College Board

Compensation

Full Description

Executive Director, Strategic Execution & Performance Insights College Board - Office of the CEO Location: This is a fully remote role. Candidates who live near CB offices have the option of being fully remote or hybrid (Tuesday and Wednesday in office). Type:This is a full-time position About the Team The Office of the CEO is a small, high-leverage enterprise team that operates at the center of the College Board, working directly with the CEO, President, and senior leaders to strengthen and accelerate mission impact. The Office of the CEO brings together executive leadership support and enterprise execution to ensure the organization moves in a coherent, disciplined, and aligned way-connecting strategy to action and enabling leaders to focus on what matters most for students. Within the Office of the CEO, the Strategic Execution & Performance Insights team serves as the execution and performance arm of the Offices of the CEO and President. The team owns the enterprise operating system the College Board uses to set priorities, execute strategy, and monitor progress. Through a deep understanding of mission metrics, organizational dynamics, and cross-divisional interdependencies, the team governs enterprise planning and performance frameworks, including strategic agendas, execution operating rhythms, performance dashboards, early-warning indicators, and quarterly learning cycles. By aligning leaders around a shared narrative, cadence, and set of expectations-and by modernizing the systems that support collaboration and decision-making-the team helps the College Board execute with focus, agility, and a relentless commitment to improving outcomes for students. About the Opportunity As the Executive Director, Strategic Execution & Performance Insights, you are accountable for the College Board's enterprise strategic execution cycle. Reporting to the Chief of Staff and working closely with the CEO, President, and senior leaders, you ensure that enterprise priorities translate into coordinated, cross-divisional execution through a clear annual and quarterly rhythm that aligns strategy, strategic initiatives, budgets, and staff goals. In this role, you design, lead, and continuously improve the operating system that enables senior leaders to engage meaningfully with execution progress, risks, and tradeoffs. You ensure high-priority initiatives are clearly defined, sequenced, resourced, and reviewed with explicit milestones, decision points, and ownership. When progress is at risk, you surface issues early, require corrective action, escalate misalignment, and drive timely decisions to restore momentum. You also ensure that performance insights are tightly integrated into execution reviews and decision-making. By synthesizing enterprise signals, external context, and emerging risks, you help leaders adapt strategy in real time-keeping the organization focused, aligned, and responsive as conditions change. This is not a role for a process purist. While you design and steward enterprise execution systems, you are expected to adapt them continuously-simplifying where possible, intervening selectively, and prioritizing speed, clarity, and learning over rigid adherence to process. Success in this role depends on judgment, agility, and the ability to respond effectively as conditions evolve. In this role, you will: Enterprise Strategic Execution & Operating Rhythm (30%) • Design and lead the enterprise execution rhythm that aligns enterprise priorities, initiatives, budgets, and goals • Adapt execution approaches as conditions change, rather than applying a fixed process uniformly • Apply the execution cycle selectively to a focused portfolio of enterprise priorities where intervention adds the most value • Use execution structures to accelerate momentum and decision-making, not to standardize activity for its own sake Mission Metrics, Enterprise Performance & Strategic Insight (25%) • Oversee mission metric strategies to ensure shared understanding of theories of action, leading indicators, and risk signals • Govern enterprise performance frameworks to support interpretation and action, not just reporting • Synthesize performance signals into concise, decision-oriented insights for senior leadership • Partner with Technology to ensure business intelligence investments answer strategic questions and surface early risk • Manage the Senior Director, Strategic Execution & Performance Insights, ensuring insights are tightly coupled to executive decision needs Leadership Engagement, Decision Support & Course Correction (25%) • Design executive forums that surface execution risks and tradeoffs requiring leadership judgment • Adjust review structures and inputs in real time to ensure leaders are focused on the right decisions at the right moment • Recommend corrective action based on evidence and judgment • Step in directly when enterprise priorities are at risk to restore momentum, simplify approaches, or reset expectations Enterprise Learning, Adaptation & Risk Management (10%) • Integrate learning, external context, and emerging risks into enterprise execution and strategy discussions • Identify when enterprise processes or routines are no longer serving their purpose and retire, redesign, or bypass them • Strengthen the organization's ability to adapt strategy based on evidence rather than anecdote Leadership & Team Management (10%) • Lead and develop a small, high-performing, remote enterprise team • Set clear expectations, priorities, and accountability within the team • Model enterprise thinking, disciplined execution, and candid truth-telling • Build trust and credibility with senior leaders across the organization About You You have: • 10+ years of senior leadership experience in enterprise strategy, execution, performance management, or transformation roles • A track record of translating strategy into results in complex, cross-divisional organizations • Demonstrated ability to exercise judgment and intervene effectively when execution is at risk, without relying on formal authority • Comfort operating in ambiguity and adapting approaches as conditions change, rather than defaulting to rigid processes • Experience designing execution systems that enable clarity, momentum, and learning-while knowing when to simplify or bypass them • Strong analytical and synthesis skills, with the ability to translate complex signals into clear, decision-ready insights • Experience working directly with senior executives and serving as a trusted, candid thought partner • A bias toward action, learning, and progress over procedural perfection • A commitment to improving outcomes for students • Ability to travel up to 20% All positions at College Board require: • A passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work • Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and a comfort learning and applying new digital tools independently and proactively. • Clear and concise communication skills, written and verbal • A learner's mindset and a commitment to growth: welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously improving through iterative learning and user input. • A drive for impact and excellence: solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing what matters most, and continuously improving through learning, user input, and external benchmarking. • A collaborative and empathetic approach: working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success. • Authorization to work in the United States About Our Process • Application review will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled • While the hiring process may vary, it generally includes: resume and application submission, recruiter phone/video screen, hiring manager interview, performance exercise, a panel interview, a conversation with leadership and reference checks. About Our Benefits and Compensation College Board offers a competitive benefits and compensation program that attracts top talent looking to make a difference in education. As a self-sustaining non-profit, we believe in compensating employees equitably in relation to each other, their qualifications, their impact, and the relevant market. The hiring range for a new employee in this position is $152,000 to $220,000. College Board differentiates salaries by location so where you live will narrow the portion of this range in which you can expect a salary. Your salary will be carefully determined based on your location, relevant experience, the external labor market, and the pay of College Board employees in similar roles. College Board strives to provide our best offer up front based on this criteria. Your salary is only one part of all that College Board offers, including but not limited to: • A comprehensive package designed to support the well-being of employees and their families and promote education. Our robust benefits package includes health, dental, and vision insurance, generous paid time off, paid parental leave, fertility benefits, pet insurance, tuition assistance, retirement benefits, and more • Recognition of exceptional performance through annual bonuses, salary growth over time through market increases, and opportunities for merit raises and promotions based on increased scope of responsibility • A job that matters, a team that cares, and a place to learn, innovate and thrive You can expect to have transparent conversations about benefits and compensation with our recruiters throughout your application process.