Site Director

About College Track

College Track is a comprehensive college completion program that empowers students from underserved communities to graduate from college. From ninth grade through college graduation, our 10-year program removes the academic, financial, and social-emotionalbarriers that prevent low-income and first-generation students from earning their college degree. In 1997, we started with 25 students in East Palo Alto, and today, we have 12 centers located in underserved communities across California, Colorado, Louisiana, and the D.C. Metro Area with more than 3,000 students on the path to upward social mobility. To learn more, please visit www.collegetrack.org.

Our Impact

College Track students graduate from college at a rate that is more than double the national average for low-income and first-generation students. Six months out of college, 79% of College Track alumni are employed. For those 30 and over, 92% report earnings greater than their parents with wages on par with the national average. By helping our students maximize the value of their four-year college degree, which includes minimizing student loan debt, securing internships, and limiting the need to work while in college--we prepare them to succeed in the 21st century economy.

Our Values

At College Track, our values drive the way we do our work, and we look for individuals who share our passion. We blend an entrepreneurial spirit with our nonprofit roots, cultivating a dynamic culture where everyone's contributions are valued and encouraged.

 

• COMMITMENT: We have an unwavering belief in our students.

• PASSION: We are dedicated to changing our nation’s college completion story.

• JOY: We create environments rich with smiles and laughter.

• AUTHENTICITY: We believe relationships matter.

• EXCELLENCE: Our students deserve nothing but the best.

Position Overview

Site Directors are inspiring, visionary, and highly relational leaders. Their expertise combines the capacity to engage and connect across a wide range of internal and external stakeholders, with the instincts, authenticity, and gravitas to gain their trust and confidence. As practiced leaders, Site Directors drive results by holding and articulating an organization-wide vision, and tying it in a meaningful way to the aspirations, realities, and desired outcomes of a local site and community. They have a propensity for planning and managing competing priorities, and proven ability to marshal team members and resources and develop productive partnerships. They are equally adept at vision setting, operations, finance, and coaching. Site Directors are conduits to the national organization, carrying knowledge, tools, messages, mandates, and insights across channels, promoting mutual understanding and cohesion. While the Site Director role differs some by site and situation, its inhabitants are universally tenacious, agile, and adaptable, with unshakeable resolve and relentless commitment to strong student outcomes. 

 

Primary Responsibilities 

• Site Vision and Culture: Set a powerful vision for student achievement. Inspire the commitment and collaboration of others towards the shared vision, and ensure the alignment of all decisions with that vision. Build a strong and enduring site culture based on mission, vision, and organizational values. 
• Staff Management: Recruit, lead, manage, and develop a site team of full-time and part-time employees (paid and volunteer) to ensure the overall success of students. Build a collaborative, cross-functional team of individuals committed to achieving excellence and meeting site and organizational goals. Establish role clarity and shared expectations about distribution of responsibilities, prioritizing based on student, site, and organizational needs.
• General Site Management: Identify and support site specific needs related to location or site type (start-up, established, transitioning). Develop and execute site-responsive plans that allow site to achieve desired goals and outcomes for students. 
• Student Recruitment and Enrollment: Build relationships with partner middle schools/high schools to ensure a robust applicant pool representative of College Track’s mission and reflective of organizational goals. Develop strategic plan for recruitment and selection process, and set benchmarks. Lead the application collection, selection, and communication process. Develop a contingency plan to backfill enrollees.
• Family Engagement: Develop strategy and create the conditions for authentic family engagement by team members. Support team to build deep trust and cultivate productive partnerships with families to maximize student achievement.
• Individual Student Planning and Monitoring: Work with site staff to assess student data continuously, manage student dismissal and discipline and ensure that at least 90% of students matriculate to a four-year college and 70% graduate from college within six years despite obstacles.
• School and Community Partnerships: Develop and formalize partnerships with organizations and partner schools on behalf of the site. Manage relationships and collaborate with key stakeholders of partner schools on student recruitment and intervention efforts.  Together with the regional team, steward partnerships with community based organizations, local colleges, corporations, individuals, and districts, that result in additional resources for our students and improvements to our program model. Be abreast and active in emerging trends and practices within the high school, college, and community landscape.
• Fiscal Management, Fundraising and Development: Develop and manage budget. Work in collaboration with the College Track development team, as the external leader of the site, to execute development activities that support long-term sustainability. 
• Organization-wide Leadership: Participate as a member of the Regional Leadership and Strategy Teams, and liaise between site, regional, and national teams to support organizational cohesion.
• Team Leadership and Management: Manage and coach team on growth & development of key competencies to ensure team and individual success on individual goals & development.

 

Highest Priority Competencies

• Vision: Co-creates a clear, inspiring vision. Invests others in it by helping them connect the vision to both daily work and long-term impact in a way that creates momentum and shared commitment to action.
• Build Teams: Cultivates talent and assembles strong teams. Assigns work in a way that maximizes an individual’s assets and builds their leadership capabilities over time. Provides the right level of team support, tailored to the needs of individual team members.
• Set Goals, Plan and Achieve Results: Clearly sets high expectations and holds others accountable. Identifies a manageable set of goals and progress indicators; creates monitors, and adjusts plans based on data. Proactively flags and mitigates risk, identifies root causes for challenges, and effectively problem solves. Focuses effort and resources on meeting those goals and takes responsibility for outcomes.
• Resolve: Focuses on delivering outcomes despite obstacles. Takes setbacks in stride. sees challenges as opportunities to grow. Can galvanize oneself and others towards goals and impact. 

 

Additional Skills, Experience and Characteristics Required

• Ideally 7-10 years of experience building or managing a complex, youth-serving project, program, or organization leading students to breakthrough results, including 5 years leading teams
• Track record of creating the conditions for high performance and talent retention by fostering a results-oriented, productive, diverse, equitable and inclusive team and culture of support, mutual-accountability, and impact  
• Ability to oversee effective delivery of College Track’s core work, partnering with the regional and national teams to achieve goals
• Success building relationships and communicating in a way that fosters trust, values differences, and furthers College Track’s mission
• Experience proactively driving healthy change by taking initiative, and applying both an operational and programmatic lens, to improve systems and program delivery
• High degree of flexibility and adaptability; can work within and drive decisions in the face of ambiguity and an ambitious, fast-moving environment; helps team move towards clarity and solutions
• Unwavering belief in the potential of students in setting high expectations 
• Spanish language fluency (preferred)
• Minimum 4-year college degree (Master’s Degree preferred)
• Connection to the local community in which the site is situated is preferred, but not required
• Valid driver’s license and clean driving record required and ability to pass College Track’s drivers clearance process

 

Reporting Relationships

Site Directions report to Regional Executive Directors. The number of direct reports varies by site maturity and location, and generally includes one or more full time staff and a team of part-time paid staff and volunteers.

Compensation & Benefits

College Track offers a competitive salary based on the organization’s compensation philosophy, which is grounded in market data. We also offer comprehensive health & welfare benefits and top of the market paid time off. 

To Apply

Please upload a PDF resume and cover letter with your application. We will only contact candidates chosen for further consideration. No phone inquiries please.  

 

  

College Track works to remove barriers for first generation college students on their journey to college completion. Our commitment to removing barriers for first generation college students doesn't stop when college ends. While we hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, we especially encourage applicants who identify as first-generation college graduates to apply for open opportunities on staff.

College Track is an equal opportunity employer fully committed to achieving a diverse workforce. College Track does not discriminate on the basis of race, age, color, religion, national origin or ancestry, sex, gender, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.