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Executive Director

Employer
Teach For America
Location
Rapid City
Salary
Competitive

View more

Industry
Education
Role
Executive
Job Type
Long-Term
Hours
Full Time

We are seeking our next Executive Director to lead the region. We work each day to ensure all students across the communities where we work have access to opportunities that will enable them to pursue choice-filled lives. Our incoming leader will work shoulder-to-shoulder with existing champions and enlist new advocates - including our corps members, parents, students, community leaders, donors, and elected officials - as partners in the success of all children. They must work to build deep relationships and coalitions across the community, and demonstrate a true commitment to authentic educational equity. The next leader will be leading a strong and accomplished regional team but at a dynamic time, where we will also live more fully into our next 10-year organizational strategy, as we continue to navigate a global pandemic. The new ED's mission is to define the unique and evolving role that must play to accelerate educational opportunity for all.

Primary Responsibilities

Our new Executive Director (ED) will deeply believe in our vision - that every child has the chance to attain an excellent education. The next ED will lead our staff team, engage and inspire our community through the following core activities:

  • Working with internal and external stakeholders to co-create the vision for (staff, corps members, board, alumni, families, community, etc.): Once established, the ED will execute what work will look like in the region and lead a team successfully to realize that vision.
  • Expanding, evolving and sustaining fundraising base: Our ED is currently charged with raising around $1 million annually, and determining the strategy to get there.
  • Leading a strong team and strengthening the broader community: Our ED will lead a team of 7 staff members. In addition, our ED is charged with ensuring that the region has a thriving corps, alumni, and staff culture, as well as strong student outcomes in corps member classrooms.
  • Ensuring the organization is part of a broad and diverse coalition for change: The ED will mobilize the education ecosystem - ensuring that our corps (over 30 CMs) and alumni are represented and engaging in coalitions that are fighting on behalf of our students and families in the South Dakota community.

Experience and Competencies

  • 8-10 years of professional experience, at least part of which includes successful experience managing and leading high performing teams to outcomes, and doing so with a focus on examining race, class and power structures
  • Professional experience rooted in the mission and values: this may include but is not limited to: a current or former staff member, a alum, a non-profit or school leader, a local organizer or advocacy leader directly involved or adjacent to education and issues impacting the communities we work alongside.
  • Experience leading successful fundraising campaigns or curiosity around how to learn and do this well, with a baseline of developing deep and influential relationships with current and prior stakeholders in your work, mobilizing them in some way to create champions in your work
  • Outstanding interpersonal skills and an ability and desire to develop and maintain deep relationships with a variety of diverse constituents
  • Understanding of the complexity of the local environment and partnerships that impact and an orientation to continuing to learn more

Personal Characteristics

  • Excellent judgment and sound decision-making skills
  • Strong strategic thinking skills to understand and lead in a complex environment, translating a strategy into something clear and accessible for multiple audiences
  • Practice and be able to speak to their own pursuit of anti-racist leadership and anti-racist management

Strong Manager:

  • Drives outcomes alongside and through the members of their team
  • Attracts, hires, and develops a team of diverse and talented staff members
  • Ensures that the proper infrastructure exists to maximize performance of all people and resources, creating an environment that fosters diversity and inclusiveness
  • Builds and maintains a culture that is grounded in our core values of transformational change, leadership, team, diversity, and respect and humility
  • Exemplifies our core values in all actions with internal and external constituents
  • Assesses and balances the region's short and long-term priorities with organizational benchmarks for achieving our mission, which include: 1) a connected, inclusive, supported, thriving community of corps members, alumni, and staff contributing to a powerful movement; 2) corps members, alumni, and staff who consistently have a strong impact for kids - both inside and outside the classroom; 3) a large, diverse, and influential force of corps members and alumni working for educational equity and excellence

Relationship Builder:

  • Elevates the performance, engagement, and genius in others
  • Identifies diverse critical partners with whom to align and build relationships across multiple levels
  • Participates in community coalitions advancing shared aims - and seeks to build new ones
  • Displays appropriate openness, vulnerability, and self-disclosure while also engendering confidence
  • Leverages diverse relationships/networks to identify or create opportunities to benefit Teach For America, our mission, and the broader local movement

Strong Decision Maker:

  • Views situations through multiple lenses to weigh options and consequences; seeks input of diverse audiences and thought leaders in the community
  • Accurately discerns problems with solutions vs. dilemmas/polarities that have to be managed and adjusts approach accordingly
  • Leads with integrity in ambiguous situations
  • Constructs decision-making processes to engage multiple perspectives (manager, direct reports, team members, external constituents, community, board members, etc.) at the appropriate times to move work forward productively and efficiently

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