Business and Operations Senior Associate

Business and Operations Senior Associate

(Part-time or Full-time)

ABOUT THE ROLE

As Promise’s first dedicated Business and Operations Senior Associate, you will play a critical role in achieving our mission of supporting innovators and accelerating innovations for equity in early childhood development (ECD). You will be responsible for supporting our organization to operate in a way that maximizes our impact and lays the foundation for scale. You will ensure that our business systems – finance, talent, IT and operations – adapt and improve as our organization continues to evolve. This role will work closely with the Promise leadership team to identify and address operational opportunities and challenges.

Key Objectives + Responsibilities

1. Manage and optimize Promise’s overall business and operation systems
2. Act as primary liaison with Promise’s fiscal sponsor in order to ensure high-quality support on contracted functions (i.e. payroll, HR/personnel policies, benefits admin, legal support, contract admin, and accounting)
3. Manage Promise’s operations and technology stack (e.g., Streak CRM, Zoom, Slack, Google Drive, Social Media, etc.), including procurement, managing vendors, setting team standard processes, and conducting trainings as needed. Ensure Promise team members have what they need to complete their jobs efficiently and effectively..
4. Support financial and budget planning through revenue, expense, cash and budget tracking and reconciling and ensure timely internal and external reporting and analysis
5. Developing recommendations for how to streamline and make our operations more efficient (as relates to managing programs, our network of ~400 social entrepreneurs, onboarding, fundraising, hiring/recruitment, etc.)
6. Complete special projects as assigned. Examples might include:
7. Ensure a smooth and efficient stipend process in service of our Early Childhood Leaders of Color Collaborative
8. Codify and lead onboarding process management with new team members
9. Lead project management on seasonal talent and operations processes and events
10. Work closely with program managers to implement proper data collection strategies and support with analytics as needed
11. Collect, analyze and present data to support Promise impact tracking, strategy and programming decisions
12. Assist in CRM development and implementation
13. Provide support to program managers on various aspects of program operations (eg: Zoom, in-person event logistics, retreat logistics, tech enablement)

1. Execute additional team projects and responsibilities
2. In partnership with the leadership team, participate in the development of short and long term plans for the organization and provide input to operational decisions
3. We’re a startup too! Things will come up, new opportunities will arise, unexpected events and turns will happen, and it will always be an adventure. We are looking for someone who thrives in this environment, relishes change, finds ways to say yes, thinks on their feet and enjoys juggling various opportunities, challenges and needs that come our way!

ABOUT YOU

Values / Mindset

• Alignment and commitment to Promise’s core values
• A willingness to engage personally and professionally in the work to dismantle structural racism and systemic inequality and uphold the commitments laid out in Promise’s Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion statement.

Experience

• 4+ years in an operations, administration. business or talent role in a highly effective small business, start-up or nonprofit
• Experience and/or deep interest in social entrepreneurship, early childhood development (birth to age 5), family engagement, education, human services, health, technology, anti-racist and equity work, or another related field
• Experience collecting, analyzing and presenting data to inform strategy and programming decisions
• Experience with change management and supporting leaders to adopt and utilize new tools and systems
• Experience discovering, learning, integrating, and managing various productivity, social, and programmatic tech / software products
• Experience leading projects – translating goals into work plans, executing with high quality and managing internal change processes
• A willingness to engage personally and professionally in the work to dismantle structural racism and systemic inequality

Skills

• Entrepreneurial: you can adopt an entrepreneur mindset and working style – you love juggling multiple tasks, at various levels, and wearing many hats. You are action-oriented and always ready to roll up your sleeves, no matter the size of the task, and you take a lean, iterative approach to your work and embrace testing and learning.
• Proactive: you can proactively identify and prioritize operational systems and tools to add to Promise’s suite of tools to help us increase our impact. You tend to anticipate needs before they arise and proactively build solutions to address them.
• Critical and analytical thinking: you can effectively problem solve and collaborate thoughtfully in a fast-paced, dynamic environment
• Systems builder: you can build effective and efficient processes to support our work and help Promise reach greater scale and impact
• Detail-oriented: you sweat the details and do what it takes to get them right because you believe it leads to higher quality
• Organized: you know how to to build the right processes to get work done in the most efficient and effective way with your team; you stay on top of various work streams and communications
• High-autonomy: you are able to find your footing in an ambiguous situations, have a high degree of self-motivation in a remote environment, and we can count on you to, deliver high quality work at speed and close the loop
• Collaborative: you work well in small team environments, you like bouncing ideas off of others, you enjoy getting and giving feedback, you derive value out of brainstorming and group thinking
• Confidential: you can be trusted to both have access to and handle confidential and personal data and information that is critical to the day to day operations of Promise discreetly and with high-integrity.
• Proactive Communicator: you initiate conversations on potential roadblocks or opportunities for improvement. You keep stakeholders informed on relevant priorities and workstreams.

