Vice President, Strategy Jobs

About Braven

We believe that the next generation of leaders will emerge from everywhere. We empower promising college students with the skills, confidence, experiences, and networks necessary to transition from college to strong first jobs, which lead to meaningful careers and lives of impact.

Learn more about Braven’s impact:

https://impactreport.bebraven.org/

https://jobsreport.bebraven.org/

About the Role

In order to achieve its ambition of serving 80,000-100,000 Fellows over the next decade, Braven is hiring a Vice President, Strategy who will be a critical thought partner to the CEO and develop the strategic architecture toward maximum impact in a quickly growing and evolving organization. The VP, Strategy ensures the organization stays laser focused on its business strategy, makes smart pivots, and most importantly continues to produce high impact results for its Fellows, higher education, and employer partners.

As a member of the CEO’s Alignment Team and the head of the Strategy team at Braven, you will build a first class team that drives the proactive analysis, steward the decision making processes and foster the culture of results orientation and learning that are essential for reaching our ambition over time.

This role reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer.

What You’ll Do

Build the Strategic & Consulting Capacity of the Organization (20%)

• Manage, coach and empower the Director, Strategic Operations to design, drive, and innovate around a set of communication and meeting structures that ensure the organization is on a path to reaching its ambition
• Manage, over time, a team that ensures internal consulting needs are met and/or are met via our outside consulting partners
• Steward the relationships and work in partnership with top tier consulting firms to add capacity to our strategic work
• Create a team that has the strategic and analytical rigor to work with the CEO to set, track, and analyze the strategic direction of the organization

Partner with the CEO to Set, Implement & Monitor the Strategic Direction for the Organization (30%)

• Be a significant thought partner to the CEO on the organization’s business strategy as well as its implementation
• Make sure that leaders making decisions are supported with the right data, tools and frameworks to balance opportunity and risk as they set their own strategy in line with the big picture vision of where we are headed
• Ensure that the growth strategy (where to grow, how fast, what type of growth is best right now) is aligned to the product strategy (how we achieve outcomes with Fellows) and both of these are in concert with our operating model (who does what within the organization, how do decisions get made)
• Design processes that maximize alignment, leverage diverse opinions and perspectives, and allow for a change in direction when new information comes to light
• Craft communications and build documents that compel people inside and outside of Braven around our strategy
• Serve as liaison with the People and Operations and External Affairs Teams to ensure they are armed with understanding of our strategy to drive their respective goals around talent engagement and sustainability

Manage the Strategy Committee of Senior Leaders (20%)

• Set the vision and direction of the group
• Lead and manage routine meetings and two in-person larger sessions a year

Build and monitor the organization’s prowess at planning and coordination (15%)

• Design and oversee the strategic planning process year to year and quarter to quarter
• Support other leaders in their contexts to keep long-term planning, cross-functional planning, and strategy setting front and center even as day to day priorities ebb and flow
• Ensure the organization builds the right capacity and infrastructure as we grow, advising the Alignment Team when shifts in strategy require new ways of meeting outcomes

Oversee the processes, tools, and culture that drives results against our ambition as an organization (15%)

• Foster a culture of learning, failing forward, and iteration in cross functional spaces where leaders reflect on progress
• Ensure the organization has a strong culture of goal setting and progress monitoring that aligns the actions of the individual, team and organization at the right cadence
• Other duties as assigned.

Requirements

Minimum Requirements

• 8+ years of strategy consulting experience
• Bachelor’s Degree

Preferred Qualifications

• You exemplify Braven’s core values.
• You have exceptional oral and written communication skills with an ability to deliver a compelling case for strategic initiatives and influence others to get invested
• You invite and integrate both internal and external perspectives to inform your decision making
• You foresee external/internal risks to plans, and takes proactive preventative measures and anticipate changes in the landscape that could affect one’s work and/or Braven’s strategy
• You are extremely comfortable with ambiguity and pivoting priorities, and ground decisions in the vision and help others adjust their direction as circumstances require
• 10+ years of strategy consulting experience and training (highly preferred at a major firm e.g., Bain, McKinsey, BCG, etc.)
• You have a demonstrated commitment to equity and inclusion.
• You have great problem-solving skills, including the ability to understand the impact and intersection of people, process, external factors, and technical changes and to articulate high-level solutions to address problems
• You have an analytical mindset, relationship development skills, and an ability to collaborate across teams to achieve organizational outcomes
• Your experiences have informed your belief in Braven’s mission and have prepared you to work with, or for, Braven’s student Fellow population.
• You weigh the amount of work planned across the team/org and makes decisions to prioritize and manage workload and consistently apply systems thinking to understand the full implications of decisions

Please know that no one ever meets 100% of the preferred qualifications. If much of this describes you, we encourage you to apply.

Work Demands

• Travel 2-3 times per month
• Ability to work in-person in Atlanta (GA), Chicago (IL), Newark (NJ), or New York City (NYC)

Additional Requirements

• Must be fully vaccinated and have received the Booster vaccination against COVID-19 and provide proof of such by the date of hire. Individuals may claim exemption from the vaccine requirement for medical or religious reasons. Exempted individuals will be subject to weekly testing if they engage in any in-person work activities.
• Authorized to work in the U.S.

Application & Interview Process

While the interview process may vary slightly, the general process will be:

• Reference Checks
• Interview with CEO & Chief of Staff
• Performance Task
• Final In-Person Interview with CEO
• Phone screen with Talent Team member
• Panel Interview with Key Partners

Benefits

Compensation and Benefits

The salary for this position, which depends on prior work experience and our assessment of your demonstrated fit for the role, will likely be between $153,700-$192,100 in Atlanta, $161,800-$202,200 in Chicago, and $178,00-$222,500 in NYC or Newark. Braven offers competitive base salaries based on the midpoint of the market among not-for-profit organizations of similar size, with opportunities for salary growth over time. We believe in compensating staff members fairly in relation to each other, their qualifications, and their impact on behalf of the organization, and take internal and external equity seriously. Given our commitment to equity, Braven does not negotiate salary offers; instead each salary offer is determined carefully using external and internal benchmarking. You will have an opportunity to discuss salary in more detail after you begin the application process.

Braven also provides competitive, comprehensive benefits, recognition, and career development. While Braven reserves the right to change benefits at any time, current benefits include:

• Unlimited vacation time in addition to org-wide holidays and week-long shutdowns in July and the end of the calendar year (this is a minimum of 19 days per year)
• Coverage of 85% of health insurance premium for employee and dependents
• A one-month paid sabbatical after 4 years on staff
• Match of your 401K contribution up to 5% of your base annual salary, starting your first full month

Location

We gather in the office two to three days a week. Therefore, we require teammates to live within commuting distance of one of our hubs: Atlanta, Chicago, Newark, or New York City. Each teammate can use at least two flex days per week of their choosing to work remotely. We believe in the magic, connection, and collaboration that happens when people work together face-to-face and we believe in giving people flexibility to focus, balance personal priorities, and save themselves two commutes per week.

Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At Braven, we are committed to attracting, engaging, developing, and retaining a diverse team. Braven operates in the context of our American culture, against the backdrop of systemic racism and oppression of marginalized people since our country’s founding. We are committed to assembling leaders at our organization who have emerged from everywhere, with a particular emphasis on those who share the racial and income backgrounds of our Fellows, and creating an inclusive culture that allows all teammates, of all experiences and identities, to thrive.

Braven is an equal opportunity employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected factor. We encourage talented individuals of all backgrounds to apply.