Senior Associate, Community Outreach

Senior Associate, Community Outreach

Achievement First (AF) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization supporting 41 public charter schools across New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. For more than 25 years, AF has been recognized as one of the top tuition-free public charter school networks in the country. We are committed to creating schools of academic excellence within nurturing environments — schools that prepare students to be college-ready and to pursue and succeed in whatever paths they choose in life.

The majority of AF students are Black and Latinx children from low-income families, many of whom will be the first in their families to graduate from college. Across our network, we employ more than 2,200 staff members — 64% of whom identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color — who collectively educate nearly 15,000 students in Brooklyn and Queens, NY;
New Haven, Bridgeport, and Hartford, CT; and Providence and Cranston, RI.

Our mission is to prepare every student to excel in college, career, and life; deepen their understanding of self and community; and lead lives of purpose. We believe in the limitless potential within our students and their power to shape a more just society. That belief drives our deep commitment to student achievement: we aim to set a high bar for learning and create warm, demanding classrooms where rigorous instruction is paired with the care, encouragement, and consistency every student deserves.

We are looking for a strategic and dynamic Senior Associate, Community Outreach to join our Student Recruitment and Enrollment team.

Achievement First seeks a Senior Associate, Community Outreach to drive outreach and recruitment efforts for our Connecticut schools and help keep families engaged in the AF community long after they enroll. Acting as a key liaison between Achievement First schools and the local community, this person will build strong partnerships with neighborhood institutions and prospective families, and will support families through the full arc of their journey from first awareness of AF, through application and enrollment, to persistence and matriculation in later grades.

This is a goal-driven, metrics-accountable role: the Senior Associate is responsible for hitting specific enrollment targets each cycle and is expected to bring real rigor, urgency, and follow-through to that work. Success requires strong organization and follow-through (keeping a multi-month recruitment campaign on track against milestones and deadlines), sharp data analysis (using enrollment and pipeline data to know where to focus effort and what's working), and excellent communication and stakeholder engagement (building trust with families, community organizations, and school leaders, and bringing them along as true partners in AF's mission).

Responsibilities of the Senior Associate, Community Outreach will include, but are not limited to:

• Manage relationships with a portfolio of community organizations, daycares/early childhood centers, schools, and community leaders across the neighborhoods where we serve our students, through regular, structured touchpoints.
• Coordinate and represent Achievement First's Connecticut schools at external events, presentations, and school visits, and plan and execute AF's own recruitment events end to end.
• Conduct outreach to school leadership through one-on-one meetings and site visits, building genuine enrollment buy-in — not just transactional contact.
• Try out and refine outreach approaches, in partnership with the Director of Student Recruitment, based on where families are, what they need, and what has worked before.
• Cultivate long-term relationships with school counselors and local…