Managing Director, Early Talent Admissions

ROLE TITLE: Managing Director, Early Talent Admissions

POSITION REPORTS TO: Vice President, Selection

APPLICATION DEADLINE: Sunday, August 17th, at 11:59 pm ET

LOCATION: Flexible

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Teach For America seeks a strategic and execution-focused leader to help drive the future of Teach For America’s admissions work through the design, execution, and continuous improvement of our early talent selection process. In this role, you will be responsible for ensuring smooth early talent applicant experience, from operational systems to decision-making. You will ensure these processes align to our corps admissions model and maximize efficiency. You will operationalize strategic priorities and work cross-functionally to ensure our pre-corps systems, decisions, and pilots strengthen our broader admissions model.

This role will serve as a critical connector between partner programs that hire undergraduate talent (e.g., Teach For America’s Ignite Fellowship, TFA Impact, Breakthrough Collaborative, Jumpstart, etc.) and our selection structures. You will execute new processes that support innovation, coordinate risk-informed decision making, and ensure that learnings from pre-corps admissions inform the long-term evolution of how we identify and select corps members.

The ideal candidate thrives in complexity and can seamlessly move between systems-level thinking and on-the-ground execution. You are energized by refining strategy through action, partnering across teams, and holding high standards for applicant care, operational integrity, and equity. You are a strong communicator, collaborator, and problem-solver with a deep commitment to building systems that reflect our values and support our mission.

WHAT YOU’LL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR

Administer the application process to select early engagement participants for Ignite and Jumpstart annually (65%)

Cross-Team Partnership

• Build and maintain strong alignment between early engagement selection and the programmatic goals of early talent partners.

• Serve as the central point of contact across teams, fostering shared clarity on selection timelines, standards, and program expectations.

• Partner with the VP, Selection and key Ignite and Jumpstart staff to co-create campaign objectives, adjust strategies as needed, and respond to program feedback.

• Establish clear objectives to guide the annual campaign in partnership with early talent partners.

• Ensure that early engagement selection is aligned with corps admissions values, priorities, and long-term goals.

Operations

• Set the process for applying to each program. Establish stable and efficient systems and workflows, within the available resources

• Lead execution of the application process for these programs. Ensure logistics, communications, and decision-making structures are efficient, equitable, and applicant-centered. 

• Coordinate with others on the Admissions Team who will be contributing to key parts of execution.

• Carefully monitor execution and make adjustments to steer toward important outcomes

• Coordinate with early talent partners to ensure a smooth transition from selection decisions to onboarding to the program

Decision Quality

• Oversee training and quality control with decision reviewers to ensure we make the strongest possible selection decisions.

• Coordinate adjudication of edge or high-risk cases in collaboration with VP, Selection

• Maintain transparency and documentation of decision-making to ensure integrity and alignment

• Recommend who should be admitted to each program for sign off from the VP, Selection and the program

Learning & Improvement

• Establish learning loops after each admissions cycle to analyze data, identify themes, and inform improvements.

• Document bright spots, challenges, and implications to inform future iterations of the early engagement selection process.

• Lead or support post-cycle reviews and process reflections across teams.

Build the early engagement admissions process of the future (25%)

• Contribute to building the admissions process and calendar of the future, ensuring this offers a strong bridge from early engagement to the corps

• Lead execution of selected pilots, capturing feedback and surfacing insights

• Ensure pilots reflect our values, priorities, and commitments within corps admissions and build toward scalable future processes

Team & Organization Partnership & Stewardship (10%)

• Actively engage with the teams and work groups involved in early corps engagement

• Participate in organizational initiatives, learning and development sessions, and key moments of cross-functional collaboration.

• Serve as a flexible contributor, lending expertise and capacity to emerging projects and evolving team needs.

A WEEK IN THE LIFE

Over the course of any week, this role will spend time driving key elements, with a primary focus on managing early talent admissions from start to finish and ensuring alignment between this work and corps admission with quality decisions at its core. This includes developing and managing detailed project plans, supporting people and systems, troubleshooting issues, and ensuring alignment to the selection model and broader admissions goals.

