career navigation technology ecosystem and identify promising solutions, capabilities, gaps, and emerging opportunities, to help Strada determine whether to partner, invest, or discontinue approaches.
Translate research, investments, pilots, and field learning into practical frameworks and scalable approaches that help states, institutions, schools, and coaching organizations responsibly adopt and integrate human-centered technology.
Serve as Strada's Quality Coaching subject-matter leader on technology and AI, partnering across other departments (Research, Strategy & Innovation, and Impact Investments) and with external partners to advance shared opportunities.
Collaborate with Strada's Learner Engagement team to incorporate what students are saying about their lived experiences into the design, evaluation, and continuous improvement of tech-enabled coaching approaches.
Independently frame and analyze complex strategic questions, drawing on research, data, portfolio learning, and partner perspectives to identify patterns, risks, opportunities, and next steps.
Synthesize complex and incomplete information, shape initial responses to cross-functional and organizational requests, and drive issues toward resolution through clear options, tradeoffs, and decision-ready recommendations for the SVP, Quality Coaching and other senior leaders.
Contribute as a member of the Quality Coaching leadership team, identifying connections across the three change drivers and leading cross-functional priorities through influence, clear decision-making, and accountability.
Represent Strada with researchers, funders, policymakers, education leaders, and technology providers to share relevant learning through presentations, publications, partnerships, and convenings.
Lead complex, cross-functional initiatives through influence, establishing clear roles, decision rights, and accountability across internal and external partners.
Provide strategic oversight for Quality Coaching's grants, contracts, and impact investments, working with cross-functional partners to strengthen portfolio coherence, grant development, implementation, learning, and decision-making.
Coordinate Quality Coaching's approach to impact measurement and learning, partnering with Research and initiative leaders to establish clear outcomes, learning questions, measures of success, and evidence-building approaches and to translate findings into decisions.
Manage and develop the Project Manager, Quality Coaching, providing strategic direction for teamwide project and portfolio management, annual planning, progress monitoring, grants coordination, budgets, and other operating systems.
Provide light-touch project management leadership across Quality Coaching, ensuring visibility into major priorities, deliverables, dependencies, risks, resource needs, and decision points while maintaining clear accountability with initiative leaders for substantive strategy and results.
Strengthen connections across the Quality Coaching portfolio by identifying patterns, shared learning, and opportunities that can improve execution and impact across initiatives.
Serve as an integrator across Quality Coaching, connecting perspectives and work across initiative leaders and coordinating strategic follow-through on shared priorities.
Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performing team culture grounded in Strada's board-approved principles, valued behaviors, and ways of working.
Contribute to Quality Coaching and organization-wide efforts to strengthen organizational health, employee engagement, collaboration, inclusion, belonging, and continuous improvement.
Support the development and success of colleagues through coaching, feedback, and knowledge sharing while contributing to shared accountability and collective success.