Senior Director or Managing Director of Organizational Effectiveness

Highline Academy Reports to: Executive Director Status: Full-Time, Exempt Salary: $115,000- $158,000 Role Purpose The Senior Director of Organizational Performance serves as a senior organizational leader and key partner to the Executive Director, primarily responsible for building and managing the systems through which Highline Academy turns strategic direction into coordinated action and measurable results. The role acts as part strategist, part problem-solver, and culture builder.  The Executive Director leads Highline's strategic vision, sets organizational priorities, guides the organization's senior team, and supports overall accountability for the organization's performance and culture. The Senior Director complements this leadership by owning the organizational systems, project-management structures, and execution routines that enable Highline to implement that vision successfully. At the center of the role is responsibility for running the organization's rhythm. This includes: leading the annual planning process and quarterly progress monitoring against network goals; tracking cross-functional commitments and surfacing risks, gaps, and conflicts early. Key streams of this role include network performance management, strategic project management, and organizational execution. The Senior Director serves as the primary steward of Highline's organizational effectiveness, leading high-priority initiatives across the network, from scoping through execution The Senior Director also creates the structures and routines that keep Highline's highest-priority work moving. Working across campuses and functions, the Senior Director translates organizational priorities into executable plans, creates visibility into progress, identifies barriers and dependencies, facilitates coordination, and builds systems that support consistent follow-through. Ultimately, the Senior Director of Organizational Performance helps maintain a clear and consistent connection between vision, systems, data, action, and results—increasing the organization's capacity to execute its strategy effectively. Key Responsibilities 1. Organizational Systems & Execution - Serve as the Executive Director's senior partner for organizational systems, execution, and performance management. - Translate strategic priorities established by the Executive Director and leadership team into clear organizational systems, implementation plans, routines, and measures of progress. - Build and continuously improve the structures through which Highline manages organizational priorities across campuses and functions. - Create visibility into major organizational commitments, ensuring that priorities, responsibilities, timelines, dependencies, and expected outcomes are clear. - Identify organizational barriers, competing priorities, unclear ownership, or cross-functional dependencies that may prevent successful implementation. - Facilitate coordination across campuses and functions when work requires organization-wide collaboration. - Support teams and project owners in establishing clear implementation structures and maintaining progress toward organizational priorities. - Promote a culture of clarity, follow-through, shared responsibility, learning, and continuous improvement. 2. Organizational Performance Management - Serve as the primary steward of Highline Academy's organizational effectiveness, leadership sustainability, and network performance information. - Develop and maintain Highline's systems for organizing, storing, accessing, and regularly updating key organizational data. - Establish clear systems for determining what organizational information to collect, who owns it, how often it is updated, and where it is maintained. - Ensure leaders have reliable, timely access to the information needed to understand organizational performance and make informed decisions. - Develop and maintain dashboards, scorecards, and other performance-management tools that allow leaders to monitor progress toward strategic priorities and key organizational goals. - Establish organizational routines to regularly review performance data and identify areas requiring attention, investigation, or action. - Improve the consistency and efficiency of Highline's data systems by reducing duplication, addressing information gaps, and establishing clear sources of truth for key organizational measures 3. Strategic Project Management - Lead project management for Highline's highest-priority cross-functional and organization-wide initiatives. - Translate strategic priorities into clear project plans with defined outcomes, deliverables, owners, timelines, milestones, dependencies, and measures of success. - Maintain organization-wide visibility into the status of major initiatives, including what is on track, what is at risk, and where additional problem-solving or decisions may be needed. - Facilitate coordination across campuses, departments, and functions when successful implementation requires shared ownership. - Identify risks and potential obstacles early and facilitate the problem-solving necessary to address them. - Establish systems for documenting decisions, commitments, responsibilities, and next steps. - Provide the Executive Director with concise and timely visibility into progress toward major organizational priorities. 4. Performance Routines & Continuous Improvement - Design and facilitate organizational routines that translate plans and commitments into consistent action. - Facilitate progress-monitoring meetings, project check-ins, implementation reviews, and other working sessions designed to keep priority work moving. - Establish clear methods for tracking commitments, milestones, and implementation progress. - Surface barriers to progress and connect teams with the people, decisions, information, or resources needed to resolve them. - Help project teams examine how work gets accomplished and identify opportunities to improve organizational processes, routines, and systems. - Introduce and adapt useful project-management and continuous-improvement practices, including Agile/Scrum-inspired approaches where appropriate. - Help Highline develop an organizational habit of continuous planning, implementation, monitoring, learning, and adjustment. 5. Executive Decision Support - Provide the Executive Director with timely, synthesized information about organizational performance, major initiatives, emerging risks, and decisions requiring executive attention. - Help the Executive Director maintain visibility across the organization without requiring direct involvement in every implementation detail. - Identify issues that may require Executive Director involvement and distinguish them from those that existing organizational systems and processes can address. - Conduct research and analysis on high-priority organizational questions and emerging needs. - Support preparation for high-leverage leadership, Board, and strategic conversations. - Participate in selected internal meetings or initiatives on behalf of the Executive Director when appropriate. - Take ownership of high-priority organization-wide initiatives that require centralized coordination or do not naturally reside within another role. Qualifications Required - Bachelor's degree from an accredited institution. - At least 5–7 years of progressively responsible professional experience in organizational leadership, project management, strategy, data and performance management, continuous improvement, education, nonprofit leadership, or a related field. - Demonstrated experience managing complex, cross-functional projects involving multiple stakeholders, competing priorities, and interdependent workstreams. - Strong proficiency working with quantitative and qualitative data, including the ability to organize, analyze, interpret, visualize, and communicate information clearly. - Experience developing or managing organizational data systems, dashboards, scorecards, project trackers, or other performance-management tools. - Demonstrated ability to build systems and processes that improve organizational execution and follow-through. - Strong facilitation skills and the ability to help groups move from discussion to clear decisions, commitments, and action. - Demonstrated ability to coordinate complex work across teams and functions through facilitation, influence, relationship-building, and strong project-management practices. - Exceptional organizational skills combined with the ability to understand larger strategic priorities and organizational dynamics. - Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate complex information into concise, accessible narratives. - Sound judgment, discretion, and the ability to operate as a trusted partner to senior organizational leadership. Preferred - Experience working in K–12 education, charter schools, nonprofit organizations, or another mission-driven environment. - Experience as a principal of a K-12 school. - Experience serving on or working closely with a senior leadership or executive team. - Experience with strategic planning, organizational performance management, continuous-improvement systems, or Agile/Scrum-inspired project management approaches. - Experience developing or improving organizational data infrastructure and data-governance practices. - Familiarity with data visualization and business-intelligence tools. - Graduate degree in education, business, public administration, organizational leadership, data analytics, or a related field.