Additionally, about 20% of the role will be spent managing the Manager, of Early Talent to aide in the operational support of this work and with supporting strategic innovations and change management—operationalizing pilots, integrating future-state work like bringing in community selectors into pre-corps programs (e.g. Ignite), and ensuring everyone is connected to evolving processes. The remaining time will be dedicated to handling urgent applicant issues during interview weeks (10%) and contributing to team learning, cross-functional collaboration, and emerging organizational needs (10%). This role requires flexibility, strong judgment, and a high capacity for managing both day-to-day operations and long-term strategy.

YOUR EXPERIENCE

Prior Experience

• Teach For America staff, alumni, or former staff preferred

• Experience and proficiency with the Teach For America selection model preferred

Your areas of knowledge and expertise that matter most for this role (minimum qualifications):

• Leads complex projects from design through implementation, with a focus on finding the best solutions for now and improving over time

• Manages fast-paced operations with accuracy and efficiency. Holds a deep commitment to fair systems that serve applicants fairly.

• Excels in working with different stakeholders by establishing shared vision, fostering alignment, staying in communication, and navigating tensions

• Previous experience and record of excellent decision making as a selector for TFA.

• A role model of TFA's core values while leading through ambiguity

YOUR FUTURE TEAM

This role sits on the Selection Unit, a close-knit team of 11 within the broader Admissions Team, which is responsible for ensuring a rigorous, fair, mission-aligned admissions process that identifies future corps members with the greatest potential for impact. While you’ll be rooted in this team, your day-to-day work will be deeply cross-functional.

You’ll collaborate regularly with partners across Early Talent Partners, Recruitment, TDX, and the broader Growth team to ensure strong alignment between pre-corps program goals and the admissions systems that support them. This role serves as a connective thread across these workstreams, helping translate strategic intent into high-quality execution.

You’ll also work closely with colleagues in Matriculation, CMPP, and Selection Operations to ensure applicants experience a seamless transition into their programs and that our admissions decisions reflect the values, goals, and evolving needs of the organization.

YOUR COMPENSATION 

The applicable salary range for each U.S.- based role is based on where the employee works and is aligned to one of 3 tiers according to a cost of labor index in that geographic area. Starting pay for the successful applicant will depend on a variety of job-related factors, which may include education, training, experience, location, business needs, or market demands. New hires are typically brought into the organization at a salary between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint depending on qualifications, internal review, and the budgeted amount for the role.

The expected salary ranges for this role are set forth below. These ranges may be modified in the future.

• Tier A: $81,700 to $111,500 

• Tier B: $89,100 to $121,500

• Tier C: $96,400 to $131,600

You can see which Tier you belong to here. If you do not see your location listed, click here for additional total rewards information.

NEXT STEPS

In lieu of a Cover Letter, please respond to this prompt in 1-2 typed pages and share with RTStaffing@teachforamerica.org:

Our most successful team members have demonstrated strong achievement in their professional experience prior to taking on their positions. Please describe the most ambitious goal you have ever set and achieved, and what actions you took to attain it. How did you engage others, if at all, to reach this goal? What challenges, if any, did you encounter while working towards your goal?

Your response should include all of the following:

• A professional experience supporting/leading a small group, large group, or complex project

• Explicitly state the goal you were working towards

• The action steps you took to achieve this goal

• How you involved different perspectives and/or invested partners (e.g. colleagues, administration, parents, etc.) to help you to achieve this goal

• Quantitative results that demonstrate your impact AND

• Qualitative results that demonstrate your impact

We have provided some “sentence starters” below to help guide your thinking. You can choose to leverage these sentences as you write your reflections, or you can write something entirely different! Both methods are encouraged: we want to get the most accurate information about your record of results as possible.

• At the beginning of the year, I set a classroom goal of X

• I set this/these goal(s) because of <X, Y, Z reasons>

• We achieved <Y results>. I know this because of <X, Y, and Z>.

• In addition to quantitative targets, I set a qualitative goal(s) of X