Head of Program Design

Job
Title
:
Head of Design

Team
:
Product

Location
:
Hybrid in Atlanta (GA) - preferred, Chicago (IL), New York (NYC), or Newark (NJ)

Employment
Type
:
Full-time

FLSA
Classification
:
Exempt

Start Date
: ASAP

Braven is a national nonprofit that prepares promising college students to secure a strong first opportunity after college graduation through a career-accelerating program.

We work with higher education and employer partners to offer a life-changing experience that begins with a semester-long course for college students, followed by support that lasts through graduation.

Together, our ambition is to help rebuild the middle class and revitalize the American Dream.

To learn more, take a look at Braven’s Jobs Report.

In order to achieve its ambition of serving 80,000–100,000 Fellows over the next decade, Braven is hiring a Head of Program Design who will own the evolution, quality, and integrity of every program experience Braven puts in front of students, volunteers, and staff, serving as both the lead builder and the person responsible for setting the standards for how those experiences are designed.

Braven's program is built around a core belief: that students build career readiness by developing the right skills, networks, experiences, and confidence. Everything the Design team builds is in service of that equation. As the leader of the Design team and a member of the Product Leadership Team, you will translate evidence from Braven's research and real-time signals from the field into high-quality, pedagogically sound program assets and learning sequences that can be delivered across dozens of campuses with varying academic lengths (e.g., semester, quarter, summer school, etc.)

at scale.

You hold the line on adult learning best practices regardless of timeline pressure or competing priorities, and you ensure that every staff member and volunteer who facilitates a Braven program experience understands both what they're teaching and why it's built the way it is. We're also looking for someone with a genuinely entrepreneurial orientation, someone who is deeply curious about how other organizations are solving the college-to-career challenge, and who brings that curiosity back into how Braven evolves its own approach.

Critically, this person must be able to hold two things as connected rather than in tension: the commitment to human-centered, pedagogically excellent design and the imperative to simplify and scale. The program has to work for the student sitting in front of it and for the institution delivering it ing those as the same challenge — not competing ones — is a prerequisite for excellence in this role.

This role is on the Product team and reports directly to the Chief Product Officer.

Build, Steward, and Evolve Braven's Program Experience (30%)

• Design and evolve the entire program experience continuum, which starts with the Accelerator course and extends to supporting our Fellows for 6 months after graduation.
• Maintain a growing high-quality multi-modal library (in-person, virtual, and on-demand) of program experiences, including workshops, learning modules, facilitated sequences, stand-alone resources, on-demand tools, and event designs that help students build the skills, networks, experiences, and confidence needed to secure strong first opportunities after college.
• Create and pilot new program assets in response to what program staff is observing in the field and/or our higher education partners lift up as a need/interest — when teams flag that students are struggling or that a specific need has emerged, your team builds the response, keeping scale and simplicity front and center.
• Translate findings from Braven's research team into concrete design decisions, ensuring that what the evidence says students need is actually reflected in how every experience is structured, sequenced, and facilitated, partnering with execution teams to ensure the program is delivered as intended
• Maintain and refresh program assets over time by updating content regularly based on stakeholder feedback, student outcome data, and shifts in the college-to-career landscape, including…