Sr Director Corporate FP&A
for section headings (e.g. About the role, Responsibilities, Requirements, Qualifications, Skills, Benefits, Pay, Schedule). Use - for any list of duties/requirements/benefits, and
for prose. Do NOT repeat the job title as a heading (the page already shows it) and do NOT put Job ID / requisition numbers as headings — fold minor metadata into a short
or drop it. Preserve ALL substantive information; do NOT invent or summarize away detail. Remove cookie/navigation/legal/EEO/equal-opportunity/scam-warning boilerplate, duplicated lines, and application instructions. IMPORTANT: include a section ONLY when the posting has real, specific content for it — never emit a heading followed by filler/placeholder text (e.g. "commensurate with experience", "not specified", "N/A", "varies", "TBD") and never create Pay/Schedule/Benefits sections unless the posting actually states them. Prefer a few substantive sections over many thin ones. Output ONLY the HTML fragment — no /, no markdown code fences.
Thus we need to parse the posting and decide which sections to include.
We have:
- Intro: "We Impact Lives Through Purpose-Driven Work in A People First Culture Ascend Learning, a leading healthcare and learning technology company, is the connection between a powerful portfolio of brands serving students, educators, and employers with outcomes-based, data-driven solutions across the lifecycle of learning. From testing to certification, Ascend Learning products are used by physicians, emergency medical professionals, nurses, allied health professionals, certified personal trainers, financial advisors, skilled trades professionals and insurance brokers. Headquartered in Burlington, MA, with additional office locations and hybrid and remote workers in cities across the U.S., Ascend Learning was recognized by Newsweek and Plant-A Insights Group as one of America’s 2025 Greatest Workplaces as well as America’s Best Places to work for Mental Well-Being for 2025. We're always looking for talented, passionate professionals to join us in our mission to help change lives. If this sounds like an environment where you'd thrive, read on to learn more."
This is general company description; could be considered "About the role"? Actually "About the role" is not exactly; but we could treat as "About the role" or maybe "Overview". The instruction says use headings like About the role, Responsibilities, Requirements, Qualifications, Skills, Benefits, Pay, Schedule. So we can map sections accordingly.
We have "What You'll Do" which is responsibilities. So we can have
Responsibilities
with content.
We have "WHERE YOU'LL WORK" which is schedule/location: hybrid schedule from Leawood, KS office or remote within Central/Eastern time zones. That's schedule/location. Could be "Schedule" heading.
We have "How You'll Spend Your Time" which is more detailed responsibilities; could be merged into Responsibilities or separate "Key Activities". But we should avoid thin sections. Perhaps combine "What You'll Do" and "How You'll Spend Your Time" into one Responsibilities section.
We have "What You'll Need" which includes qualifications: Bachelor's degree, CPA/MBA preferred, 12+ years experience, etc. That's qualifications/requirements. Could be "Requirements" or "Qualifications". Use "Requirements" heading.
We have "HIRING RANGE" which is pay: $178,000-$254,540. That's Pay. So we can have Pay
with that info.
We have "Benefits" list: Health, dental, vision insurance; Company paid life Insurance; 401(k) with company match; Paid time off and parental leave; Employee assistance program; Other wellness programs such as Headspace and Airvet; Charitable matching program. That's Benefits.
We have "Fostering A Sense of Belonging" which is culture description; could be "About the role" or maybe "Overview". But we already have intro about company; maybe we can combine into an "About the role" section that includes company overview and culture. However the instruction says prefer a few substantive sections over many thin ones. So we could have sections: About the role (company overview + culture), Responsibilities (combined What You'll Do + How You'll Spend Your Time), Requirements (What You'll Need), Pay, Benefits, Schedule (WHERE YOU'LL WORK). That's six sections.
Check if any content is duplicated or boilerplate: The intro includes "We Impact Lives Through Purpose-Driven Work in A People First Culture". That's okay.
