Director, Transformation and Strategy
Location: In-person with a strong preference for Chicago (IL); also possible in Atlanta (GA), Newark (NJ), or New York City (NY). Employment Type: Full-time, exempt.
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.
About The Role
To achieve its ambition of serving 80,000-100,000 Fellows over the next decade, Braven is hiring a Director, Transformation and Strategy, to join the newly formed Transformation team. This team ensures we see around corners and are prepared to maximize strategic opportunities in our future. Your role is to incubate and then hand off initiatives critical to our organization's success. You'll launch pilot projects, determine what should be consistent across the organization, and adapt what must be unique to meet the needs of the student population and local landscape to scale.
You bring a broad toolkit: designing and executing programs, articulating and assessing business cases, analyzing data, and building operational foundations that make initiatives sustainable and scalable. While you don’t manage anyone directly, you will work across many internal stakeholders, moving people toward shared outcomes without direct authority. You thrive in ambiguity, take initiative, think in systems, and enjoy bringing structure to complex problems without flattening their complexity.
This role calls for adaptability as Braven’s transformation agenda evolves, and your scope will grow with it. Initially, you will play a pivotal role in deepening career partnerships with universities and exploring an evolution of our core model. Strong contributors here thrive in a startup environment where job descriptions are starting points, not ceilings, and are willing to roll up their sleeves for the mission. This is a small team culture where everyone pitches in, shares credit, and stays focused on student impact. The role reports directly to the Head of Transformation within the Office of the Chief Executive Officer.
Responsibilities
- Set Strategy and Own the Business Case (40%)
- Develop and own Braven’s multi-year strategy for key pilot initiatives, synthesizing insights from program delivery, partner relationships, financial modeling, and student outcome data into a coherent, evidence-based framework.
- Build and maintain the business case for key pilot initiatives as a scalable Braven offering: model unit economics, cost per student, and revenue potential across partner types; translate findings into recommendations for Braven leadership and external stakeholders.
- Establish consistent measurement baselines (financial and programmatic metrics) to enable data-driven decisions and meaningful comparisons over time and across pilot partners, surfacing ROI and risks/opportunities.
- Gather updates from across the team and synthesize them into cohesive, well-structured presentations reflecting both progress and challenges.
- Prepare materials, briefings, and talking points for board meetings, distilling complex program activity into clear, compelling narratives for a non-operational audience.
- Conduct ongoing landscape research to stay current on industry trends (university campuses, peer organizations) and test assumptions about the model.
- Deliver Program Outcomes (35%)
- Develop a scalable program framework and multi-year roadmap aligning with Braven’s mission and current model, enabling pivoting toward new future opportunities.
- Execute pilots, launching programming at initial partner sites, and assess what’s working to build a clear framework for replication versus redesign for each context, culture, and student population.
- Define what should be consistent across pilot contexts and what must be adapted, honoring institutional differences while staying true to our model and principles.
- Build authentic relationships with collaborating teams to understand their goals and constraints, acting as a genuine thought partner.
- Define effective partnership approaches with internal and external stakeholders to strengthen relationships, increase efficiency, and ensure strong outcomes.
- Build the operational scaffolding behind launch work—checklists, timelines, communication templates, and handoff documents—to make programs sustainable beyond your direct involvement.
- Create and own project plans across program initiatives, including timelines, milestones, cross-functional dependencies, and keeping work moving forward with minimal oversight.
- Conceive, design, and execute specific programs that excite participants about the results.
- Manage all logistics end-to-end: vision, venue, promotion, materials, execution, and follow-up with strong attention to detail.
- Debrief every program honestly—what worked, what flopped, what to try next—and feed insights back into the overall design.
- Drive Organizational Learning and Operations (25%)
- Design and run a data collection campaign to capture key outcomes.
- Build forms, trackers, and processes that make data collection low-friction and high-compliance for stakeholders.
- Synthesize findings into clear, compelling narratives for a wide variety of audiences—from student-facing summaries to Alignment Team briefings to board-level presentations.
- Ensure data is actionable, not just reported; keep reports simple and useful.
- Develop high-quality memos, briefings, and presentation materials for high-stakes meetings with external key stakeholders.
- Document learnings from each launch to make the next one faster and smarter, adding to our institutional knowledge base.
- Support the broader team in understanding data insights and their implications for future decisions.
Requirements
- Minimum Requirements
- Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent.
- 7+ years of strong track record managing multiple complex, cross-functional strategic initiatives and leading others to outcomes, including building or launching a new program, function, or business line from the ground up.
- Track record of operating in ambiguous environments and creating structure where little exists, requiring constant iteration and resourcefulness.
- Preferred Qualifications
- Exceptional ability to collaborate and work in cross-functional teams.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to draft clear, audience-appropriate communications quickly and with minimal direction.
- Exceptional ability to synthesize information, identify what should stay consistent, and where adjustments are needed due to various contexts.
- Demonstrated ability to move between strategic altitude and hands-on execution: setting strategy, building business cases, and doing operational work yourself.
- Track record of influencing and driving alignment across senior stakeholders—including organizational leadership—without formal authority.
- Strong financial acumen: experience building business cases, modeling unit economics, and translating financial analysis into strategic recommendations for senior leaders.
- Experience in the education or nonprofit sector.
- Fluency in Asana, Trello, Salesforce, Claude, Zoom, and Slack; ability to navigate myriad technology tools.
- A genuine appreciation for and enjoyment of the dynamic, fast-paced energy of a college campus, coupled with an ability to connect authentically with diverse stakeholders, ranging from students to university leadership.
- Demonstrated commitment to building strong and welcoming cultures that help develop others.
- Exemplification of Braven’s core values.
- Experience that has informed your belief in Braven’s mission and prepared you to work with Braven’s student Fellow population.
Please know that no one ever meets 100% of the preferred qualifications. If much of this describes you, we encourage you to apply.
Work Demands
- Ability to work in-person in Atlanta (GA), Chicago (IL), Newark (NJ), or New York City (NY).
- Travel 30% of the time.
- Authorized to work in the U.S.
Benefits
- Competitive base salaries based on the midpoint of the market among not-for-profit organizations of similar size, with opportunities for salary growth over time. Salaries are determined using external and internal benchmarking, with new hires starting at the lower end to allow for growth with performance. The salary ranges for this role are:
- $95,900-$118,900 in Atlanta
- $101,200-$126,400 in Chicago
- $111,300-$139,100 in New York City and Newark
- Unlimited vacation time in addition to org-wide holidays and week-long shutdowns in July and the end of the calendar year (minimum of 19 days per year).
- $25,000 in lifetime Carrot benefits for fertility, family-building, and hormonal health.
- Match of your 401K contribution up to 5% of your base annual salary, starting your first full month.
- Coverage of 85% of health insurance premium for employee and dependents.
- 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
- A one-month paid sabbatical after 4 years on staff.
Schedule
We gather in the office 3 days a week (Tuesday through Thursday) and work remotely 2 days a week (Monday and Friday). This role requires living within commuting distance of one of our hubs: Atlanta, Chicago, Newark, or New York City.