WHAT WE OFFER:

• Making catalytic impact on one of our country’s most complex social challenges
• Steep growth and responsibility with a small, dynamic, entrepreneurial team
• A joyful and supportive team environment, with teammates who take the work extremely seriously, but will never miss an opportunity to make space for laughter
• The chance to observe, practice and learn entrepreneurship, with mentoring from serial entrepreneurs
• Visibility to and relationship-building with cutting edge entrepreneurs, researchers, experts, funders, practitioners, and more in the early childhood field
• Annual salary range is $85,000 to $100,000. Compensation is commensurate with qualifications and experience with new team members rarely starting at the top of the range.
• Promise has flexibility on if this role is full-time or part-time, depending on the candidate, but we anticipate this role will be about .5 – .75 FTE each week.
• ​​Promise also offers generous benefits including medical, dental, vision and an employer contributed 401K plan with additional matching.

Location: The position is remote and can be based anywhere in the U.S. but may require occasional travel.

HOW TO APPLY:

Submit your resume, LinkedIn profile (if you have one!) and an email explaining your interest in this role to jobs@promisestudio.org with the subject line “Application for Business and Operations Senior Associate Role – [YOUR NAME]”. Please also include how you heard about this job opportunity.

We strive to ensure our hiring process, including the submission of the application, meets your needs. If there are accommodations that would help you in submitting the materials above, please email jobs@promisestudio.org.

Promise is an equal opportunity employer, are committed to racial and gender equity, and we make a particular effort to recruit candidates who identify as Black, Indigenous, people of color and gender non-binary to apply for open positions.

ABOUT PROMISE

Promise Venture Studio aims to address one of the greatest social justice issues facing our country — the equity gap that starts long before children enter Kindergarten. Due to structural racism and systemic inequality, over five million children under five years old in the US are growing up in poverty, millions of children and families lack access to the healthcare services they need, and more than half of children from low-income families are unprepared for kindergarten. Further, the Early Childhood Development (ECD) field, like the broader society it serves, is riddled with inequity, particularly along racial and socioeconomic lines. This reality fundamentally shapes lifelong outcomes. Our work is rooted in a conviction to do our part to build a world where all children, no matter their background, can fulfill their innate promise.

Promise believes that social entrepreneurs, as they have in other fields, can pioneer programs, products, services, and interventions that lead to more just outcomes at scale. However, social entrepreneurs in ECD face significant obstacles to building organizations that can achieve impact at scale, including less venture support, less financial capital, less human capital, and less intellectual capital. Moreover, these obstacles are disproportionately higher for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) innovators than their white peers. These inequities are especially problematic because research shows that proximate leaders of color who see the intersectional root causes of issues and respond in ways that integrate cultural competency and respect are best poised to eliminate inequities.

Backed by leading investors and philanthropists, Promise Venture Studio is a national nonprofit with a mission to support innovators and accelerate innovations for equity in Early Childhood Development. We help social entrepreneurs in ECD achieve scaled impact in the face of these obstacles – and help the field dismantle these obstacles over time. We support any venture (for profit company, non-profit organization, academic institution, etc) that is exploring, developing or scaling products, services and programs that improve outcomes in ECD.

Promise employs three mutually reinforcing strategies:

• We unite BIPOC and proximate innovators to drive personal sustainability and collective power
• We accelerate the impact of equity-driven social ventures
• We connect innovators and ventures to sources of capital and customers

Ultimately we believe these strategies will lead to more social ventures that improve outcomes for children and families at scale, along with more and more equitable capital for the ECD field.