Partner, Journey Supports Systems & Operations

Start Date: Immediate
Role Type: Full-time
Reports to: Kirsten Dargis, Managing Partner
Team: Journey Supports Team

Location/Travel: Remote (U.S.-based); ~1-2 trips per quarter (6-8x / year)

Who We Are

Transcend is a national nonprofit that helps communities reimagine and redesign schools so every young person can thrive in a rapidly changing world. Across the country, communities are recognizing that classrooms built for the industrial age aren’t preparing learners for what’s next. Instead, schools must be designed for continuous evolution: relevant, resilient, and ready for the future. For more than a decade, Transcend has partnered with school and system leaders to build the capacity for bold, lasting change—change led by the people who live it every day. We’ve worked with nearly 500 schools and 200 districts serving over 225,000 students in 35 states. Together, we’ve seen what’s possible when communities lead redesign with proven methods, insight, and support. From that work, we develop and share tools, research, and models that help schools everywhere make the leap to extraordinary learning—for every child, in every community.

For more information, visit our website or follow us on LinkedIn.

The Opportunity

The Journey Supports Team (JST) builds the tools, resources, and learning experiences that make it possible for the school design coaches we call Design Partners to support communities through locally-driven, multi-year design journeys. On these journeys, schools form design teams made up of leaders, teachers, students, caregivers, and other community members to envision and build a new model of school that fits their community's needs and aspirations. The JST creates and curates the tools Design Partners need to lead that process well.

The JST sits within Transcend's Program team, alongside work focused on org foundations (the core concepts and frameworks that underlie all of our work), usable knowledge (the research and tools that inform the design choices communities make), and tech and innovation (the infrastructure that ties it all together).

The Journey Supports Team includes:

• 3-4 Design Journey Content Leads, each holding deep expertise in a particular part of the design journey
• 2 Builders who develop and refine the tools and experiences that make that expertise accessible and usable
• A Managing Partner who provides overall team leadership and direction

As Transcend grows its reach and deepens its impact, the JST's work is increasingly critical and complex. Alongside building strong products, the team must maintain coherence across a growing library of methods and materials, run clear systems for learning from use, and stay tightly coordinated with teammates across the organization. Holding the full picture of all of this work has become a job unto itself. This is where you come in.

As the Partner, Journey Supports Systems & Operations, you will serve as the Managing Partner's strategic and operational right hand. You will keep our systems running, our products coherent and findable, our team informed and coordinated, and our roadmap clear. You will represent the team in internal meetings, cross-team conversations, and senior leader touchpoints with the judgment, presence, and synthesis skills to help move decisions forward. This is an individual contributor role that sits at the center of how the team functions and delivers impact.

In This Role, You Will:

Support the Managing Partner in team strategy and coordination (~25%) You will work in close partnership with the Managing Partner to hold the full picture of team strategy, priorities, and cross-functional coordination, and show up as a credible representative of the team in key spaces.

• Co-hold the full view of the team's work and priorities: Partner with the Managing Partner to maintain a clear, shared understanding of everything the JST is working on, and facilitate the team's quarterly planning process to ensure clarity on priorities, sequencing, and tradeoffs.
• Track and communicate progress toward team goals: Define, monitor, and synthesize progress toward team goals and success metrics, and create materials (e.g., memos, slide decks, one-pagers) that communicate insights and decisions to teammates and senior leaders.
• Join key cross-team conversations: Accompany the Managing Partner in meetings with program leadership and other team leaders, helping to synthesize discussions and identify implications for the JST.
• Support alignment with partner teams: Coordinate and align JST systems with those of partner teams including Usable Knowledge, Design Partner Capacity Building, Business Development, and tech and platform functions.
• Communicate what we're building: Lead the JST's org-wide communications about what we've built and what's coming, including regular updates that keep teammates informed of our progress and priorities.

