Senior Manager, Special Projects

KIPP Public Schools is a national network of public charter schools that prepares students with the skills and confidence to create the future they want for themselves, their communities, and us all. We are a network of 278 schools, nearly 16,500 educators, and 190,000 students and alumni.

 
Our mission: Together with families and communities, we create joyful, academically excellent schools that prepare students with the skills and confidence to pursue the paths they choose—college, career, and beyond—so they can lead fulfilling lives and build a more just world. 

Our vision: Every child grows up free to create the future they want for themselves and their communities. 

The KIPP Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports KIPP schools across the country. The KIPP Foundation trains and develops outstanding educators to lead KIPP public schools; provides tools, resources and training for excellent teaching and learning; promotes innovation; and facilitates the exchange of insights and ideas across KIPP and other public schools and organizations. 

About The Position 

The Senior Manager of Special Projects will lead the development and management of data and knowledge management systems that support the KIPP Foundation Network Talent Team’s efforts across KIPP’s 27 regions, ensuring alignment and accuracy across talent functions. They will establish data protocols, oversee data integration, and maintain high-quality data sets to support strategic decision-making and continuous learning. This role also involves managing strategic talent projects, creating user-friendly tools, and promoting best practices in project management and equitable design. The Senior Manager will report to the VP, Talent and collaborate closely with the Vice President of Leadership Development. 

Responsibilities: 

1. Build and Manage Talent Data and Knowledge Management Systems: 

• Collaborate with the KIPP Foundation Network Talent Team to create and maintain data collection systems, dashboards, and knowledge management tools that support talent priorities across talent functions (e.g. talent planning, talent development, talent acquisition, talent operations/systems). 

• Develop dashboards that enable users to assess the completeness and quality of submitted data and use them for data-driven decision-making. 

• Ensure alignment of dashboards and knowledge management systems across talent functions and KIPP Foundation talent sub-teams. 

2. Lead Collection, Integration, and Maintenance of Talent Data and Knowledge Management: 

• Establish clear protocols and expectations for KIPP regions to submit data and high-quality, user-friendly resources. 

• Define consistent data entry, validation, and submission processes to reduce errors and discrepancies. 

• Oversee the process of cleaning, matching, loading, and verifying data files received from regional talent teams, providing a single point of truth for data sets. 

• Maintain the accuracy, relevance, and comprehensiveness of data and research within KIPP’s centralized data and knowledge management systems. 

• Regularly conduct and present ongoing data and research analysis to support continuous learning and inform talent strategy development across the network and data inquiries from KIPP regions. 

3. Lead Strategic Talent Projects Through Effective Project Management and Product Development: 

• Manage strategic talent initiatives and projects independently and collaboratively with KIPP Foundation Talent Team members, ensuring alignment with team goals. 

• Support the creation and continuous improvement of high-impact, user-friendly tools and products across the Talent Team 

• Promote and scale best practices in project management, product development, knowledge management, user experience design, and equitable design across the Talent Team, ensuring consistent application and high standards. 

• Ensure timely and effective responses to support tickets from KIPP regions, assisting with data, analysis, and resource needs

Skills  

• Problem Solving and Decision Making: Gathers information from multiple and diverse sources and stakeholders to inform strong decision making;; can analyze the pros and cons of a solution and the risk in a given solution; assesses the strengths and weaknesses of arguments to judge the merits and/or validity of a case and the actions to take; navigates ways around a wide range of guidelines and can be an agile, equitable, and effective interpreter of guidelines. 

• Continuous Learning & Critical Consciousness: actively owns and learn from mistakes, actively seeks learning opportunities, leverages experts, internalizes learnings, and lead team learning to continually grow and improve results; explores how identities impact their work, brings an assets-based lens, builds understanding of marginalization, dismantle white dominant culture, works towards racial justice and healing, and act against oppressive systems. 

• Trusting Relationships: Possesses a high level of self-awareness and cultivates strong, collaborative relationships at all levels; excellent communication skills with an aptitude for translating complex information into a clear and persuasive narrative; convinces others by identifying benefits for all; encourages teams to seek and share diverse perspectives to inform decision making and planning; strong customer-service orientation, with deep value placed on the end-user experience. 

• Organization, Planning, & Execution: Design, develop, and execute knowledge management systems, data collection tools, and dashboards with attention to agility, deadlines, and stakeholders; proactively evolves plans and processes in anticipation of changing circumstances.  

• Technical Fluency: Demonstrates the ability to define high-priority questions about the use and application of data and design quality technical solutions; excels at processing, analyzing, and synthesizing quantitative data, generating actionable insights and opportunities; prioritizes a focus on data quality and possesses a willingness to be in the weeds to gain deeper understanding of the data; leverages data to inform continuous improvement and monitor progress; possesses the ability to translate findings into accessible and visually appealing formats that portray a compelling and relevant narrative for the audience. 

• Functional Content Knowledge: Demonstrates some expertise in discrete areas of talent practices (e.g., talent planning, talent development, talent acquisition, talent operations/systems) 

Experience and Qualifications 

• Record of results and achievements with data collection, management, dashboard design and knowledge management 

• Minimum of 4 years of experience leading data collection and analysis system 

• Experience communicating and managing stakeholders on a national scale 

• Experience with adult learning and training methodologies and frameworks strongly preferred 

• Intermediate expertise with spreadsheets (Excel, Google) required

Work Conditions 

• Travel requirements: 2-4 work trips of 2-4 days to attend team stepbacks and all staff retreats

• Full time, Exempt role 

Location 

It is preferred, but not mandatory for this role to be based out of a KIPP Foundation office. This role also has the option of working from a remote office full-time. KIPP Foundation offices are in NYC and Chicago. 

Compensation and Benefits 

In compliance with local law, we are disclosing the compensation, or a range thereof, for roles in locations where legally required. Actual salaries will vary based on several factors, including but not limited to external market data, internal equity, and relevant experience.  The salary range for this position is $100,000 to $118,000. In addition, KIPP Foundation provides a variety of benefits to employees, including:  

• 26 holidays for + 18 days additional flexible PTO days (flexible PTO increases to 23 days for years 3 and 4 and to 28 days for years 5+). 

• 100% paid parental leave 

• 100% coverage of the premium for employee and 75% for employee + family’s medical/dental/vision plans. 

• Wellness benefits such as fitness reimbursements, discounted tickets to theme parks/attractions, backup care support for children and adults/elders, and our employee assistance program 

• Finance Security benefits include such as a 401K retirement plan with 4% match, employer-sponsored legal plans, life/disability insurance, and flexible spending accounts 

KIPP Foundation embraces the opportunity to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of the students and communities with whom we work and the world that around them. Being an equal opportunity employer means that we take seriously our responsibility to consider qualified candidates on the basis of merit, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, mental or physical disability, and genetic information, marital status, citizenship status, military status, protected veteran status or any other category protected by law.