Manager of Family Communications

Position Summary:

The Manager of Family Communications is responsible for coordination, planning, implementation and follow-up of all OBL communications to our enrolled families. Gathering requirements and input from relevant department (including Enrollment, Family Support, Learning Coach Support, Program Management, and Product Management), this role will enhance the family experience in our schools by delivering the right communication at the right time via the right channel, ensuring that our messaging is always coherent, digestible, action-oriented, and consistent with our brand identity and value of customer-centricity.

To succeed in this role, you will be an impeccable communicator with distinctive process management skills, you will be comfortable proactively engaging across functional and departmental boundaries, and thrive in a setting with a high level of independence and accountability. You will be able to develop responses to urgent circumstances (e.g., changes in state policy) with high quality and tight timelines, while also developing and maintaining a long-term communications roadmap aligned with all planned developments during the coming academic year.

This position will report to the VP of Student Success. The Student Success Team is a new team at OBL, having been launched in late Q1 of 2020, and this role represents an opportunity for an entrepreneurial team member to formalize a function that has been significantly enhanced through the intense effort of several colleagues, but which now needs a full time owner to transition to steady state.

Specific Responsibilities include:

• Drafting and / or editing content based on requirements and input from other teams (e.g., Product Management, Family Support, Learning Coach Support, etc.) 
• Co-ordinating with the Brand team to ensure that the draft is voiced / positioned appropriately 
• Co-ordinate with Product Management to pull the recipient lists based on instructions from the business owner of the communication 
• Co-ordinating with outbound channel SMEs to distribute the messages with appropriate visuals, packaging, and customer experience 
• Defining and implementing a holistic Family Communications strategy and operating plan for routine communications (e.g., the annual “Intent to Return” process) 
• Re-imagining the Intent to Return process for families onboarded this academic year into our new Learning Management System

Requirements:

• Bachelor or Master’s Degree required 
• Minimum of 3 years of experience with responsibility for public facing or external stakeholder communications 
• Minimum of 2 years of direct experience working in K-12 or Higher Education 
• Demonstrated ability to craft thoughtful, actionable, customer-centric communications under time-sensitive conditions 
• Demonstrated ability to craft and execute a holistic communications strategy / plan 
• Experience leading through influence and collaboration in a highly cross-functional environment 
• Constructive, development-oriented mindset, that prioritizes outcomes over ego 
• This is a remote role with limited travel and none required for eligibility 
• Applications without a cover letter will not be considered

Key Capabilities:

• Impeccable Communications – ability to write clear, concise, action-oriented communications with speed, accuracy, and attention to detail 
• Independence and Process Management – seamlessly plans and executes amidst the complexity of 40 schools in 20 states with different regulations and academic calendars, many of which are in the midst of a transition to modernized learning management systems and curricula, while others will transition over the next couple of years. 
• Collaboration and cross-functional competency – solves problems with peers, builds trust and support, skillfully navigates a complex matrix structure 
• Customer-orientation – relentlessly focuses on what will be best for our students, families, and schools, and advocates for these stakeholders in designing and implementing initiatives 
• Development-orientation – sees each experience as a learning opportunity, reflects on and learns from mistakes, and seeks and offers open and constructive feedback from colleagues within and beyond their reporting line 
• Ownership and accountability – takes initiative, sets a high bar for self and others, and considers themselves responsible not just for activity (doing what was agreed) but also for outcomes (getting where we wanted to go).