Manage our product roadmap and learning systems (~25%) You will maintain a clear picture of what the JST is building, ensure we are learning from how our materials are being used, and help the team make informed prioritization decisions. This means staying close to the work — joining project touchpoints, seeing how tools land in the field, and rolling up your sleeves to contribute directly when needed.

• Manage our central build list: While Content Leads and Builders own the build lists for their specific areas, you will ensure all lists are aligned and coherent with each other, and will maintain a central build list and product roadmap for materials that span across design journey areas.
• Build feedback loops to learn from use: Design and maintain systems that help us understand how our materials are actually performing in the field — listening closely to Design Partners and Project Leads, documenting what's working and what isn't, and translating those insights into concrete recommendations for the product roadmap.
• Stay connected to portfolio teams: Maintain a clear picture of which projects are working on which design journey areas, surface important artifacts and needs that emerge from their work, and identify implications for what the JST should be building or refining. Maintain a parking lot of ideas and needs to revisit in future cycles.

Manage our Methods Library and core platforms (~20%) Transcend's Methods Library in Notion is a critical resource for Design Partners and teammates across the org. You will ensure it stays current, accessible, and useful.

• Manage Notion as our Methods Library platform: Ensure all Transcend staff have access, coordinate with relevant operations teammates when someone onboards or offboards, and contribute to the strategy for how Notion integrates with the broader set of platforms in use across the organization.
• Keep the library current: Support Content Leads to ensure the Methods Library stays up-to-date, including owning and facilitating an annual "Spring Cleaning" process.
• Drive awareness and use: Share periodic org-wide updates to remind teammates of the resource, surface what's new, and ensure folks know how to access and navigate it.

Own and evolve our product infrastructure and standards (~10%) You will steward the systems and processes that keep the JST's library coherent, high-quality, and consistently applied, working closely with Builders and Content Leads.

• Ensure consistent application of our specs, templates, and visual identity: Keep our specifications, templates, and visual identity documented, findable, and consistently applied across the team's work, and ensure updates land everywhere they need to when things evolve.
• Steward our Materials Creation Process: Own and continuously improve the team's shared process for building new materials, so it is clear, lightweight, and actually used.

Tend to team operations and culture (~5%) You will ensure the team's day-to-day operations run smoothly and that the JST is a team where people thrive.

• Maintain team infrastructure: Own and update the team's charter, manage the team's meeting and Portfolio Pitstop calendar, and help tend to the health and connectedness of the team.
• Manage the team budget: Own the JST's budget tracking and management in coordination with the Managing Partner and the finance team.
• Lead planning and coordination for team retreats and events: Own all logistics for the JST's 1-2 annual in-person gatherings, including venue and hotel sourcing, travel coordination, food and materials planning, and day-of operations. Partner with the Managing Partner and other teammates to shape retreat agendas that reflect team needs and culture.
• Tend to the magic: Track and celebrate meaningful team milestones — birthdays, work anniversaries, personal achievements, and other moments worth marking — contributing to a team culture where people feel seen, valued, and connected to one another.

The remaining ~15% of this role's allocation is dedicated to org-wide collaboration, community-building spaces, and learning and development opportunities.

Who You Are

You are someone who gets satisfaction from making complex systems work smoothly and helping a team deliver its best. You are not looking for the spotlight: you are energized by being the person behind the scenes who makes everything run, and you take real pride in that. You are extraordinarily organized and detail-oriented, but you are not just an executor: you think ahead, spot problems before they surface, and bring a point of view to the work. You build trust quickly with the senior leader you support, with the teammates you coordinate, and with the broader collaborators who depend on your team's work. And you are driven by a deep belief that strong operational systems are what make it possible for the people closest to schools and communities to do their best work — and ultimately, for more young people to thrive.

