Partner, Portfolio Director - Postsecondary Pathways (PSP)

PARTNER, PORTFOLIO DIRECTOR - POSTSECONDARY PATHWAYS (PSP)

Start Date: Immediate

Role Type: Full-time employee

Location: Flexible -- Fully remote/virtual team

Travel: Flexible; willingness to travel approximately once a month for 1-2 days, ~20% travel

Who We Are

Transcend is a national nonprofit that helps communities reimagine and redesign schools so every young person can thrive in a rapidly changing world. Across the country, communities are recognizing that classrooms built for the industrial age aren’t preparing learners for what’s next. Instead, schools must be designed for continuous evolution: relevant, resilient, and ready for the future. For more than a decade, Transcend has partnered with school and system leaders to build the capacity for bold, lasting change—change led by the people who live it every day. We’ve worked with nearly 500 schools and 200 districts serving over 225,000 students in 35 states. Together, we’ve seen what’s possible when communities lead redesign with proven methods, insight, and support. From that work, we develop and share tools, research, and models that help schools everywhere make the leap to extraordinary learning—for every child, in every community.

For more information, visit our website or follow us on LinkedIn.

The Opportunity

The Postsecondary Pathways (PSP) Portfolio is setting off on a journey to transform the secondary space across the country by creating and implementing replicable models that provide meaningful, future-aligned experiences and strong outcomes for all students, ensuring that innovation benefits every high school student, regardless of background. The PSP Portfolio aims to contribute to shifting the high school landscape across the country by: 

• Partnering with visionary leaders, communities, and organizations to identify, codify, and/ or build strong high school model components in the areas of foundational academics, personal development, and immersive pathways.
• Supporting communities to develop cohesive whole-school models that integrate strong high school model components.
• Supporting high schools across the country to more easily learn about and adopt/adapt existing models so they are not starting from scratch or implementing another initiative that will overwhelm their system.
• Partnering with organizations, states, and districts that are working to shift the policy landscape so that it is more conducive to flexible learning models.

We’re seeking a Partner, Portfolio Director to join the PSP Portfolio team and help build and drive the portfolio’s operations, project management, and communication & culture systems. As the Portfolio Director, you will serve as the “right-hand-person” to J.T. Schiltz, Managing Partner, who leads the Portfolio, and coordinates across all of the portfolio’s moving parts. You will play an especially important role in new project development, including developing agendas for meetings with external stakeholders, tracking and following through on the next steps, and drafting communications with current and prospective partners. You’d also step into internal meetings and spaces with the PSP’s Portfolio team in mind and operate as an extension of J.T.  This is a fast-paced and highly dynamic role, with a significant volume of internal and external communications and relationship management. Watch this short video to learn more about the role from J.T.!

As the inaugural Partner, Portfolio Director on the PSP team, you’ll create the systems that allow for strategic alignment, help amplify the team’s impact, support across a broad range of work streams across the portfolio, and be uniquely positioned to lead within the following buckets of work:

Portfolio Management – ~40-50% 

Working closely with the Managing Partner, you will play a leadership role on the Portfolio and oversee the day-to-day coordination and the execution of (and at times creation of) systems, and internal communications that keep the portfolio running smoothly and aligned. You won’t just help build and drive these systems—you’ll also serve as a strategic thought partner, holding up the mirror to the Managing Partner and team to ensure clarity, focus, and that we’re driving the work forward in a strategically aligned way. And, this includes building and managing processes across the following: 

• Create and manage cohesive systems to organize and track diverse work streams across the portfolio by providing guidance, structure, and support for internal, cross-functional meeting collaboration and processes. 
• Steward project execution by leading portfolio teammates through clear timelines, accountability and tracking systems and deliverables ensuring every project results in meaningful, goal-aligned experiences. At times, this may include working with internal operations teammates and/or operations contractors, and external vendors.
• Drive smooth logistics for internal and external meetings by supporting the facilitation of team meetings, preparing agendas/slide decks, taking meeting notes, and sending follow-ups. 
• Own the planning and facilitation of portfolio events and portfolio operations for all project needs, including in-person workshops with school teams, team retreats and community-building activities, school visits, and day-to-day logistics and coordination. 
• Support and provide feedback on the portfolio’s strategy to ensure goal alignment, resource allocation, and consistent progress monitoring. 
• Support the development, stewarding, and shared ownership of the portfolio’s culture by ensuring the team’s norms, visions, and operations are aligned to our core values and problem-solving when any needs emerge.

Portfolio Learning & Data Systems – ~20-30%

In collaboration with the Managing Partner and holding the Portfolio’s strategy at the center, oversee all aspects related to learning initiatives, including:

• Facilitating knowledge downloads, orchestrating stepbacks for the portfolio team and cross-functional teams, and ensuring the effective management of evidence-based practices.
• Provide training and support to Project Leads to implement learning and data systems effectively
• Work with other portfolio team members to collect evidence and monitor progress toward portfolio goals. 
• Maintain and enhance the structures necessary for data collection and progress monitoring to run smoothly, ensuring continuous improvement and alignment with organizational objectives.
• Synthesize learnings for outside audiences such as funders, partner organizations, and Transcend Community members.

