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

Braven is hiring a Director, Transformation and Strategy, to join the newly formed Transformation team. This team ensures we see around corners and maximize strategic opportunities. Your role is to incubate and hand off initiatives critical to our organization's success. You will 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. 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.

This role is adaptable as Braven’s transformation agenda evolves, and your scope will grow with it. Initially, you will deepen our career partnerships with universities and explore an evolution of our core model. Strong contributors here thrive in a startup environment where job descriptions are starting points, not ceilings.

This role is part of the Office of the Chief Executive Officer and reports directly to the Head of Transformation.

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.
  • Build and maintain the business case for key pilot initiatives, modeling unit economics, cost per student, and revenue potential across partner types.
  • Establish consistent measurement baselines (financial and programmatic metrics) to make data-driven decisions and surface ROI and risks/opportunities.
  • Gather updates from across the team and synthesize them into cohesive, well-structured presentations reflecting progress and challenges.
  • Prepare materials, briefings, and talking points for board meetings, distilling complex program activity into clear narratives.
  • Conduct ongoing landscape research to stay current on industry trends 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 enabling pivot toward new opportunities.
  • Execute pilots, launching programming at initial partner sites, and assess what’s working to build a replicable framework.
  • Define what should be consistent across pilot contexts and what must be adapted for institutional differences while staying true to our model.
  • Build authentic relationships with collaborating teams to understand their goals and constraints as a thought partner.
  • Build operational scaffolding behind launch work—checklists, timelines, communication templates, and handoff documents—to ensure sustainability.
  • Create and own project plans across program initiatives, tracking timelines, milestones, cross-functional dependencies, and logistics end-to-end.
  • Debrief every program honestly—what worked, what flopped, and what to try next—and feed insights back into the design.
• Drive Organizational Learning and Operations (25%)
  • Design and run a data collection campaign to capture key outcomes, building forms, trackers, and processes for low-friction, high compliance.
  • Synthesize findings into clear, compelling narratives for diverse audiences—from student-facing summaries to board-level presentations.
  • Ensure data is actionable and reports are simple and useful.
  • Develop high-quality memos, briefings, and presentation materials for high-stakes meetings with external 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 implications for future decisions.

Requirements

• Minimum Requirements
  • Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent.
  • 7+ years of experience managing complex, cross-functional strategic initiatives, 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.
• 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.
  • Exceptional ability to synthesize information and identify what should stay consistent versus where adjustments are needed.
  • Demonstrated ability to move between strategic altitude and hands-on execution.
  • Track record of influencing and driving alignment across senior stakeholders without formal authority.
  • Strong financial acumen: experience building business cases, modeling unit economics, and translating financial analysis into strategic recommendations.
  • Experience in the education or nonprofit sector.
  • Fluency in Asana, Trello, Salesforce, Claude, Zoom, and Slack; ability to navigate myriad technology tools.
  • Genuine appreciation for the dynamic energy of a college campus and ability to connect authentically with diverse stakeholders.
  • Demonstrated commitment to building strong, welcoming cultures that 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. Salary ranges:
  • $95,900–$118,900 in Atlanta
  • $101,200–$126,400 in Chicago
  • $111,300–$139,100 in New York City and Newark

  Salaries are based on a 50-hour work week.

• 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.
• 401K match 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.
• 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 teammates to live within commuting distance of one of our hubs: Atlanta, Chicago, Newark, or New York City.