Summary
Description
Step Up For Students is a state-approved, nonprofit scholarship funding organization that helps administer scholarships for Florida schoolchildren:
- The donor-funded Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC) Program and the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options (FES-EO) helps K-12 students attend private schools.
- The Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities (FES-UA) empowers families to personalize the education of their students by directing funds to where they’re needed most.
- The Personalized Education Program (PEP), which is part of FTC, for students who are not enrolled full-time in private or public school.
- New Worlds Scholarship Accounts supports K-5 public school students who need additional academic support in reading and/or math.
- The Transportation Stipend to help K-8 students travel to a public school of their choice
Public education is rooted in the promise of equal educational opportunity, regardless of income, special needs, or home address.
Step Up For Students is a partner of public schools, and these scholarships strengthen public education by offering options to all families so they can choose the learning environment that best meets their children’s individual needs.
The Opportunity:
The Chief Operations Officer (COO) is a critical role for the transformation and growth of Step Up for Students. Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, the COO is responsible for leading the organization’s operational teams, including Customer Experience, Scholarship Programs, Enterprise Project Portfolio Management, Project Management Office, Procurement, and Vendor Management. The COO will deliver operational excellence through direct efforts and collaboration with other teams to best serve the organization’s current and future constituents.
Responsibilities:
- Assess and manage current operational practices across the newly redefined COO scope, including Customer Experience (CX), Operations, Scholarship Programs, Enterprise Project Portfolio Management, Project Management Office, Knowledge Management, Procurement, and Vendor Management.
- Implement the operational strategy in collaboration with the CEO, Strategy team, and peers to ensure success and growth across each function.
- Take ownership of current issues and risks, implementing tactical short and medium-term solutions while leveraging lessons learned and collaborative approaches.
- Establish practices of excellence in all areas of Operations while leading, managing, and developing a high-performing and diverse team of subject-matter experts to execute high-level strategy.
- Partner with the senior leadership team to examine and optimize key organizational processes for improved experience and outcomes, maintaining and growing SUFS’s culture of continuous improvement.
- Engage leaders across the organization to centralize Operations as a collaborative team.
- Build and improve collaboration across the organization.
- Document, refine, and execute operational excellence to support the organization and all stakeholders.
- Participate in strategic planning for the organization, recommending and implementing techniques to improve productivity, increase efficiencies, and implement state-of-the-art practices.
- Stay abreast of current trends and practices in the field of expertise, providing thought leadership to SUFS.
Ideal Candidate:
- Demonstrated success and a proven track record in professional/life experience in specific job functions, projects, or industries, and military service can substitute for the formal education requirements.
- At least 15 years of experience leading large teams (50 direct and indirect reports) and budgets.
- Experience managing all or similar teams/functionality: Operations, Knowledge Management and Process improvement, CX, Enterprise Portfolio, PMO, Scholarship (or similar) Programs, and Procurement.
- Experience in leading large vendor teams and managing key vendor relationships (multiple relationships and/or over $10M spend/vendor).
- Experience in organizational growth and transformation.
- Alignment with the Step Up For Students mission.
Location: United States Remote, East Coast working hours
DRiWaterstone is proud to lead this search on behalf of Step Up For Students.
