Director, Qualitative Research & Insights | Research, Data Insights Team

Job Description

About Good Reason Houston

Good Reason Houston exists to create a future where every child in every neighborhood of Houston has access to a world class public education that prepares them to thrive in the Houston of tomorrow. We believe that all Houston students deserve an excellent education, and work to reshape the Houston education landscape by inspiring hope, possibility, and action as we work towards our mission of growing the number of students learning in great public schools.

Good Reason Houston builds awareness of, advocates for, and advises school systems on measures aimed to improve the quality of education available to all. Today the organization partners with 25 public school systems that collectively serve 700,000 students across 900 public schools in the Houston region. We seek to cultivate a shared regional vision for educational quality, to build the capacity for change required within districts and the greater Houston community, and to foster collective ownership to support student-level results for kids across our city.

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Good Reason Houston is seeking a leader to serve as the Director, Qualitative Research & Insights. This role is essential in driving the organization's mission to advance Houston as a leading education city through the production and strategic use of data, research, and evaluation. The Director leads the production of high-quality, timely, relevant and rigorous qualitative research and data analysis that can be shared across stakeholders, including policymakers, school district leaders, and community members, to accelerate and amplify our impact.

This experienced professional collaborates across the organization to augment quantitative analyses and program evaluation with insightful qualitative storytelling to illuminate the context behind the numbers.

This is a leadership role on Good Reason Houston’s growing Research, Data, and Impact team and is considered a thought leader and strategic advisor across the organization. The Director will manage and execute an organization-wide research agenda by refining research questions and orchestrating data collection, analysis, visualization and meaning-making to inform our internal strategy and external messages. The Director, Qualitative Research & Insights will create systems and build team capacity to ensure our analyses are accurate, efficient, and accessible.

In addition, this role will help departments develop strategies for systematic collection and analysis of qualitative data. This role reports to the Managing Director, Research, Data, and Impact and works cross-functionally to support data needs across divisions.

• Manage capacity (staff and contractors) to conduct recurring and ad hoc qualitative data analysis that maximize Good Reason Houston’s impact and aligns with strategic and external affairs objectives.
• Lead planning and execution of a portfolio of research projects with a significant qualitative analysis component, including refining research questions, developing and codifying research methods, accessing and/or collecting data, analyzing data, surfacing insights, and creating visualizations, presentations, and reports on the research findings.
• Collaborate with the Director, Quantitative Research & Data Analytics and Director, Regional Impact & Evaluation on integration of qualitative and quantitative research and findings and creation of mixed methods studies.
• Ensure timely and accurate delivery of initial and final findings from research projects.
• Collaborate with cross-functional division leaders and team and external partners to develop appropriate research questions and data collection instruments, and coordinate research activities and dissemination.
• Serve as lead consultant on publicly available state- and national- data sources on education as well as data requirements and access to support development of organization-wide research agenda.
• Build staff capacity to interpret and leverage data by developing and facilitating training and workshops, providing small…