Senior Director, Marketing & Communications

Company Description

Uncommon Schools is a nonprofit network of high-performing, public charter schools providing an outstanding K-12 education in historically under-resourced communities. We have proudly built schools that reflect our student population, with more than 60% of our teachers and staff across our network identifying as a person of color. Uncommon currently manages 53 schools serving more than 20,000 students in five cities: Boston, Camden, New York City, Newark and Rochester. We are proud that Uncommon graduates persist in and graduate from college at five times the rate of their peers nationally. We achieve this by offering strong academic, co-curricular, and social-emotional learning that prepares students for success in college and beyond.

The Sr. Director leads the Uncommon Schools marketing and communications function spanning the network and home office. To enable our mission, this leader sets the vision and strategy to build a unified Uncommon brand, in close collaboration with the Chief External Officer (CExO), and owns critical cross-functional efforts, including marketing execution for student enrollment and staff recruitment, external and internal communications, and impact work. This high-visibility position leads a team of marketing and communications experts and requires a meaningful degree of collaboration across a wide range of internal and external collaborators. The role requires a seasoned marketing professional with expertise in performance marketing, branding and communications, and reports to the CExO on Uncommon’s Executive Team.

Responsibilities

Development of Brand Strategy

• Increase brand awareness, relevance and loyalty and ensure cohesion across the central office, regions and schools through strategic brand framework and compelling storytelling.
• Elevate the Uncommon brand, as well as the marketing function, through thought leadership, both internally and externally.
• Lead development and implementation of organization-wide brand strategy, in close partnership with the CExO, to build the brand among target audiences.

Core Functional Work

• Lead all aspects of content and deployment of communications hierarchy on Uncommon’s websites and on internal employee communications platform.
• Deploy strategy for owned media – website/intranet, social media, schools’ physical environments (e.g., signage, environments).
• Strong data and analytics focus to understand target audience insights, drivers of choice, and effectiveness and efficiency of marketing activities, in order to provide ongoing updates on brand health for key partners.
• Harness the power of Uncommon Schools brand and enable consistency across owned, paid, earned, influence and social media channels:
• Collaborate with Chief Media Officer and External Affairs on earned, influence and social media, and empower regional teams to build brand through organic social media.

Support Organizational Growth/Priorities

• Get results through multi-channel, performance marketing strategy and support connectivity across broader organization-wide initiatives:
• Demonstrate ownership mentality by collaborating across organization on strategic priorities and recommending Marketing & Communications solutions based on a combination of data and standard methodologies.
• Improve the enrollment journey through deployment of impactful marketing campaigns, messaging and materials.
• Partner with Talent teams to develop and communicate an Employee Value Proposition to current employees and via recruitment marketing for prospective candidates.
• Support engagement initiatives with donor development and boards of trustees.

Leadership and Team Management

• Display maturity, flexibility, comfort with ambiguity and a sense of optimism/can-do attitude.
• Develop/resolve appropriate metrics to guide marketing investment decisions and alignment with internal partners
• Lead and model a strong project management mentality, structure and process for Marketing and network partners to drive impact and results.
• Transparently communicate strategic plan and regular updates on marketing investments to broad collaborators, provide ongoing data dashboard with ability to change directions as needed.
• Steward marketing’s financial resources across the home office, regional enrollment and relevant initiative-based budgets.
• Nurture partner engagement and collaboration to understand the role of brand and marketing, and the value of marketing investment.
• Lead and mentor marketing team to drive team’s value, impact and support of mission across home office teams and regions.
• Champion network priorities, initiatives, and culture and serve as Home Office Lead for the Marketing function.
• Lead Marketing’s data and decision-making ecosystem to ensure strong enterprise-level tracking, performance and reporting metrics.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required; MBA preferred
• 10+ years experience in marketing and communications roles encompassing brand management, performance/acquisition marketing, and/or communications.
• 7+ years experience leading and managing successful teams with diverse functional skills
• Prior creative agency or strategy consulting experience and working with nonprofit or mission-led organizations strongly preferred.

Skills

• Excellent forward-thinking and planning skills
• Knowledge of Mailchimp, Adobe Creative Suite, Asana, CRM and Marketing automation software (Salesforce)
• Strong approach to building consensus
• Able to adapt to new systems and change course easily
• Ability to build strong, scalable systems
• Strong communication, especially the ability to synthesize the needs of various groups
• Proven grasp of digital platforms and channels within an omni-channel environment (Social, email, search, paid, programmatic, retargeting, etc.)

Travel and Location

• NYC with regular travel to our regions (1-2x per month)

Additional Information

Our people are what make us uncommon. It’s important to us that our compensation practices align with our values and enhance our ability to attract and retain talent. Our compensation philosophy is focused on equity and fairness, retaining our talented staff and valuing their expertise, and transparency and clarity.

Compensation for this position: The starting compensation for this role based in New York, NY is between $154,800–$172,000. The starting pay will depend on a variety of factors that may include but are not limited to experience, education, training, certification, and location. Because we value staff staying in their roles over time, we do not currently cap salary ranges.

Benefits: We offer comprehensive, flexible, and competitive benefits that support the personal health, wellness, and finances of our staff and their families.

Uncommon believes in the importance of being a diverse, equitable and inclusive organization that enables our students and staff to thrive. We are committed to building an exceptional team that reflects the diverse backgrounds and experiences of our students. We also strive to ensure an inclusive community by creating a space for meaningful dialogue about issues of race and identity for our staff and students. As an equal opportunity employer, we hire without consideration to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status or disability. We also ensure that individuals with disabilities receive all privileges and benefits associated with employment and are provided reasonable accommodations for the interview process and to perform core job functions. If you would like to request an accommodation, please email [email protected].