Executive Director, Strategic Support & Special Projects
About the role
The Executive Director, Strategic Support & Special Projects leads the Forward Deployed Services (FDS) function, owning its vision, strategy, and execution. Reporting to the EVP of Customer Experience, this role also serves as a versatile partner to the Customer Success & Development leadership team.
Responsibilities
Lead and manage a growing team of 5-12 Forward Deployed Services Specialists (FDSSs), setting the vision and direction for the function's impact and managing the full lifecycle of the team—from hiring and onboarding to long-term professional development and performance management.
Set priorities, goals, and KPIs for the FDSS team, driving long-term and annual planning. Develop and manage budget inputs to ensure the team is appropriately resourced and aligned with organizational objectives.
Partner closely with cross-functional stakeholders, including Sales, Product, and Engineering, to align on strategy, elevate customer needs and concerns, inform market priorities, and shape sales strategy.
Document best practices and create playbooks from the projects or coaching you lead, ensuring that interventions and coaching leave a permanent impact on the CSD team.
Temporarily assume full responsibilities of prioritized CSD roles, including people manager (Director, Senior Manager) and account manager (Customer Success Manager and Digital Success Manager) roles. Provide coverage for key leaders, address critical business needs, and drive essential initiatives forward.
Maintain strong feedback loops across Sales, Product, and CX to ensure excellent synchronization.
Master the nuances of each role within the CSD ecosystem to ensure seamless coverage that maintains (or exceeds) current standards of excellence.
Act as a stabilizing force during transitions, covering leaves of absence or gaps in leadership by maintaining team momentum, fostering alignment, and ensuring continued progress toward objectives.
Quickly build trust within internal teams and external stakeholders to ensure that “handoffs” feel like a continuation of the work and not a pause. Quickly assess team strengths and areas of growth, understand current progress to key outcomes and success metrics, and implement structured processes that drive progress and accountability.
Seamlessly integrate into various territories, accounts, and management styles.
Serve as a thought partner, confidant, and sounding board to the EVP of Customer Experience, providing team health, operational risks, strategic opportunities, unvarnished feedback and alternative perspectives to improve leadership effectiveness.
Directly support external partners when high-level leadership intervention is needed. Work with members of the Customer Success & Development team to understand when external partners need leadership support, the type of support needed, and the urgency.
Coach and mentor the CSD team, providing coaching and performance management that levels up managers and individual contributors.
Represent Amplify: Act as an ambassador for the Customer Success and Development team within and outside of our organization. Drive positive relationships with account stakeholders at all levels, including school and district leadership, with a focus on growth and retention.
Develop high-impact presentations, talking points, and other written communications for the CSD team, rooted in a deep understanding of customer needs.
Qualifications
Executive Support Experience: 10+ years of progressive professional experience, with at least 3 years spent in a high-leverage strategic, operational function supporting a Vice President or C-level executive.
Successful Team Leader: You’re a proven leader who has managed teams of 10+, preferably through layers. You have demonstrated the ability to coach people up and out of teams with respect and intentionality.
Radically Adaptable Change-Whisperer: You don’t just tolerate change, you thrive in it. You can switch contexts five times before lunch without losing your focus or joy in the work. You quickly make sense of complex situations and bring people along with you. When you’ve led through change, you did so compellingly, building stakeholders’ change readiness and ensuring strong outcomes through the change. Your people don’t get “stuck,” they swim with the currents.
Swiss Army Knife: You are as comfortable in a high-level board meeting as you are in the weeds of a project management tool or a school principal meeting. You possess a blend of logic and problem-solving as well as strong emotional intelligence and political acumen.
Expert Communicator: Proven ability to speak the language of school district leaders, internal team members, and organizational leadership with equal fluency and authenticity.
Project Leadership: Demonstrated ability to independently lead and manage complex, ambiguous, and high-visibility cross-functional special projects from concept through operational hand-off. You’re a consummate communicator who always follows through and doesn't let details fall through the cracks.
Ability to travel up to 50–70% of the time, including extended on-site district engagements with customers.
Past Roles Within or Supporting Customer Experience: You have proven experience in Customer Success or Professional Development roles.
Pinch Hitter Experience: You have previous experience substituting in for various roles and bringing adaptability to an organization and/or have experience successfully supporting a significant project/team during a leadership transition.
National Operations: Experience working with and aligning geographically dispersed teams, understanding the nuances of customer success operations.
Tool Proficiency: Advanced proficiency with enterprise tools for strategic management, such as executive dashboards (e.g., Tableau, PowerBI) and planning software (e.g., Asana, Jira, Salesforce).
Experience with Amplify programs: You’ve helped implement an Amplify program before and/or would call yourself an expert in one of our Amplify programs.
Education: Bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution in Business, Finance, Engineering, Education, or a related quantitative field.