Program Director, State Strategy & Execution

At ACT, your work makes a difference. Education has power—a power that changes lives forever. It creates opportunities that lift up individuals, their families, and sparks societal change that echoes through generations. ACT is devoted to helping anyone who struggles to access that power, ensuring equity in education. Team members are part of an organization dedicated to a mission: helping people achieve education and workplace success. ACT values a diverse workplace and is committed to fostering an inclusive, equitable environment where every team member has the opportunity to grow.

About the role

The Program Director of State Strategy and Execution is a critical individual contributor role on ACT's State, Government and Public Relations team, responsible for translating state-level goals into coordinated, cross-functional action. As ACT sharpens its focus on state markets, this role ensures alignment across teams—including State/District Sales, Product, Government Relations, and Policy—toward shared goals. The role acts as the backbone across multiple teams by coordinating work, maintaining accurate tracking systems, and ensuring a shared understanding of priorities, actions, and outcomes. Success requires exceptional cross-functional credibility, understanding of ACT’s products and relationships, disciplined accountability tracking, and the judgment to escalate when necessary.

Responsibilities

• State Strategy Coordination:
  • Translate the state-by-state strategy into cross-team initiatives with clear owners, timelines, and success measures.
  • Manage the Senior Directors’ and SVPs' priorities, ensuring time and attention are allocated to the highest-leverage work.
  • Coordinate cross-functional state strategy meetings.
• Tracking, Reporting & Accountability:
  • Own the tracking and reporting cadence on state-by-state goal progress, proactively flagging misalignment before it becomes a problem.
  • Build and maintain dashboards and reporting tools that surface goal progress, relationship health, revenue trends, and execution gaps for leadership review.
  • Provide regular updates to internal teams on state portfolio performance, including risks, wins, and recommended pivots.
• Revenue Gap & Growth Opportunity Identification:
  • Track revenue gaps and growth opportunities within existing state relationships to facilitate strategy development.
  • Maintain documentation for the cross-functional plan to capture identified opportunities, coordinating across sales, product, and policy teams.
  • Work with Policy and Government Relations team members to track state policy developments that may affect ACT's market position.
• Cross-Functional Coordination & Influence:
  • Coordinate across divisions without direct authority—leading through collaboration, clarity, and accountability.
  • Drive cross-team working sessions to align on state priorities, resolve execution conflicts, and maintain momentum toward shared goals.
  • Escalate when a division's independent pursuit conflicts with the state strategy, redirecting and refocusing the work.
  • Identify and address organizational gaps that prevent effective state execution, surfacing structural or process issues and building solutions in partnership with division leads.
  • Foster a culture of accountability, transparency, and mission alignment across the senior leadership team.

Role Progression

• In the first 90 days:
  • Develop a working knowledge of ACT's target state portfolio, including existing relationships, contract status, and pending opportunities.
  • Establish a foundational state-by-state strategy document for the highest-priority states.
  • Map current cross-functional workflows and identify key gaps in coordination or communication across teams.
  • Learn existing tracking/organization resources and identify improvements.
  • Build relationships with key internal stakeholders across government & public relations, district sales, product, research, and operations.
• In the first year:
  • Own the resources for coordinating/tracking a comprehensive state strategy that is actively used by division leads.
  • Demonstrate measurable improvement in cross-functional alignment on at least three target states.
  • Surface and drive action on at least two revenue gap or growth opportunities within existing state relationships.
  • Establish a reporting cadence that gives leadership consistent, reliable visibility into state portfolio health.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in strategy, program/project management, or cross-functional operations in a matrixed organization.
• Demonstrated ability to coordinate complex, multi-stakeholder work across teams without direct authority.
• Strong analytical skills with experience translating data and relationship intelligence into actionable strategy.
• Experience building and maintaining tracking systems, dashboards, or reporting tools for executive audiences.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate complexity into clear direction.
• Proven ability to manage competing priorities and communicate across teams with diplomacy and directness.
• Bachelor's degree in education policy, public policy, economics, statistics, data science, or a related field, or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Skills

• Strategic Thinking: Sees the full state picture and identifies where priorities conflict or where opportunity is being left on the table.
• Influence Without Authority: Builds buy-in across divisions through credibility, clarity, and relationship, not org chart position.
• Accountability Orientation: Tracks what matters, flags what's off course, and follows through until the work is done.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Comfortable moving between sales, product, policy, and operations contexts and translating across each.
• Executive Communication: Can distill complex state portfolio dynamics into crisp, decision-ready summaries for senior leadership.
• Judgment & Escalation: Knows when to resolve independently, when to escalate, and how to do both in a way that builds trust.

Qualifications

It’s a plus if you have:

• Experience in K–12 education policy, state government relations, or education sales environments.
• Experience working in a chief of staff or similar role.
• Familiarity with state procurement cycles, education agency relationships, or statewide assessment markets.
• Background in revenue operations, sales strategy, or account-based planning.
• Experience working in or alongside a revenue-generating organization (sales, business development, or partnership management).

Benefits

• Company-paid life insurance, medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Flexible health and dependent spending accounts.
• 401(k) retirement savings with company match.
• Paid holidays and paid time off.

For a comprehensive list of benefits, visit ACT's benefits page.

Pay

For this position, ACT anticipates offering an annual salary in the range of $115,000 to $125,000. Salaries are managed within this range based on relevant factors including skills, experience, and internal equity. This position is also incentive-eligible.

Schedule

This is a remote position based in the United States. Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. without the need for visa sponsorship.