Portfolio Communications & Culture – ~10%

Cultivate a thriving portfolio culture by designing intentional systems, routines, and events that foster connection, alignment, and shared ownership of the portfolio’s values, agreements, and ways of working. For example:

• Lead internal/external communications and steward relationships, including the creation of summary decks/materials, and coordination of streamlined communication structures and routines for the internal team.
• Develop and maintain structures for collaboration with other teams within Transcend, ensuring effective communication and coordination across teams and buckets of work.

As appropriate, serve as the primary point of contact between Transcend and its external partners, directly engaging in partner-facing work with funders, partner organizations, school and system leaders, Principals, and District Leadership. 

Special Projects & Events – ~5%

Provide flexible leadership and support across a variety of strategic projects, such as:

• Act as a connector, at times, between the Portfolio and broader Transcend teams—coordinating closely with other teams to ensure alignment with the Portfolio’s strategy and work.
• This ranges from collaborating with our finance team to support onboarding for project contractors (background checks, materials, etc.), to creating a library of our materials for easy access by project teams, to preparing slide decks for potential partners, to drafting memos, to advising on the data infrastructure we need to understand progress, to researching instructional partners, to overseeing budget finances for the team in collaboration with the portfolio team's Managing Partner, etc. 
• Manage the portfolio’s presence and logistics for external conferences and engagements

The remainder ~10-15% of the role’s allocation, is dedicated to org-wide collaboration, community-building spaces, and learning and development opportunities.

Who You Are

You are a highly organized and relationship-driven leader who thrives in dynamic environments. You bring top-notch project management and communication skills, and you're known for your ability to get things done with clarity, intention, and care. You demonstrate strong executive presence—exercising sound judgment, poise, and professionalism in complex or high-stakes situations. You communicate with clarity, empathy, and influence across a range of audiences, including senior leaders, school and system partners, and funders, while consistently representing Transcend’s values. You take pride in designing and optimizing systems and processes that drive impact, foster strong team culture, and enable others to do their best work. You enjoy building connections across functions and personalities, synthesizing complexity, and translating it into clear action. You’re excited to contribute your skills to a team focused on reimagining the future of high school—and you find energy in work that is fast-paced, purpose-driven, and deeply collaborative.

To all of this, you bring: 

• A deep commitment to Transcend’s mission of transforming education, and an eagerness to add to Transcend’s culture and live into Transcend’s core values. 
• Outstanding project management and organizational skills that allow you to gather and organize multiple work streams and logistics efficiently.
• Strong executive presence — demonstrating sound judgment and an ability to communicate with clarity and influence across diverse internal and external stakeholders.
• Exceptionally clear, persuasive, and efficient writing skills in prose, slides, and other creative methods.
• Detail-orientation, and skills to build easy-to-use systems from scratch to manage all details and support effective decision-making with impeccable follow-through. Proficient with data, spreadsheets, and basic analytics.
• A calm and grounded presence that allows you to lead and support teams through influence by creating clarity where there is ambiguity. While this role is an individual contributor position, it is uniquely positioned to influence, organize, and galvanize project teams through lateral leadership and strong collaboration.
• Flexibility, enthusiasm, and trust—enabling you to build positive relationships and collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, readily stretching high and low, doing whatever it takes to get the job done
• Proven experience navigating ambiguity and succeeding in dynamically changing contexts.
• Comfortability with data, spreadsheets, and basic analytics
• A strong ability to thrive in a remote work environment and strong personal organizational systems
• And above all, you care deeply about people. You help shape and steward a portfolio culture that is grounded in relationships, reflection, and shared purpose—ensuring that our ways of working not only drive results but reflect who we are and what we stand for

Application & Hiring Process
We review applications on a rolling basis and are committed to a thoughtful and human-centered hiring experience that helps candidates feel what it’s like to work at Transcend. Here’s what you can expect if you are selected to move forward:

• Initial interview with the team via Zoom to learn more about your background. A note on compensation: during your initial interview with the team, we will share the salary range for your particular location. *More on how we determine this is below. 
• Try-on activity to engage in a role-aligned exercise. This helps us get a sense of how you approach the work and gives you a feel for what the role might be like. 
• Try-on task debrief with the team.
• Compensation & benefits convo where we’ll share information around where we anticipate you’ll fall within the range, share more about our employment policies and benefits, and answer any questions you may have. 
• 1:1 with the hiring manager to debrief the role, talk more about working styles, and create the space to explore the role and Transcend more deeply.
• Final interview with our Portfolios Co-Lead. 
• Reference checks to learn more about your superpowers and working style. 

A Few Nuts & Bolts
We are an experienced team focused on extraordinary learning for all. We welcome candidates who are passionate about ensuring that all students thrive. We are also committed to providing our colleagues with a competitive benefits package and offer medical, dental, and vision coverage options, org-wide holidays, paid time off, paid parental leave, professional development opportunities, and fully remote work. We take pride in our collaborative environment, exceptional team, and shared commitment to principled, impactful work.

*As a national team, we apply a cost-of-labor adjustment by adjusting salaries into 3 geographical bands (geo-band) in order to offer competitive compensation for all employees across the US. These geo-bands help us tailor compensation appropriately based on the specific location of each teammate.

We look forward to learning more about you!