Senior Program Officer, Advising Solutions and Distribution

Gates Foundation•Seattle, WA

About The Position

The Foundation is the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally. The Postsecondary Courseware and Navigation team harnesses AI-enabled tools to remove widespread barriers that stand between learners and a postsecondary credential that reflects their skills and knowledge and delivers sustained economic value. The team recognizes that some barriers are about learning itself, and others are about navigation—the ability for learners to move within and across fragmented systems with ease, cost-effectiveness, and recognition of the skills and knowledge they’ve gained along the way. This team invests in AI-enabled gateway courses, personal advising, and learning mobility; taken together, these efforts support today’s learners to build momentum across enrollment, persistence, and credential completion. Your Role You are responsible for advancing the foundation’s strategy to develop AI-native advising solutions that help students navigate the transition from high school to postsecondary education and into the workforce . You lead investments to build and steward an organization that manages the shared technical components powering AI-native advising products, broker engagement with enterprise technology providers to encourage integration of these solutions into the education platforms used by schools and districts, and shape the distribution strategy to reach the students and contexts where they will have the greatest impact. You bring mastery-level knowledge of AI product development, platform architecture, and the postsecondary advising landscape, combined with an entrepreneurial track record in standing up or stewarding new organizations through governance, business model development, and pathways to scale.

Requirements

An advanced degree or equivalent demonstrated experience.
Entrepreneurial track record having stood up, scaled, or stewarded a new company or business unit through governance design, leadership recruitment, business model development, and pathways to sustainable scale; or comparable experience in venture capital, venture philanthropy, or impact investing, evaluating and supporting portfolio companies through these stages.
Product and platform-building experience for AI-native software, ideally including middleware or platform architecture, developer-facing infrastructure and low-code components, with hands-on involvement in shaping product roadmaps.
Experience engaging effectively with enterprise technology providers and the broader edtech distribution ecosystem, demonstrated through prior partnerships, enterprise software development, institutional procurement, or comparable engagement.
Demonstrated investor perspective with experience designing, negotiating, and managing complex investments; structuring partnerships; and supporting organizational development.
Foresight orientation with a track record of spotting emerging technology trends and balancing rapid experimentation with execution of a core strategy.
Strong knowledge of the pathways advising landscape—including students, advisors, technology providers, and state and institutional data systems—sufficient to assess product-market fit and influence product roadmaps.
Significant experience aligning team members in matrixed environments and translating technical complexity for non-technical leadership, grantees, and field partners.
Strong knowledge of institutional, state, and federal policy relevant to the design, adoption, and implementation of college and career advising offerings.
Demonstrated commitment to equity in education and in AI design and deployment, particularly attentive to how product design, distribution patterns, and adoption decisions impact underserved populations.
Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where this position is located.
The Foundation does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. This includes direct company sponsorship and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (eg: H-1B, O-1, L-1, E, OPT, STEM-OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc.).

Responsibilities

Design, negotiate, and manage a portfolio of grants and contracts to advance the design, build, and launch of AI-native advising solutions that improve student outcomes at scale.
Lead investments to stand up and steward a new or existing organization that bundles navigation public goods into a middleware platform and deploys exemplar low-code AI-native advising systems of engagement that travel with students across institutions and sectors.
Develop and steward the foundation’s distribution strategy for AI-native advising solutions, sequencing investments across enterprise platforms, incumbent providers, and direct-to-institution channels to ensure solutions reach the students and contexts where they will have the greatest impact.
Lead team engagement with enterprise technology providers (e.g., major cloud and productivity platform companies) to encourage integration of navigation solutions into their education platforms, while ensuring incumbent college and career advising software providers can harness shared technical components to strengthen their products.
Steward the long-term health and durability of core product partners, monitoring governance, business model viability, leadership, and pathways to sustainable scale, bringing an impact orientation that connects each investment decision to meaningful change for students.
Continuously scan emerging AI capabilities for opportunities to transform the student advising experience, funding rapid experimentation alongside execution of the core strategy and proposing new approaches when current methods are not working.
Foster a user-centered design approach to help understand incentives for and needs of end users, institutional decision makers, practitioners, developers, distributors, funders, and policy makers in ways that improve the impact of priority solutions.
Identify gaps in current advising product availability and quality to guide positioning of grant and contract-funded partners, using data and defined metrics to inform decisions.
Manage collaborative, trusting partner and team relationships in ways that ensure productive feedback loops between partners and multiple program strategy teams in support of shared goals, engaging proactively and transparently and prioritizing the success of the broader team.
Represent the foundation to key program-related external constituencies, as appropriate, on committees related to area of expertise and responsibilities of the position.
Support inclusive culture through modeling behaviors and actions; raise issues in a timely fashion to appropriate partners.