We need to remove EEO/equal-opportunity boilerplate: At the end there is "Ascend Learning, LLC is proud to be an equal opportunity employer (M/F/Vets/Disabled). No agency or search firm submissions will be accepted. Applications for U.S.-based positions with Ascend Learning, LLC must be legally authorized to work in the United States, and verification of employment eligibility will be required at the time of hire." That's boilerplate; remove.
Also remove duplicated lines? Not seeing duplicates.
Now format: Use for each heading. Use
for prose. Use
- for any list of duties/requirements/benefits.
We need to decide what is a list: Responsibilities could be a list of bullet points; but the text is paragraph style with sentences. Could convert each sentence to
- ? The instruction: Use
- for any list of duties/requirements/benefits. If the posting has a list (like bullet points) we should use
. The posting does not have explicit bullet list; it's paragraphs. However we could still treat each duty as list items? Might be overkill. Safer: If not explicitly a list, use . The instruction says use
- for any list of duties/requirements/benefits. If it's not a list, we can use
. So we will keep responsibilities as
paragraphs.
Similarly for requirements: could be list but it's paragraph; we can use
.
Benefits: It is a list separated by semicolons; we could turn into
- . That seems appropriate.
Schedule: just a sentence; use
.
Pay: just a sentence; use
.
About the role: combine intro and culture; use
.
Now ensure we preserve all substantive information. Let's extract details.
Intro paragraph: "We Impact Lives Through Purpose-Driven Work in A People First Culture Ascend Learning, a leading healthcare and learning technology company, is the connection between a powerful portfolio of brands serving students, educators, and employers with outcomes-based, data-driven solutions across the lifecycle of learning. From testing to certification, Ascend Learning products are used by physicians, emergency medical professionals, nurses, allied health professionals, certified personal trainers, financial advisors, skilled trades professionals and insurance brokers. Headquartered in Burlington, MA, with additional office locations and hybrid and remote workers in cities across the U.S., Ascend Learning was recognized by Newsweek and Plant-A Insights Group as one of America’s 2025 Greatest Workplaces as well as America’s Best Places to work for Mental Well-Being for 2025. We're always looking for talented, passionate professionals to join us in our mission to help change lives. If this sounds like an environment where you'd thrive, read on to learn more."
Culture paragraph: "Fostering A Sense of Belonging Our values-driven culture unifies our teams and inspires a mindset of action, innovation, and collaboration, with a relentless focus on customers. We seek out and celebrate all people and perspectives and cultivate an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive, feel valued, and be authentic. Our culture is firmly rooted in the belief that by embracing our differences and drawing on diverse perspectives, we are a stronger, more innovative, and more successful organization where employees experience a sense of belonging."
We can combine these two into one About the role section.
Now Responsibilities: combine "What You'll Do" and "How You'll Spend Your Time". Let's extract the sentences.
What You'll Do:
"Ascend Learning is seeking a Senior Director of Corporate Finance who brings extensive Corporate FP&A and strategic finance leadership experience in high-growth environments. This role leads the Corporate FP&A team, building a scalable process and system foundation for planning, reporting, and analysis to provide critical information and insights for decision making. This is a high-impact, high-visibility role interacting directly with senior leaders both inside and outside of finance to shape the future of a company that is a market leader in education technology for healthcare, fitness, and wellness. This role also interacts with Ascend's shareholder teams at Blackstone and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. In this role, you will be responsible for providing business leaders with crucial insights and recommendations to drive financial and operating performance while establishing the underlying processes needed to enable this. You will partner with the businesses to sustainably generate relevant and meaningful planning, reporting, and analysis for Ascend and its segments/businesses."