What You Bring

• You share a deep commitment to Transcend's mission of transforming education and a passion for designing learning experiences where all students thrive.
• You show up with curiosity, care, and a drive to make meaningful change — living into Transcend's values through how you work, connect, and lead.
• You bring direct experience in K-12 schools, as a teacher or in a similar school-based role (required), with enough grounding in that world to have a real stake in making sure the tools and resources Design Partners and communities rely on are as strong as they can be.
• You have experience supporting schools through change processes as a coach or in a similar capacity at a school support organization or model provider (a plus).
• You bring experience in operations, coordination, or a chief-of-staff type role (required), with a track record of building systems, managing multiple workstreams, and supporting a senior leader or team to stay organized and moving forward.
• You have experience working on or alongside a program or product team (strongly preferred): you understand how organizations build, organize, and maintain a library of materials over time, including how to develop and manage a product roadmap, prioritize what gets built, and make it easy for others to find and use.
• You have strong project management skills: you can hold multiple workstreams, prioritize ruthlessly, and meet deadlines reliably, with detail-orientation and impeccable follow-through even when all the pieces aren't nailed down.
• You bring excellent written communication that is clear, concise, and always audience-aware, and an ability to synthesize across multiple streams and distill what matters into clear materials and decisions.
• You bring sound judgment and poise in complex situations, including the ability to represent the team credibly in rooms with senior leaders, and you communicate proactively: surfacing needs, flagging risks, and sharing updates before others have to ask.
• You can lead through influence rather than formal authority, galvanizing teammates around shared priorities and creating accountability without a top-down approach.
• You bring a warm, collegial presence and skill at building strong relationships across functions, including working in true support of a senior leader while remaining a trusted thought partner.
• You are coachable and growth-oriented, actively seeking feedback early and often and letting it shape your thinking and your work. You thrive in environments that are always evolving, and you see iteration, including on your own approach, as a strength rather than a setback.
• You are proficient with Google Suite (required) and Notion (strongly preferred); you have familiarity with AI tools and a drive to keep learning as they evolve (required).

Application & Hiring Process

We review applications on a rolling basis and are committed to a thoughtful and people-centered hiring experience that helps candidates feel what it’s like to work at Transcend. Here’s what you can expect if you are selected to move forward:

• Initial interview with the team via Zoom to learn more about your interest and experiences. A note on compensation: during your initial interview with the team, we will confirm your location and accompanying salary range. *More on how we determine this is below.
• Try-on activity to engage in a role-aligned exercise. This helps us get a sense of how you approach the work and gives you a feel for what the role might be like.
• Panel interview with Kirsten and other members of the Journey Supports Team where we'd debrief the try-on task and dig into additional elements of the role.
• Interview with Kirsten, where we'd take a deeper look at your skills and engage in some scenarios you are likely to encounter in the role.
• Final interview with Ross Lescano Lipstein, Chief Program Officer.
• Reference checks to learn more about your superpowers and working style.

Salary

As a national team, we apply a cost-of-labor adjustment by adjusting salaries into 3 geographical bands (geo-band) in order to offer competitive compensation for all employees across the US. These geo-bands help us tailor compensation appropriately based on the specific location of each teammate. Below are the three salary geo-bands for this role, and we will confirm the individual range for your location during this initial interview, if you move forward in the process.

• Geo Comp 1: Currently Includes: NYC metro area, CA Bay Area, Boston City, LA City, Washington, D.C, Seattle $105,000 - $135,000
• Geo Comp 2: Currently includes locations such as: San Diego; New Haven, CT; Ventura, CA $99,750 - $128,250
• Geo Comp 3: Currently Includes: Most other US locations $94,500 - $121,500

A Few Nuts & Bolts

We are an experienced team focused on extraordinary learning for all. We welcome candidates who are passionate about ensuring that all students thrive. We are also committed to providing our colleagues with a competitive benefits package and offer medical, dental, and vision coverage options, org-wide holidays, paid time off, paid parental leave, professional development opportunities, and fully remote work. We take pride in our collaborative environment, exceptional team, and shared commitment to principled, impactful work.

We look forward to learning more about you!