Program Recognition Lead; Remote

Program Recognition Lead (Remote)

Title: Program Recognition Lead
Department: Office of Strategy, Planning, and Learning
Reporting to: Senior Director, Strategy, Planning, and Learning
Compensation: $185K - $195K USD
Location: Remote - USA (Candidates based in the US only)

Who We Are:
World Education Services (WES) is a non-profit social enterprise that supports the educational, economic, and social inclusion of immigrants, refugees, and international students. For 50 years, WES has set the standard for international academic credential evaluation, supporting millions of people as they seek to achieve their academic and professional goals. Through decades of experience as a leader in global education, WES has developed a wide range of tools to pursue social impact m evaluating academic credentials to shaping policy, designing programs, and providing philanthropic funding, we partner with a diverse set of organizations, leaders, and networks to uplift individuals and drive systems change.

Together with its partners, WES enables people to learn, work, and thrive in new places. For more information about WES, please visit our website .org.

About the Opportunity:
This role will lead, manage, scale and evolve new business offerings as part of the WES strategic plan. The incumbent will utilize their skills in strategic thought-leadership, problem-solving, and product vision to develop products and management frameworks. This position will ensure that WES is effectively serving its customers in new ways and generate revenue sources to continue its mission. This role will manage a small team to fulfil the work required.

What You'll Do:

• Lead development and execution of a multi-year strategy to evolve the product opportunity and business model for WES Program Recognition.
• Steer initiatives across product, engineering, and partner teams - both with and without influence - to ensure the best product solution for our customers and WES.
• Define a differentiated business strategy positioning based on an understanding of the market including potential competitors, substitutes, and technology trends.
• Take an MVP (minimum viable product) strategy to validate hypotheses for opportunities in the business models and applications for WES Program Recognition.
• Assess business and technology trade-offs, find creative solutions, and define product and delivery objectives.
• Manage product P&L and budget.
• Continuously develop a deep understanding and empathy for WES Program Recognition current customers and potential new product users. Driving growth to 200 programs by the end of year one.
• Lead development and execution of a data-informed product roadmap of new and improved product features.
• Define pricing structures, licensing, and distribution mechanisms.
• Experience leading and managing a small team of direct reports (4-5) and cross-functional team resources to achieve goals.
• Collaborate with cross-functional resources to build and execute product launch and go-to market strategy, including defining relevant content, value propositions for typical use cases, distribution on applicable channels, and defining product line sales targets as well as countermeasures to address shortfalls.
• Communicate regularly with business unit leaders and other key business stakeholders to ensure overall product roadmaps align with strategic imperatives.
• Maintain a strong industry focus and support the assessment of external products to complement and drive product life cycles from ideation through delivery.
• Other duties as the product evolves.

Your

Experience:

Required

• Strong leadership experience in product, product management, strategy or operations, developing business objectives and driving towards business goals.
• Leadership and Product management experience in the education services industry or higher education industry is a plus, with an ability to drive business objectives through product development and a history of people management leading teams of product managers.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams and shared people resources.
• History of developing strong partnerships across large organizations in a highly collaborative environment that values challenging the status quo.
• Excellent communication skills with an ability to build compelling and successful strategic and development plans that resonate with stakeholders.
• Proven ability to grasp technical concepts quickly and identify key optimization opportunities, with a history of close collaboration with software engineering organizations to deliver against a shared vision and strategy.
• Data minded with an ability to drive product development roadmaps based on factual data driven conclusions.
• A passion for people leadership with a strong focus on colleague development and creating a collaborative and inclusive culture.
• Strong communication skills; sense of urgency; strong customer empathy; adaptive to change; continuous improvement mentality; self-starter.
• Proven ability to build and execute product roadmaps and…