How You'll Spend Your Time:
"Providing vision and driving execution for the Corporate FP&A function. This team is transforming, having recently implemented a standard reporting and analytics tool that provides a foundation for the next phase of transformation. Bringing outstanding analytical capabilities. You will understand business drivers, identify what is important to analyze, and concisely communicate critical business insights both verbally and visually. Employing mature business analytics by fully leveraging analytical and visualization tools to drive insights and efficiency. Standardizing and harmonizing processes and procedures for FP&A activities while continuously identifying opportunities to improve efficiency and develop new ways to generate business insights. Serving as an expert on Ascend business processes and data flow as they relate to business drivers. Proactively recommend process, tool, or data flow changes to enhance information quality while considering end-to-end impacts. Preparing Board, senior leadership team, lender, and other reporting, including analysis that generates meaningful business insights. Establishing processes to ensure exceptional quality and efficient preparation of these materials. Overseeing the process, timelines, and templates for long-range plans, budgets, and forecasts (P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow). Providing relevant analytical insights for all plans and forecasts. Producing value-added insights into the operating results of the business through analytics and reporting. Organizing data sets to create analyses that drive actionable insights, not just financial variance reporting. Establishing and executing the Planful roadmap, continually expanding analytical effectiveness and process efficiency. Driving a Center of Excellence approach where appropriate activities are centralized and lifted out of segments. Supporting finance transformation programs, partnering with segments, accounting, and IT to drive progress. Identifying cost leverage and savings opportunities across Ascend Learning through analytics and reporting. Collaborating with the procurement to realize savings. Overseeing corporate expense planning, working directly with finance, legal, HR, and strategy senior leaders. Providing direct leadership for Corporate FP&A by inspiring, supporting, and developing team members. Building strong partnerships across the Ascend finance organization."
We need to preserve all that. We'll put as
maybe multiple paragraphs.
Requirements: "What You'll Need" paragraph:
"Bachelor's degree in Finance or Accounting. CPA or MBA preferred. 12+ years of experience in business or corporate finance roles, including 5+ years of FP&A leadership. Experience in a high-growth technology environment. SaaS and recurring revenue experience is preferred. Strong results orientation with a proven ability to inspire, develop, and lead a team while managing multiple deliverables and overcoming obstacles. Demonstrated passion for continuous improvement in the delivery of financial information and insights, with exceptional attention to detail and quality. Strong analytical capability combined with verbal, visualization, and presentation skills to communicate
for prose. Do NOT repeat the job title as a heading (the page already shows it) and do NOT put Job ID / requisition numbers as headings — fold minor metadata into a short
or drop it. Preserve ALL substantive information; do NOT invent or summarize away detail. Remove cookie/navigation/legal/EEO/equal-opportunity/scam-warning boilerplate, duplicated lines, and application instructions. IMPORTANT: include a section ONLY when the posting has real, specific content for it — never emit a heading followed by filler/placeholder text (e.g. "commensurate with experience", "not specified", "N/A", "varies", "TBD") and never create Pay/Schedule/Benefits sections unless the posting actually states them. Prefer a few substantive sections over many thin ones. Output ONLY the HTML fragment — no /, no markdown code fences. Thus we need to parse the posting and decide which sections to include. We have: - Intro: "We Impact Lives Through Purpose-Driven Work in A People First Culture Ascend Learning, a leading healthcare and learning technology company, is the connection between a powerful portfolio of brands serving students, educators, and employers with outcomes-based, data-driven