Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives

Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives

Location: Hanover, NH (onsite only)

Serves as the primary strategist and project leader for a portfolio of Dartmouth's strategic initiatives, including cross‑institutional priorities that span operations, capital planning, governance, policy, planning, and crisis management. Simultaneously acts as a strategic liaison and coordinator across other operational initiatives—such as housing, childcare, and energy transition—that have designated owners but require cross‑functional alignment. Reports directly to the Senior Vice President for Operations and Strategic Initiatives, translating senior leadership priorities into structured workplans, timelines, and deliverables.

Prepares board‑level materials, conducts policy research and financial analysis, and manages complex stakeholder processes that span academic, administrative, and governance constituencies. This role demands exceptional judgment, political acuity, and the ability to drive progress on sensitive institutional matters in a decentralized, consensus‑oriented environment.

• Owns the day‑to‑day planning, execution, and delivery of strategic initiatives that lack a dedicated departmental owner, including cross‑institutional priorities related to operations, capital planning, governance, institutional policy, investor responsibility, long‑range planning, and crisis management.
• Develops and maintains structured workplans, timelines, and accountability frameworks for each initiative, ensuring consistent forward progress and clear reporting to the SVP and Board of Trustees as needed.
• Conducts research, analysis, and benchmarking to inform institutional decision‑making on complex policy questions, producing white papers, briefing documents, and board‑ready presentations.
• Advances Dartmouth's thought leadership positioning in higher education by identifying emerging trends, drafting institutional responses, and coordinating with communications and government relations as appropriate.
• Manages the crisis management planning cycle, including scenario development, tabletop exercises, and maintenance of institutional response frameworks in coordination with relevant campus partners.
• Staffs and supports advisory committees and working groups as assigned by the SVP, preparing agendas, managing follow‑up, and ensuring that committee deliberations result in actionable recommendations.
• Tracks the broader landscape of strategic commitments across the division, identifying risks, interdependencies, and resource conflicts, and escalating issues to the SVP with recommended courses of action.
• Develops and manages initiative budgets, conducts financial analysis and modeling to support strategic decision‑making, and monitors expenditures to ensure fiscal accountability across assigned projects and programs.

• Serves as a strategic liaison to operational initiative owners (e.g., housing, childcare, energy transition), monitoring progress against institutional goals, identifying cross‑cutting dependencies, and facilitating coordination where initiatives intersect or compete for resources.
• Maintains a consolidated view of the division's strategic initiative portfolio, including status dashboards, milestone tracking, and regular briefings for the SVP that synthesize progress across both owned and coordinated initiatives.

• Builds and sustains productive working relationships with senior administrators, faculty leaders, deans, trustees, and external partners whose engagement is essential to advancing strategic initiatives.
• Navigates the complex governance and decision‑making structures of a research university, exercising political acuity and discretion when managing sensitive topics such as investment policy, institutional planning, and strategic positioning.
• Represents the SVP in meetings, committees, and working groups as delegated, ensuring continuity and consistent messaging across institutional conversations.
• Drafts executive communications, talking…