Director of Advancement, Alpha - $400,000/year USD

About the role

You would own the word-of-mouth engine for an entire region: the dinners, the parent ambassadors, the mayor's office, the CEO who opens a door for a 14-year-old's first real project. A normal week puts you in four rooms. You design and host the region's calendar of gatherings, from a 150-person open house to an eight-seat curated dinner, several a month. You recruit current parents who genuinely want to talk to prospective ones and match them, family to family. You build relationships with city officials and business leaders, turning them into venues, sources of support for new campus openings, and real opportunities for students. And you deliver on the Alpha Networks: introductions, expert masterclasses, internships, alumni welcomes, logged family by family. There is no finished playbook. You write it while running it, and the systems you invent get picked up by peers building the same engine in other cities. As the region grows, the scoreboard gets harder, not easier: doors opened per family has to rise even as enrollment climbs. Success shows up as the share of growth arriving through real people vouching for Alpha, read on a multi-year trend rather than a quarterly report.

What You Will Be Doing

• Designing and running the region's gathering calendar: open events, curated dinners by city and grade, and family retreats, several a month and on budget
• Securing venues, hosts, and vendors, then hosting the room live
• Recruiting current parents as ambassadors, equipping them with true stories, and matching them to prospective families and tours
• Opening relationships with public officials and business executives, and turning them into venues, campus-opening support, and student opportunities
• Matching enrolled families into parent circles and students into mentorships, masterclasses, and real-world internships, and welcoming graduating families as alumni within 30 days
• Logging every gathering, introduction, and first-contact attribution in the CRM (customer relationship management platform) so "doors opened per family" is a true number

What You Won’t Be Doing

• Buying growth — this role has no paid media, no ad spend, and no impression or lead-volume targets
• Owning the brand story or top-down campaigns; Marketing has that
• Processing admissions, running tours, or chasing enrollment paperwork; Admissions and Family Success have that
• Running a campus day-to-day, or opening the physical building
• Reporting raw attendance and headcount as if a full room were the result
• Waiting for a finished playbook, a template, or support staff before you start

Key Responsibilities

• Make people-first referrals the majority source of your region's enrollment growth

Basic Requirements

• 5+ years building communities or relationship programs in K-12 education, membership, or a comparable network business, where growth came through people: referrals, members, congregations, chapters, alumni, or a client book, with numbers to show for it
• Has personally designed and run 20+ gatherings across the full range, from intimate curated dinners to 100+ person open events, with budget ownership
• Has opened and maintained relationships with public officials or business executives that produced concrete, nameable value
• Disciplined CRM user; logging relationships, attributions, and actions is already a habit
• Lives in, or will relocate to, one of these regions: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Greenwich (CT), Miami, Atlanta, Boston, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Dorado (PR), Nashville, or Park City (UT)
• Authorized to work in the US without visa sponsorship

Nice-to-have Requirements

• Ran regional growth, community, or partnerships for a network-shaped organization: a school group, membership club, franchise, or faith or civic institution
• Built and monetized a high-trust book of relationships as a client-facing principal in wealth management, consulting, or business development
• Came up through admissions, advancement, community organizing, or hospitality, and were always the one asked to host and represent the institution
• Existing relationships with local government or the business community in your city
• Fluent in how families make high-stakes education decisions

About Alpha

Alpha reimagines the school day around faster learning, stronger mentorship, and more time for students to build real-world skills. Roles with real student impact: Alpha hires teachers (guides), operators, admissions experts, school & curriculum leaders, and remote team members. Education work that pays like it matters: Alpha offers six-figure roles for people ready to help build a radically better school experience. A culture built for builders: Alpha is fast-moving, ambitious, and student focused. It’s for people who want to improve the system, not maintain it. Alpha is where you can do the most meaningful work of your career.

Pay

$400,000 USD/year, paid weekly.