solutions across the lifecycle of learning. From testing to certification, Ascend Learning products are used by physicians, emergency medical professionals, nurses, allied health professionals, certified personal trainers, financial advisors, skilled trades professionals and insurance brokers. Headquartered in Burlington, MA, with additional office locations and hybrid and remote workers in cities across the U.S., Ascend Learning was recognized by Newsweek and Plant-A Insights Group as one of America’s 2025 Greatest Workplaces as well as America’s Best Places to work for Mental Well-Being for 2025. We're always looking for talented, passionate professionals to join us in our mission to help change lives. If this sounds like an environment where you'd thrive, read on to learn more." This is general company description; could be considered "About the role"? Actually "About the role" is not exactly; but we could treat as "About the role" or maybe "Overview". The instruction says use headings like About the role, Responsibilities, Requirements, Qualifications, Skills, Benefits, Pay, Schedule. So we can map sections accordingly. We have "What You'll Do" which is responsibilities. So we can have
Responsibilities
with content. We have "WHERE YOU'LL WORK" which is schedule/location: hybrid schedule from Leawood, KS office or remote within Central/Eastern time zones. That's schedule/location. Could be "Schedule" heading. We have "How You'll Spend Your Time" which is more detailed responsibilities; could be merged into Responsibilities or separate "Key Activities". But we should avoid thin sections. Perhaps combine "What You'll Do" and "How You'll Spend Your Time" into one Responsibilities section. We have "What You'll Need" which includes qualifications: Bachelor's degree, CPA/MBA preferred, 12+ years experience, etc. That's qualifications/requirements. Could be "Requirements" or "Qualifications". Use "Requirements" heading. We have "HIRING RANGE" which is pay: $178,000-$254,540. That's Pay. So we can havePay
with that info. We have "Benefits" list: Health, dental, vision insurance; Company paid life Insurance; 401(k) with company match; Paid time off and parental leave; Employee assistance program; Other wellness programs such as Headspace and Airvet; Charitable matching program. That's Benefits. We have "Fostering A Sense of Belonging" which is culture description; could be "About the role" or maybe "Overview". But we already have intro about company; maybe we can combine into an "About the role" section that includes company overview and culture. However the instruction says prefer a few substantive sections over many thin ones. So we could have sections: About the role (company overview + culture), Responsibilities (combined What You'll Do + How You'll Spend Your Time), Requirements (What You'll Need), Pay, Benefits, Schedule (WHERE YOU'LL WORK). That's six sections. Check if any content is duplicated or boilerplate: The intro includes "We Impact Lives Through Purpose-Driven Work in A People First Culture". That's okay. We need to remove EEO/equal-opportunity boilerplate: At the end there is "Ascend Learning, LLC is proud to be an equal opportunity employer (M/F/Vets/Disabled). No agency or search firm submissions will be accepted. Applications for U.S.-based positions with Ascend Learning, LLC must be legally authorized to work in the United States, and verification of employment eligibility will be required at the time of hire." That's boilerplate; remove. Also remove duplicated lines? Not seeing duplicates. Now format: Usefor each heading. Use
for prose. Use
- for any list of duties/requirements/benefits. We need to decide what is a list: Responsibilities could be a list of bullet points; but the text is paragraph style with sentences. Could convert each sentence to
- ? The instruction: Use
- for any list of duties/requirements/benefits. If the posting has a list (like bullet points) we should use
- . The posting does not have explicit bullet list; it's paragraphs. However we could still treat each duty as list items? Might be overkill. Safer: If not explicitly a list, use
- for any list of duties/requirements/benefits. If it's not a list, we can use
. So we will keep responsibilities as
paragraphs. Similarly for requirements: could be list but it's paragraph; we can use
. Benefits: It is a list separated by semicolons; we could turn into
- . That seems appropriate.
