Senior Director, Quality Coaching – Technology Innovation and Impact

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.

• 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.

• You are advancing a coherent Technology Innovation strategy and portfolio across Quality Coaching's three change drivers, with clear priorities, use cases, intended outcomes, and pathways for testing, learning, adoption, and scale
• You have generated actionable frameworks and insights addressing how technology augments human-connected coaching, quality standards and technical benchmarks for career navigation tools, and the systems, data infrastructure, and interoperability needed to support quality coaching at scale
• You have strengthened impact measurement and learning across Quality Coaching through clearer outcomes, learning questions, measures of success, and synthesis of evidence to inform strategy, investment, adaptation, and scale
• You have established effective oversight of Quality Coaching's grants and portfolio management, with clear visibility into major investments, priorities, deliverables, risks, dependencies, resources, and decision points
• You are successfully managing and developing the Project Manager and have established a light-touch PMO function that improves teamwide planning, coordination, accountability, and execution without displacing initiative-level ownership
• You are providing high-quality strategic analysis, decision support, and cross-team leadership by independently framing complex questions, producing decision-ready recommendations, and strengthening collaboration across Quality Coaching and Strada

• 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.

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

• 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

Strada Education Foundation is a national nonprofit dedicated to strengthening the connections between education and employment — with a particular focus on people who've faced the greatest barriers to economic opportunity through postsecondary education and training. Our strategic plan centers on five priorities: clear outcomes, quality coaching, affordable postsecondary education and training, work-based learning, and employer alignment.

We offer a dynamic, collaborative, and inspiring professional environment with robust opportunities to test innovative approaches and build evidence for impact at scale to improve education-to-career outcomes for millions of learners. We invest in our people the same way — with real learning and professional development opportunities, inside the organization and out.