Director, Transformation and Strategy

Job
Title
:
Director, Transformation and Strategy

Team
:
Office of the Chief Executive Officer

Location
:
In‑Person strong preference for Chicago (IL), also possible;
Atlanta (GA), Newark (NJ), or New York City (NYC)

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 Director, Transformation and Strategy, to join the newly formed Transformation team. Transformation is charged with ensuring we see around corners and are prepared to maximize strategic opportunities in our future. Your role is to incubate and then hand off initiatives that are critical to our organization's success.

You'll do the work of launching pilot projects, figuring out what should be consistent across the organization, and determining what has to be unique to meet the needs of the student population and/or local landscape to scale. You bring a broad toolkit: you will design and execute programs, articulate and assess the business case for initiatives, analyze data and learnings, and build the operational foundation that makes the initiative sustainable and scalable - and you thrive on this.

While you don’t manage anyone directly, you will manage across many internal stakeholders, and your ability to move people toward shared outcomes without direct authority is critical to your success. You're energized by ambiguity, you take initiative before being asked, you think in systems, and you genuinely love figuring out what "cutting edge" means for an organization that is paving the way.

You enjoy bringing structure to ambiguous problems without flattening the complexity, and you know when to slow down and define the question before rushing to answer it.

This role calls for adaptability as Braven's transformation agenda evolves, and your scope will grow with it. To start, you will play a pivotal and dynamic role in deepening our career partnerships with universities, helping to explore and launch an evolution of our core model. Strong contributors here thrive in a startup environment where job descriptions are starting points, not ceilings, and are willing to roll up their sleeves to support whatever the mission needs.

This is a small team culture where everyone pitches in, shares credit, and stays focused on student impact.

This role is a part of the Office of the Chief Executive Officer and reports directly to the Head of Transformation.

Set Strategy and Own the Business Case (40%)

• Develop and own Braven’s multi-year strategy for key pilot initiatives — synthesizing insights from program delivery, partner relationships, financial modeling, and student outcome data into a coherent, evidence-based framework
• Build and maintain the business case for key pilot initiatives as a scalable Braven offering: model unit economics, cost per student, and revenue potential across partner types; translate findings into recommendations for Braven leadership and, where appropriate, external stakeholders
• Establish consistent measurement baselines (including financial, programmatic metrics) so we can make data‑driven decisions and meaningful comparisons over time and across pilot partners, surfacing ROI and risks/opportunities on an ongoing basis
• Gather updates from across the team and synthesize them into cohesive, well‑structured presentations that reflect both progress and honest challenges
• Prepare materials, briefings, and talking points for board meetings — distilling complex program activity into clear, compelling narratives for a non‑operational audience
• Conduct ongoing landscape…