Guild, the leading education benefits platform and one of Denver's fastest growing startups, is increasing economic mobility for working adults in America and providing education and support to help every student survive and thrive in the economy of tomorrow. Our platform helps employers offer education as a benefit to their employees by connecting employers' workforces with our network of nonprofit universities and education institutions that focus on serving the needs of working adults. And, our team of retention coaches helps each employee navigate the path back to school, providing individualized support from day one through graduation. In order to accelerate our growth and achieve our mission to serve 1000s more students, we've raised over $70 million from top tier investors including Felicis Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Redpoint Ventures (among other social impact and VC partners!). Now, we’re looking to add a VP of University Operations to the team.

As the VP of University Operations, you’ll lead a business-critical team that manages a portfolio of academic or university partners and will take the lead on operational management of these partnerships. We are looking for a committed business unit leader with excellent management skills and enthusiasm for increasing student success and completion. It’s an opportunity to lead a team that will create, innovate and test new ideas to strengthen our partnerships and ensure we scale efficiently and quickly together. This leader needs to navigate business and university partner (UP) operations within Guild and our network. You’ll also need operational and financial expertise (e.g., P&L management) along with an understanding of how to effectively manage public/private partnerships.

On any given day in our collaborative workspace you might:

• Design and implement business strategies, plans and procedures for successful operational management of our various university and academic partnerships
• Plan launch strategies for future university partners and/or programs with existing university partners
• Cultivate personal relationships with academic provider leaders, like CEOs, University Provosts, CFOs, COOs and Operational VPs
• Work with Guild engineers to simplify processes such as billing, financial aid and data integrations
• Analyze data and progress towards goals for each university partnership
• Work directly with leaders of our enrollment and student services team
• Problem-solve key issues and evaluate partnership performance with the UP team
• Develop systems to support partnerships with providers like edX, StraighterLine, Penn Foster, and other bootcamp and alternative learning providers
• Support tech integrations of Guild tech platforms, both our own technology and platforms like Salesforce, with our university partners to exchange applications, student data, and billing information

In this role, you’ll grow and expand your expertise by:

• Managing operations for a public/private network with equal parts vision and managerial expertise
• Serving in a highly cross-functional, business critical role where you’ll have visibility, access and exposure to key decisions and the people making them
• Being the external face of Guild for operational issues facing university and academic partners
• Bringing program management expertise onto the team while prototyping, testing and iterating new and innovative strategies
• Managing partnership financial operations

You’ll know if you’re successful:

• When Guild university partnerships have met their student success and enrollment goals
• When the Academic Operations team achieves established OKRs for enrollment and retention metrics and receives high NPS scores from our university and academic partners
• When Guild is viewed as a true partner - not a vendor - by our university partners….when university COOs, CFOs and SVPs ask for your endorsement
• By receiving feedback and direction provided in our learning-focused twice annual Structured Growth Conversations

You’ll join a team:

• Of experts with experience managing partnerships in government, higher education and private sector partnerships
• Of learners & problem-solvers dedicated to our dual mission of changing education in America while building a successful, high-growth company.
• Committed to building a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment that you’d support every day

What you’ll add to Guild – as an individual and part of the broader team:

• Demonstrated success in leading academic operations, including partner management, P&L, student outcomes and program design.
• Demonstrated customer (institutional/client) management success, including managing senior relationships with academic institutional or corporate leaders
• Experience managing multiple team members and multiple partnerships simultaneously
• Experience in a fast-growth, fast-paced, innovative tech-oriented company or institution
• Exceptional data analytics and use of data to make decisions
• Exceptional people management, hiring, and development
• Accountability for both business and student results and outcomes
• Exceptional ability to design effective and efficient, processes, product requirements, and approaches
• Higher education, K12, or other educational services a large plus