Title: Lead, Strategy Management
Department: Office of Strategy and Planning
Reporting to: Senior Director, Strategy and Planning
Location: Canada
Compensation: $155K - $165K CAD
Who We Are:
World Education Services (WES) is a non-profit social enterprise that supports the educational, economic, and social inclusion of immigrants, refugees, and international students. For 50 years, WES has set the standard for international academic credential evaluation, supporting millions of people as they seek to achieve their academic and professional goals. Through decades of experience as a leader in global education, WES has developed a wide range of tools to pursue social impact at scale. From evaluating academic credentials to shaping policy, designing programs, and providing philanthropic funding, we partner with a diverse set of organizations, leaders, and networks to uplift individuals and drive systems change. Together with its partners, WES enables people to learn, work, and thrive in new places. For more information about WES, please visit our website at www.WES.org.
About the Opportunity:
The Strategy Management Lead orchestrates and translates WES’s enterprise strategy into coordinated execution. This role combines strategic leadership, operational execution, and change management excellence to deliver measurable outcomes across complex, cross-functional teams. The Lead will be critical in building a new function at WES tasked with managing organizational engagement with the strategy and strategic plan at all levels, including at the executive level and within business units. In addition, the Lead will help develop and support the governance structures and frameworks needed to ensure strategy development and execution across the enterprise. The Lead will partner with the Senior Director for Strategy, Planning, and Learning to ensure WES’s long-term vision, annual priorities, and cross-functional initiatives are aligned, measurable, and successfully executed by cross-functional teams across the organization. The Lead will also have exposure to WES’s Board of Trustees.
What You’ll Do:
Strategy Management
- Serve as a trusted strategic advisor to the broader Executive Leadership Team (ELT) on strategic priorities and readiness.
- Lead the coordination of the full annual and multi-year enterprise strategy planning cycle, partnering closely with the Senior Director for Strategy, Planning, and Learning, other leaders in the Strategy, Planning, and Learning Team executive team, and leaders responsible for strategy execution.
- Engage across WES to translate strategic goals into actionable workstreams, milestones, and measurable outcomes.
- Establish and operationalize a governance model to track progress, escalate issues, support decision-making, and prioritize initiatives.
- Coordinate alignment between strategic initiatives, budgets, and resource allocation.
Alignment & Communication
- Align business units, departments, and functional strategies with the enterprise strategy; build the enabling function to monitor strategic coherence, alignment, and understanding across the organization enabling leaders to course correct where necessary.
- Cultivate strong partnerships across functional areas to ensure unified strategy delivery.
- Represent the strategy at board, executive, and enterprise forums, providing insight on progress and impact.
- Support stakeholder engagement, communication, and change management best practices to ensure organization-wide understanding and adoption of the strategic plan.
- Build confidence and alignment through transparent communication, storytelling, and shared success metrics.
Organizational Capability Building
- Build organizational capability within the strategy management team, in strategic thinking, prioritization, and execution discipline.
- Model a culture of data-driven decision making, continuous improvement, and enterprise cross-team collaboration.
- Build internal capacity for challenge identification and prioritization, change management, evaluation, and continuous improvement.
- Develop documentation, playbooks, and frameworks to ensure continuity and momentum throughout the strategic implementation timeline.
People and Functional Management
- Oversee the strategy management work with general people responsibilities ensuring consistency in hiring, training, and performance management with the team.
- Nurture an inclusive, collaborative, and supportive team culture that is high-performing, models organizational transparency, and encourages accountability.
- Ensure quality approaches to source, select, and manage external consultants and vendors, in collaboration with respective WES teams.
- Contribute to reports for the executive and senior leaders, Board members, and other key internal and external stakeholders.
Your Experience:
The ideal candidate will have:
Required
- Strong stakeholder management skills with experience in leading and delivering enterprise transformation initiatives.
- Exceptional leadership and team management skills, with the ability to inspire and motivate others; experience nurturing talent preferred.
- Strong executive presence and communication skills with tact, diplomacy, and adaptability. Proven ability to build trust, with the ability to effectively engage, influence, and align stakeholders at all organizational levels.
- Experience utilizing inclusive and participatory models for strategy development, planning, decision-making, and/or budgeting within organizations and/or with external partners. Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects and priorities in a fast-paced environment.
- Proven ability to formulate strategy and demonstrate critical thinking and ability to operationalize strategy.
- Track record as an excellent problem-solver using a data-driven approach to decision making and who enjoys taking on new challenges and demonstrates good judgement.
- Fosters behaviors such as collaboration, agility, adaptability, effective communication and continuous learning that drive strategic success and integrate culture into enterprise.
- Bring a “can-do” attitude and have a willingness to stretch up and down in their role as needs evolve.
- Strong command of technology tools, including Microsoft Office suite (especially Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive), Salesforce or other CRM systems, and Google Apps / G Suite.
- This is a remote working role with requirements for travel to the WES office for meetings. Availability to travel to attend meetings, conferences, events, etc. is required.
Desired
- A Bachelor’s degree in public policy, economics, business, international relations, or other relevant degrees is an asset, but not required.
- Strong knowledge of WES operating environment.
- Experience in a similar capacity supporting strategy development and implementation.
Questions you will answer as part of the application process in UKG:
- Why am I the right person for this role in terms of skills, experience and aptitude?
- What is my vision for the role? This is a highly collaborative role across departments and teams. How would you approach modeling the culture we want to build in this role?
- How would you approach taking on this role and the portfolio of work?
Instructions to Apply:
- Attaching a resume is optional
- Answers may be provided in the corresponding space under each question or as additional supporting documents with your application in:
-
- Prose (max 3 pages) or
- Bullet form prose (max 3 pages) or
- Powerpoint (max 5 slides)
Our Values:
- Opportunity - We open doors so people can build better futures.
- Inclusion - We become stronger, more creative, and more resilient when we embrace diversity.
- Equity - We uphold fairness and justice in our work and actions.
- Enterprising - We are resourceful, inventive, and driven.
- Expertise - We challenge ourselves to be the best at what we do.
Inclusive Recruitment Process:
We welcome all applicants, irrespective of their experience perfectly fitting the job description, as we value diverse and innovative viewpoints. At our organization, individuals who thrive in a culture of continuous learning and inclusive teamwork excel. We are committed to fostering an inclusive and accessible work environment where everyone feels valued, respected, and supported and welcome members of all backgrounds and perspectives to apply.
Our Commitment:
World Education Services is committed to fostering an inclusive workplace that reflects the rich tapestry of our communities, both in the US and Canada. This commitment is underscored by our unwavering dedication to providing equal opportunities to all qualified individuals, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or genetics. This commitment extends to every aspect of employment, from recruitment and hiring to promotions, training, and benefits. We comply with all applicable federal, state, and local anti-discrimination laws. For us, diversity goes beyond compliance – it's about embracing unique perspectives and cultivating an environment where everyone feels valued and empowered to reach their full potential.
If you require assistance and/or accommodation at any point during the recruitment process, please contact us at hiring@wes.org, we're here to support you. Our Talent Acquisition team is happy to work with you to find solutions that meet your needs.
For more information about WES, please visit our website at www.WES.org
