Senior Manager, AI Strategy

Nelnet

About The Position

Nelnet Business Services (NBS), a division of Nelnet, Inc., provides payment technology, education services, and learning management solutions to education and faith-based organizations, serving more than 1,300 higher education institutions, 11,500 K-12 schools, 3,500 churches, and millions of individual students, families, and supporters across the globe. Our culture of service enables us to form long-lasting and trusted partnerships, while our focus on creativity and innovative solutions empowers our customer communities to thrive. As a Nelnet company, the perks at NBS go beyond our benefits package. You’re part of a community, invested in you as an individual and united by our mission to create opportunities for people where they live, learn and work. The Sr. Manager, AI Strategy thinks strategically and executes with discipline; they can sit in a room with senior leaders and shape direction, then turn around and build the systems that make that direction stick. This role will help define how AI capability gets built, spread, and sustained across the organization through enablement programs, adoption frameworks, and a portfolio of high-visibility initiatives. This role is responsible for developing fluency in the portfolio, the stakeholders, and the strategy deep enough to confidently represent the function's thinking. This role’s focus is on ambiguous, fast-moving, and consequential efforts to drive our business forward.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Communications, Technology, or a related field; or equivalent professional experience.
5+ years in program management, strategy operations, learning & development, or a closely related function.
Deep familiarity with AI tools, platforms, or enterprise AI deployments; strong technical expertise is not required, but strategic literacy about the AI landscape is.
Demonstrated experience managing multiple concurrent workstreams with clarity and discipline; you can run the details without losing sight of the bigger picture.
Track record of operating at the intersection of strategy and execution: not just managing plans but helping shape them.
Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to write clearly for both executive and technical audiences.
Exceptional organizational skills.
Collaborative by default; builds trust quickly and influences effectively across functions without direct authority.
Comfortable operating with ambiguity and a high degree of autonomy
Demonstrable, self-directed depth in AI
Active power user of AI tools in your own work; not a passive observer of the space but someone who has changed how they work because of it.
Able to translate AI concepts for non-technical audiences; comfortable in rooms with both business leaders and builders.
Genuine point of view on AI's implications for knowledge work, organizational design, and workforce development and the intellectual honesty to update that view as the landscape shifts.

Nice To Haves

Experience working in or alongside a technology, innovation, or enterprise transformation function strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Drive strategic clarity across the AI portfolio, understanding which programs are being deployed, why they matter, how initiatives connect, and where the program needs to go next.
Serve as a credible voice for the AI strategy; represent the team’s work with clarity and conviction to stakeholders at all levels.
Identify and solution capacity constraints, blockers, and prioritization conflicts before they escalate.
Lead program management for AI enablement and education programs, including cohort scheduling, curriculum coordination, capstone facilitation, and participant experience.
Engage and partner with senior leadership, key stakeholders, and curriculum designers to continuously evolve learning programs; contribute strategic perspective on shifts in capability needs to drive the future of the programs.
Track and analyze program outcomes, engagement, and post-program skill development to inform the strategic direction and investment for the program.
Develop tooling and governance adoption strategies, coordinate training, and build change management approaches to back the rollout of AI tools and platforms that drive the business forward.
Develop and maintain enablement resources: frameworks, guides, and onboarding content that scale the team’s thinking across the organization.
Collaborate and influence internal and external stakeholders and brand partners to keep programs aligned to the business; anticipate where friction will emerge and get ahead of it.
Prepare briefings, decision memos, and executive updates; distill complex, fast-moving work into clear narratives that drive decisions.