Operations Manager

OPERATIONS MANAGER

Start Date: Immediate

Role Type: Full-Time

Location: West Coast/ PST based; this is a fully remote role but given the location of our projects we’re prioritizing candidates located in the Pacific Timezone. 

Travel: ~30-35% time. Willingness to travel approximately 2-3x per month for 2-3 days depending on the location and duration of trips. There will be four to six trips per year of longer duration, lasting ~4-5 days. The number of trips will vary from month to month—some months will have more, while others will have fewer. 

Who We Are:

Transcend’s mission is to support communities to create and spread extraordinary learning for all. Founded in 2015, Transcend has partnered with over 200 schools and 50 systems which collectively serve nearly 500,000 students in 30 states across the country. As a research and development (R&D) hub for the education field, Transcend provides schools and systems with research-backed, community-driven models and capacity so they can make significant leaps to reimagine the future of education. Transcend is a nonprofit that operates with a fully remote, nationwide team. 

For more information, visit our website; follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter; or check out this recent podcast featuring our two co-founders on Class Disrupted. 

The Opportunity: 

At the heart of our work across projects and teams lies our operations and events work led by Operations Managers! Operation Managers are the backstage leaders of our work and go the extra mile to ensure everyone has what they need to be able to facilitate, learn, and take risks for projects across Transcend. Operations Managers provide indispensable, practical and organizational support across the following: 

• Planning, executing, and providing expertise for in-person events, conferences and experiences
• Planning, executing, and providing expertise for virtual events, typically through Zoom 
• Providing project management guidance and support to project leads across projects

Operations Managers are home-based within our centralized operations team, a new structure for this year, and are allocated to specific projects across teams to ensure seamless coordination and execution. Across all project allocations, Operations Managers provide essential project management, communications, and logistics support to ensure smooth operations. By asking thoughtful, broad-ranging questions and deeply listening, Operations Managers curate meaningful events and experiences across projects at Transcend. They do so while fostering strong relationships with our partners and team, ensuring they feel seen, heard, valued, and inspired!

As an Operations Manager at Transcend, you will get to: 

• Foster strong relationships - with our partners and across our internal teams!
• Serve as a project manager for all things operations  – creating and managing timelines, supporting our coaches in anticipating and navigating through logistics and operational needs and constraints, and coordinating project plans and calendars across a scope of work and range of projects. 
• Lead conference coordination - holding, stewarding, and coordinating a group of teammates and external partnerships to attend events and/or conferences. This includes preparing travel plans, planning and leading spaces we want to craft during the conferences, and communicating with conference attendees. 
• Craft and manage operations-focused communications with internal staff, school partners, and our learning cohorts and communities. This includes crafting emails, slack messages, participant guides, logistics memos, etc. with clear instructions and information for the team and/or school partners to ensure alignment on the overall experience and the small details. 
• Lead and manage operations and logistics for various workshops, inspiration visits, and events, both virtually through Zoom and in-person. This ranges from leading operations for 2-hour, 15-person Zoom calls; to operations for 4-day in-person events with ~100 participants. Additionally, some in-person events may require you to rent and drive a vehicle to transport materials, support team members, or handle other logistical needs.
• Creating and analyzing team survey data – writing and sending surveys (often in Google Forms), analyzing that data, and sharing back the summary and next steps with the team.
• Spearhead smooth internal operations such as scheduling internal team meetings and project events, preparing agendas, taking notes, and capturing (and managing follow-through on) the next steps.
• Managing conference/event budgets, and other team budgets as needed. With the support of the Finance team, support your project team and/or event to stay on budget. Operations Managers who support events and procurement also have and manage a Transcend credit card, including any actions needed to review and document expenses.
• Support team special projects which range sensitive to Portfolio/team needs. These activities may include: planning team stepbacks, designing school application processes, supporting grant writing and reports, more in-depth analytics data work, video and media editing, creating internal team websites to organize resources/knowledge management, and creating and updating cohort websites through a website builder platform. Each portfolio/team has unique needs, and we explore those more fully throughout the interview process. 

To see this role in action and further details about what these buckets of work would look like, check out these sample projects. 

Who You Are:

You love all things project management and have incredible organizational superpowers. You approach managing operations and projects on a team, both internally and externally, with people at the core of experiences. You do so by taking the time to get to know the people you’re working closely with, forging strong relationships, and creating a sense of community and connection. Your passion for planning and event operations shines through as you meticulously craft and manage smooth logistics and you’re highly skilled at coordinating a team to ensure smooth logistics and exceptional experiences. Taking initiative and managing your time effectively are second nature to you, and you take immense pride in your stellar organizational systems. You also thrive in, and enjoy, working behind the scenes in a fast-paced environment where things can change quickly and operate with resolute calmness! 

And above all, you love that your everyday work is in service to a mission that matters. You believe deeply in the power of education to change lives and believe in reinventing schools so that young people can live a life of limitless opportunities. You are energized by contributing your love of all things operations to this cause!

To all this, you bring:

• A commitment to Transcend’s mission of transforming education, with a passion for creating extraordinary learning for all.
• Outstanding project management and organizational skills that allow you to gather and organize multiple work streams and logistics efficiently. 
• Prior experience with planning and executing in-person and virtual events for a variety of groups - from small <10 people events to convenings that bring large groups of people together. 
• Familiarity with facilitating logistics for virtual events through Zoom. 
• A deep love for planning and executing a variety of events.
• Curiosity and drive to develop clear, effective, and efficient operational processes.
• A strong commitment to designing meaningful, thoughtful, and community-centered experiences—whether in the events you manage, the way you communicate, or how you approach your work—to ensure that participants, partners, and teammates feel genuinely valued and included.
• A willingness to travel up to 2-3 times/month(most trips 2-3 days. Four to six trips/year of longer duration, likely 4-5 days), to support in-person operations.
• Flexibility, optimism, and a desire to learn and grow.
• Eagerness to embrace and live into Transcend’s core values.

Perks and Benefits: 

Transcend is committed to providing our colleagues with a competitive benefits package. Transcend offers 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.

Join Us!

We are an experienced team focused on extraordinary learning for all. We welcome candidates who are passionate about ensuring that all students thrive.