Senior Program Manager, Admissions and Enrollment Services
Description:
The College Board is conducting a search for a senior admissions or enrollment management thought leader. The leader will engage widely and deeply on key issues such as access and equity, and will have specific responsibility for managing the College Board Search suite of services to best support College Board members, students and College Board’s opportunity agenda.
The College Board is a forward-thinking, not-for-profit educational organization with a mission that focuses on achieving higher rates of college readiness and college completion through programs and services that span K-12 and higher education. Our organization is proud to support the Higher Education professionals and drive outcomes for students through a wide range of activities including policy, research, advocacy, and service offerings designed to connect students and institutions on the basis of fit. The College Board’s Admissions and Enrollment Services (AES) focus on serving institutions while improving student access to college success. Current services include, among others, Student Search Service, Enrollment Planning Service, Segment Analysis Service and the Admitted Student Questionnaire.
This senior position within the College Board’s Enrollment division is a leader who cares deeply about providing access to college opportunity and college success for all students, and who has proven success using, managing or conceiving of data-centric products and services in the context of admissions and/or enrollment management.
The preferred location is in the Reston, VA office and includes significant collaboration with Reston-based technology teams.
POSITION SUMMARY
The Sr. Program Manager leads the design and implementation of Admissions and Enrollment Services (AES) and is responsible for ensuring these services effectively support Higher Education institutions, College Board’s Opportunity agenda and for maintaining the financial health of the programs. He/she is responsible for strategy and roadmap management and will play a critical role in product-level direction and innovation to further the College Board’s Opportunity Agenda. The Sr. Program Manager will oversee full lifecycle of product management activities – from analyzing needs to concept creation to requirements definition to development, launch, and post launch optimization. S/he serves as the lead within the Enrollment division for thought leadership in the area of Admissions and Enrollment strategy and services, representing Enrollment with internal and external stakeholders.
ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS/RESPONSIBILITIES
Thought leadership, Vision, Product Concept Development and Innovation: Follow admissions and enrollment industry trends, engage with users and monitor evolving standards and regulations to ensure that services best serve their users.
- Play a key role in the ideation of innovative product features and improvements and collaborate with the team to assess new features based on short and long term goals.
- Work with cross-functional teams and advise on strategic alignment between College Board Search and related College Board programs and initiatives: assessments, validity studies and access initiatives.
- Analyze customer needs and competitive environment, maintain customer segmentation models and competitor analysis and ensure services are appropriately positioned.
- Represent AES/Enrollment with internal and external stakeholders and ensure AES’ visible involvement in national events/gathering of admissions professionals (e.g. submit sessions for NACAC, College Board Forum, College Board Colloquium, etc.).
Release and Roadmap Management: Manage day- to- day activities related to in-market products.
- Develop and execute plans and strategies to design and deliver product releases, on-time and with new features to support College Board admissions and enrollment services and sales targets.
- Maintain release plans, prioritize enhancements and defects.
- Complete high level, critical business requirements and functional design documents.
- Collaborate with other product managers (inside and outside the team), IT, and other external partners to manage the product development process and ensure delivery as envisioned.
- Represent the business unit at meetings where open support issues are reviewed and prioritized.
- Work closely with key IT staff to fully understand current system behavior and impacts of proposed changes to the system.
- Responsible for program-based metrics, including key performance indicators, to track customer usage and satisfaction as well product performance.
- Maintain the list of requested enhancements and prepare recommendations for implementation of yearly business improvements.
Project Management: Program lead for major projects affecting the AES product and service suite.
- Representing the Program, collaborate with the leadership on key decisions, in particular related to project scope and schedule and associated changes.
- Accountable for effective business participation to ensure the expected benefits are achieved.
- Collaborate on implementation/operational strategy, as well as project risk management.
- Play an active role in ensuring software quality from requirements walkthroughs to QA test plan review and user acceptance testing.
- Will often be called to provide leadership with cross-functional teams in the context of projects. May also have responsibility for 1-2 direct reports.
Marketing, Communication and partnership with College Board Higher Education regional staff: Place high focus on the information needs of current and future customers, using effective promotion strategies and clear documentation.
- Collaborate with the marketing lead to manage functional customer facing communications and promotions, including campaigns, newsletters, release notes, user guide, etc. Perform ongoing review to identify, define, and schedule improvements. Provide regular updates to senior management on customer usage. Survey clients to obtain valuable feedback on usability.
- Collaborate closely with College Board Higher Education regional staff to define and implement effective sales, user outreach and targeting strategies. Prepare presentation, toolkit and materials for use by College Board Higher Ed regional teams.
Service Management and Policy: Overall responsibilities for ensuring the successful commercialization and operation of assigned products and services.
- Collaborate within and outside of Enrollment to develop sound program policies and ensure processes are aligned with these policies. In particular, collaborate with assessment programs and college planning team around information collection policies.
- Collaborate with customer service to ensure users receive timely, accurate and friendly service; collaborate with support teams and Higher Ed to manage incidents and solve escalated cases.
- Guide Higher Ed in developing approaches to unique sales/customer needs, including subscriptions and special deals. As necessary, train Higher Ed and support teams.
Apply
If you are interested in joining the College Board and you meet our qualifications, we encourage you to APPLY by following the link below to send us your resume and a brief introductory cover letter that includes salary expectations.
Benefits
We offer our employees an outstanding benefits package which includes 4 weeks of paid time off, a generous retirement plan, tuition reimbursement and ongoing professional development and training.
Mission
The College Board’s mission is to connect students to college success and opportunity. We are a not-for-profit membership organization committed to excellence and equity in education. Among our best-known products are the SAT®, PSAT/NMSQT®, and Advanced Placement Program®.
The College Board is committed to diversity in the workplace and is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The College Board participates in E-Verify, a service of DHS and SSA, where required. Please understand that only qualified applicants will be contacted.
Requirements:
Areas of Expertise Admissions, Enrollment, Program Management
Highest Level of Education Bachelor\’\'s Degree
Job Type Full Time
Location Reston, VA
Years of Relevant Experience 6-9
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
Education/Experience:
- Bachelor’s degree required. Master’s degree preferred.
- Five to Seven years of progressively broad/deep responsibility for managing products for use by Higher Ed (in particular online data products) OR seven to ten years of recent experience as an enrollment management professional, using data-centric products for analysis, decision-making and/or staff and territory management.
Related Skills & Other Requirements:
- Ability to effectively persuade, explain, negotiate product solutions, both internally and with external constituencies.
- Demonstrated competency in strategic thinking, relationship management, and strong presentation, speaking, and meeting facilitation skills.
- Experience working with technology teams, specifying product or business requirements; experience in implementing software programs a plus.
- Excellent writing skills. Ability to organize and document complex and detailed information in a clear and concise manner. Ability to write coherently so that developers, quality assurance, and documentation staff comprehend and interpret accordingly.
- Proven communication skills. Ability to present complex topics and lead interviews, group discussions and analyses.
- Ability to work in a fast-paced environment and respond effectively to changing customer and business needs.
- Demonstrated problem solving skills.
- Strong team skills.
- Experience working effectively with outsourced technology providers and interactive agencies a plus.