Schedule: just a sentence; use
. Pay: just a sentence; use
. About the role: combine intro and culture; use
. Now ensure we preserve all substantive information. Let's extract details. Intro paragraph: "We Impact Lives Through Purpose-Driven Work in A People First Culture Ascend Learning, a leading healthcare and learning technology company, is the connection between a powerful portfolio of brands serving students, educators, and employers with outcomes-based, data-driven solutions across the lifecycle of learning. From testing to certification, Ascend Learning products are used by physicians, emergency medical professionals, nurses, allied health professionals, certified personal trainers, financial advisors, skilled trades professionals and insurance brokers. Headquartered in Burlington, MA, with additional office locations and hybrid and remote workers in cities across the U.S., Ascend Learning was recognized by Newsweek and Plant-A Insights Group as one of America’s 2025 Greatest Workplaces as well as America’s Best Places to work for Mental Well-Being for 2025. We're always looking for talented, passionate professionals to join us in our mission to help change lives. If this sounds like an environment where you'd thrive, read on to learn more." Culture paragraph: "Fostering A Sense of Belonging Our values-driven culture unifies our teams and inspires a mindset of action, innovation, and collaboration, with a relentless focus on customers. We seek out and celebrate all people and perspectives and cultivate an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive, feel valued, and be authentic. Our culture is firmly rooted in the belief that by embracing our differences and drawing on diverse perspectives, we are a stronger, more innovative, and more successful organization where employees experience a sense of belonging." We can combine these two into one About the role section. Now Responsibilities: combine "What You'll Do" and "How You'll Spend Your Time". Let's extract the sentences. What You'll Do: "Ascend Learning is seeking a Senior Director of Corporate Finance who brings extensive Corporate FP&A and strategic finance leadership experience in high-growth environments. This role leads the Corporate FP&A team, building a scalable process and system foundation for planning, reporting, and analysis to provide critical information and insights for decision making. This is a high-impact, high-visibility role interacting directly with senior leaders both inside and outside of finance to shape the future of a company that is a market leader in education technology for healthcare, fitness, and wellness. This role also interacts with Ascend's shareholder teams at Blackstone and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. In this role, you will be responsible for providing business leaders with crucial insights and recommendations to drive financial and operating performance while establishing the underlying processes needed to enable this. You will partner with the businesses to sustainably generate relevant and meaningful planning, reporting, and analysis for Ascend and its segments/businesses." How You'll Spend Your Time: "Providing vision and driving execution for the Corporate FP&A function. This team is transforming, having recently implemented a standard reporting and analytics tool that provides a foundation for the next phase of transformation. Bringing outstanding analytical capabilities. You will understand business drivers, identify what is important to analyze, and concisely communicate critical business insights both verbally and visually. Employing mature business analytics by fully leveraging analytical and visualization tools to drive insights and efficiency. Standardizing and harmonizing processes and procedures for FP&A activities while continuously identifying opportunities to improve efficiency and develop new ways to generate business insights. Serving as an expert on Ascend business processes and data flow as they relate to business drivers. Proactively recommend process, tool, or data flow changes to enhance information quality while considering end-to-end impacts. Preparing Board, senior leadership team, lender, and other reporting, including analysis that generates meaningful business insights. Establishing processes to ensure exceptional quality and efficient preparation of these materials. Overseeing the process, timelines, and templates for long-range plans, budgets, and forecasts (P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow). Providing relevant analytical insights for all plans and forecasts. Producing value-added insights into the operating results of the business through analytics and reporting. Organizing data sets to create analyses that drive actionable insights, not just financial variance reporting. Establishing and executing the Planful roadmap, continually expanding analytical effectiveness and process efficiency. Driving a Center of Excellence approach where appropriate activities are centralized and lifted out of segments. Supporting finance transformation programs, partnering with segments, accounting, and IT to drive progress. Identifying cost leverage and savings opportunities across Ascend Learning through analytics and reporting. Collaborating with the procurement to realize savings. Overseeing corporate expense planning, working directly with finance, legal, HR, and strategy senior leaders. Providing direct leadership for Corporate FP&A by inspiring, supporting, and developing team members. Building strong partnerships across the Ascend finance organization." We need to preserve all that. We'll put as
maybe multiple paragraphs. Requirements: "What You'll Need" paragraph: "Bachelor's degree in Finance or Accounting. CPA or MBA preferred. 12+ years of experience in business or corporate finance roles, including 5+ years of FP&A leadership. Experience in a high-growth technology environment. SaaS and recurring revenue experience is preferred. Strong results orientation with a proven ability to inspire, develop, and lead a team while managing multiple deliverables and overcoming obstacles. Demonstrated passion for continuous improvement in the delivery of financial information and insights, with exceptional attention to detail and quality. Strong analytical capability combined with verbal, visualization, and presentation skills to communicate
- . That seems appropriate.
Schedule: just a sentence; use
. The instruction says use
- for any list of duties/requirements/benefits. If it's not a list, we can use
- for any list of duties/requirements/benefits. If the posting has a list (like bullet points) we should use