Director, Transformation and Operations

Job Title : Director, Transformation and Operations Team : Office of the Chief Executive Officer Location : Hybrid in - strong preference for Newark (NJ), or New York City (NYC); Atlanta (GA) or Chicago (IL) also possible Employment Type : Full-time FLSA Classification : Exempt Start Date : ASAP About Braven Braven is a national nonprofit that prepares promising college students to secure a strong first opportunity after college graduation through a career-accelerating program. We work with higher education and employer partners to offer a life-changing experience that begins with a semester-long course for college students, followed by support that lasts through graduation. Together, our ambition is to help rebuild the middle class and revitalize the American Dream. To learn more, take a look at Braven’s Jobs Report . About the Role In order to achieve its ambition of serving 80,000-100,000 Fellows over the next decade, Braven is hiring a Director, Transformation and Operations, to join the newly formed Transformation team. Transformation is charged with ensuring that we are seeing around corners and prepared to maximize the strategic opportunities in our future. Your role is to turn the ideas that matter most into reality. You'll lead the design and execution of key transformation initiatives. Currently, the primary focus is the operational build-out of an expanded partnership pilot with one of our higher education partners, one of the most important strategic bets in Braven’s at our current inflection point in growth. This role has no direct reports, but you'll work across many internal teams. Your success depends on your ability to move people toward shared outcomes without formal authority. You're energized by ambiguity, you think in systems, and you genuinely love figuring out what "cutting edge" means for an organization that is paving the way. You enjoy bringing structure to ambiguous problems without flattening the complexity, and you know when to slow down and define the question before rushing to answer it. This role is intentionally scoped around execution, systems, and project management; the business case for the partnership and the most senior external relationships sit with other members of the Transformation and regional teams, which lets you go deep on making the work real. You will play a pivotal role in standing up and managing the operations of our pilot and in shaping what makes the model repeatable at future partner sites. The person in this role thrives in a startup environment where job descriptions are starting points, not ceilings, and is willing to roll up their sleeves wherever the mission needs them. This is a small team with a culture where everyone pitches in, shares credit, and stays focused on student impact. This role is a part of the Office of the Chief Executive Officer and reports directly to the Head of Transformation. What You’ll Do Lead, Design, and Launch Special Initiatives (50%) • Create strategic plans that translate vision into execution for special initiatives owned by the Transformation team (inclusive of multi-year roadmaps, short-term project plans, stakeholder communications maps, risk mitigation strategies, learnings from market intelligence, etc.) • Synthesize insights and recommendations for senior leaders to guide ongoing strategy • Manage the execution of a wide variety of teammates towards success, adapting strategies and frameworks as needed • Initial projects within your scope will include building out Braven’s expanded partnership pilot end-to-end, and preparing the model systems, staffing logic, and playbooks to extend to future higher-education partner sites • Lead and influence cross-functional teams in a matrixed environment (i.e., teams will not directly report into this role) to bring initiatives to life, fostering a culture of excellence, continuous learning, collaboration, and innovation • Build internal buy-in as projects evolve, meeting people where they are and making the unfamiliar feel approachable • Embrace the reality that we're figuring this out as we go and help the team feel steady while we do, serving as an internal resource for “what’s possible” Operations Infrastructure & Project Management (30%) • Create and fully own the project plans for key transformation initiatives you lead: building timelines, setting milestones, tracking dependencies, and keeping the team on track • Turn big-picture organizational priorities into specific, sequenced actions with real owners and real deadlines, and follow up on them without oversight from your manager • Create lightweight but durable operating systems: the trackers, templates, and check-in rhythms that give a small team visibility into a lot of moving parts • Ensure these integrate with and streamline/simplify organizational processes, vs. create additional complexity • Flag risks and potential blockers early; bring proposed solutions, not just problems to keep the work moving forward • Develop high-quality memos, briefings, and presentation materials to support executive-level decision-making and external stakeholder engagement • Ensure alignment with broader organizational strategic objectives Data & Technology Connectivity (20%) • Serve as the connective tissue between Transformation-led initiatives and Braven’s broader data and technology infrastructure, ensuring the choices we make to ensure our solutions work as one system or separate are intentional and aligned with our ambition • Serve as a trusted advisor to internal stakeholders on how data and technology choices affect the partnership’s scalability, offering recommendations grounded in evidence • Translate technical trade-offs into plain language for non-technical stakeholders and vice versa across stakeholders • Develop, launch and/or maintain the tools for our expanded partnership pilot (e.g. surveys, data trackers, digital platforms) • Build and maintain a shared view of student, alumni, and outcome