Senior Associate Partner

Summary

Join Bellwether as a Senior Associate Partner and leverage your policy expertise, project leadership, and people management skills to empower young people. You will contribute to business development and the financial sustainability of the organization while managing policy projects and teams. This role requires a nuanced understanding of education issues, strong analytical and writing skills, and a robust network in the education field. A background in postsecondary finance and pathways policy, particularly at the state level, is essential. The position involves approximately 20%-30% travel and offers a competitive salary and benefits package.

Requirements

• An understanding of the educational challenges and disparities facing underserved students in the United States, and a specific interest in postsecondary finance and pathways issues
• Expertise across multiple postsecondary finance and pathways topics as described above and ideally demonstrated across multiple roles of increasing seniority
• Demonstrated strong leadership skills; ability to attract, build, mentor, coach, and direct a high-performing, cohesive team
• Significant experience leading complex projects and teams to successful outcomes, including managing client engagements and relationships
• Experience supporting business development and revenue generation, which could include contracting, proposal writing, scoping, and budgeting
• A commitment to Bellwether’s core values, including diversity, equity, and inclusion, and to Bellwether’s work to address policies and practices that lead to inequitable outcomes for marginalized groups
• Ability to model a high degree of reflection and self-awareness, build trusted relationships across lines of difference, and seek out and respond to perspectives different from one’s own
• Comfort with representing an organization externally at convenings and in public-facing writing
• Experience fostering client relationships, including: Asking probing questions of clients to identify their underlying needs beyond their stated requirements
• Experience fostering client relationships, including: Proactively developing a deep understanding of the client’s context and opportunities to provide appropriate analysis and recommendations
• Experience fostering client relationships, including: Bringing a solutions mindset and a bias for action to the work
• Experience fostering client relationships, including: Aligning processes with those of the client to make it easier to work together
• Experience fostering client relationships, including: Uncovering and addressing the root causes that may be impacting client success
• An excellent track record of leading people, including: Leveraging strong project management skills to ensure a common understanding of goals, objectives, and processes; communicating clearly and delegating authority and accountability to the team as appropriate
• An excellent track record of leading people, including: Setting up forums or practices to reinforce independent and open communication among team members at various levels, and effectively managing up, down, and laterally
• An excellent track record of leading people, including: Giving a team broad visibility inside an organization and publicly recognizing the accomplishments of individuals and of the group
• An excellent track record of leading people, including: Coaching team members in various roles to support their growth and development

Responsibilities

• Serve as project lead and/or project manager for a portfolio of Bellwether’s education policy work, sustaining and growing its best-in-class advising work and field-facing presence. In particular, this role will have a significant focus on postsecondary finance and pathways issues
• Advise senior client executives and build strong ownership across client teams
• Represent Bellwether externally (as appropriate to expertise), including, but not limited to, speaking at conferences, participating on panels, and writing
• Support business and client development efforts, initially serving as a co-seller with other members of the leadership team with the expectation of growing more self-directed business development over time. This may include projects cross-staffed with Bellwether’s Evaluation and Strategic Advising practices
• Supervise and manage members of the Policy team and provide coaching, professional development, and mentorship of staff members at various levels
• Advance Bellwether’s organizational priorities and contribute to the execution of its strategic plan, including facilitating ongoing cross-organization efforts to continue growing our depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise in postsecondary education-related topics, a priority defined in our current strategic plan
• Develop, sustain, and enhance relationships with senior executives, funders, and other leaders in the field
• Cultivate a culture in which Bellwether’s team and work benefit from the open exchange of questions and ideas in the service of thoughtful, relevant analyses that advance excellent and equitable outcomes
• Integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into work with clients and in leadership of teams

Benefits

• A performance bonus based on individual and firm success
• Health care coverage
• A 401(k) plan with matching employer contributions
• Base salary range for this role for incoming team members is $165,250 to $190,000 annually
• Eligibility for an annual performance bonus targeted at $23,750 based on individual and organizational success