Director of Admissions, Alpha - $250,000/year USD

About Alpha

Alpha operates as a K-12 independent school anchored by a verifiable premise: core academics conclude within two hours daily, students advance ahead of national learning curves, and afternoon hours center on substantive skill development rather than filler assignments. Alpha reimagines the school day around faster learning, stronger mentorship, and more time for students to build real-world skills.

About the Role

This position functions differently from traditional admissions director roles at established Bay Area schools. Your territory holds families who have not yet encountered us. You will be the one who reaches them. Bay Area families—entrepreneurs, technologists, medical professionals, and capital allocators—will not respond to polished tours and aspirational messaging. They will request outcome data, scrutinize structural compromises, and evaluate us alongside Nueva, Castilleja, Harker, Marin Country Day, and Branson within the same decision framework. You should invite that scrutiny.

This role combines outbound growth work with a requirement for selective judgment. You create your own prospect flow: building ties with preschools and feeder institutions, forming community alliances, hosting local touchpoints, and activating referrals from families already enrolled. You carry an enrollment target. You also decline families when the fit is incompatible with the child's needs, operating in a market where refusing a socially prominent parent produces ripple effects. Both dimensions define the position. A single misaligned enrollment in a compact cohort damages outcomes more than an unfilled spot.

In year one, you serve as the founding on-the-ground representative for a campus still establishing local recognition, and the majority of your time unfolds beyond school walls. As enrollment matures, the role evolves. You transition from initiating early-stage outreach to becoming the senior leader families request by reputation, supported by junior staff and authoring processes replicated at peer campuses. You maintain an on-site presence at one campus location (Palo Alto or San Rafael) across all five weekdays, visible during morning arrival, afternoon dismissal, and evening programming.

What You Will Be Doing

• Building qualified family pipelines independently via preschool and feeder-school alliances, community collaborations, referral activation, and locally hosted events.
• Managing the complete cycle personally: initial inquiry, fit-assessment dialogue, campus visit, student trial day, enrollment determination, and family integration.
• Conducting tours, open sessions, and information forums where you justify an AI-enhanced learning framework to discerning, interrogative parents.
• Maintaining 7 or more concurrent family engagements across pipeline stages, each documented with current status and planned next step in HubSpot and our student information system.
• Delivering weekly summaries on pipeline vitality and enrollment quality, and revising local admissions protocols, FAQs, and standard operating procedures as market insights accumulate.

What You Won't Be Doing

• Managing a waitlist. No legacy applicant pool exists here.
• Escalating enrollment decisions to committee review or multi-tier approval chains.
• Following templated scripts or pursuing volume-driven outreach lists.
• Transferring families across separate coordinators, event staff, and reception desks.
• Supervising sizable teams or allocating the majority of your calendar to cross-functional meetings.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive enrollment growth at one Bay Area campus location by attracting families positioned to succeed within the Alpha educational model.

Basic Requirements

• 3+ years in premium client-engagement roles where the purchasing entity was an individual or family at $25K+ per transaction or $2K+ monthly. You must specify employer and price tier; enterprise or B2B-only sales experience does not satisfy this criterion.
• Direct, personal accountability for a complete client, admissions, or enrollment lifecycle: application intake, fit evaluation, offer extension, decision closure, and onboarding execution. What you executed individually, not team-level accomplishments.
• A quantified growth or acquisition metric you personally owned, including your methods for lead generation and local partnership development to achieve it.
• Management of 7 or more simultaneous client or family relationships across varied stages, documented in a specified CRM or database platform.
• A specific instance where you advised against your own offering due to poor client fit.
• Direct application of AI-enabled tools within client-facing operations, such as meeting prep, tailored outreach, conversation documentation, or follow-up automation.
• Professional-grade written correspondence with executive-level or high-net-worth clientele.
• Current residence in, or commitment to relocate within 60 days to, Palo Alto, CA, or San Rafael, CA (Marin County). This position is entirely on-site, with no hybrid arrangement.
• Employment authorization in the United States independent of visa sponsorship requirements.

Nice-to-have Requirements

• Established connections within Peninsula or Marin family networks, including relationships at area private preschools or feeder institutions.
• Prior admissions or enrollment responsibility at a selective independent K-12 institution, or a competitive-entry program.
• Professional history in luxury hospitality, private client advisory, concierge medical practice, private wealth management, exclusive membership organizations, or premium residential real estate.