Director, Regional Success

Job Title: Director, Regional Success 

Team: Regional Success

Location: Hybrid in Chicago (IL), and Newark (NJ) 

Employment Type: Full-time

Start Date: ASAP

About Braven

Braven is a national nonprofit that prepares promising college students to secure a strong first opportunity after college graduation through a career-accelerating program.

We partner with higher education and employer partners to offer a life-changing experience that begins with a semester-long course for college students, followed by support that lasts through graduation.  

Together, our ambition is to help rebuild the middle class and revitalize the American Dream. 

To learn more, take a look at Braven’s Jobs Report.

About the Role

To achieve its goal of serving 80,000–100,000 Fellows over the next decade, Braven is hiring a Director, Regional Success, who will design and deliver strategic learning and enablement experiences that empower regional team members to succeed in their work with Fellows and partners. This role leads work across central and regional workstreams that impact the entire organization, ensuring that all deliverables and outcomes are standalone outputs that directly deliver to organizational goals. 

Reporting to the Senior Director of Regional Success, you will have strategic ownership of Braven’s Regional Success enablement program—equipping diverse regional roles, from Executive Directors to Operations Coordinators, with the tools, insights, and skills to excel. Your scope will include designing best-in-class hiring resources, leading comprehensive onboarding, serving as a Learning Management System administrator, defining and tracking enablement program KPIs, and delivering end-to-end training experiences that align with every stage of the course delivery journey.

As part of the Regional Success team, you will play a critical role in Braven’s internal service engine: a function dedicated to removing barriers, codifying best practices, and fostering the conditions necessary for regions to operate with excellence. By codifying and amplifying effective practices across sites, you will enable Braven to scale impact nationally while remaining responsive to local needs.

This role is on the Regional Success team and reports directly to the Senior Director, Regional Success.

What You’ll Do

Learning Strategy & Enablement (35%)

• Engage leaders in bidirectional consultation: communicate your strategic vision for enablement while soliciting their input and recommendations, ensuring that learning plans are both aligned to Braven’s organizational goals and responsive to staff development needs.
• Skillfully set strategy for projects or initiatives and lead projects or initiatives from end-to-end, overseeing the design, development, and execution of the comprehensive Learning and Design (L&D)experience for all regional roles.
• Conduct initial and ongoing needs assessments and skills gap analyses to recommend targeted interventions.
• Responsible for identifying improvements in and meaningfully influencing strategic direction for targeted implementation support for new regions during critical start-up and launch phases to ensure program fidelity and team readiness. 
• Collaborate with the team to evaluate current implementation tools and resources for new sites, identify areas of need, and develop new materials or updates to ensure regional teams have the necessary resources to deliver programs effectively.

Instructional Design & Content Development (30%)

• Create critical new processes and blended learning programs (workshops, eLearning, on-demand resources, simulations, assessments) for: 1) Annual all-regions Bootcamp, 2) Async fundamental courses, 3) End-to-end training arcs to support individual roles, 4) Regional Business Unit role alignment, job descriptions, and goal codification. 
• Maintain high-quality hiring and recruitment materials for regional roles to ensure consistent messaging and attract top talent. Maintain up-to-date staffing plans and role-specific playbooks that outline responsibilities, workflows, and best practices to guide regional team execution and support consistent program delivery.
• Create ad hoc material as necessary to support New Sites / Regions 
• Co-manage and maintain the Regional Success Resource Library in Confluence to ensure teams have access to timely, high-quality support content that interlocks with AI support bots. 
• Partner with subject matter experts across the organization to inform content creation, ensuring resources are timely, relevant, and sequenced for maximum impact.
• Collaborate with our Central L&D team to align on adult learning principles, shared Learning Management System administration, accessibility best practices, and any relevant style guides, creating impactful experiences that embody Braven’s culture.

Facilitation & Delivery (20%)

• Deliver accessible in-person and virtual training sessions that engage diverse audiences as needed.
• Travel to regions with limited capacity to provide hands-on coaching and execution support as determined by business needs and priorities.
• Solve complex problems independently and think through organizational impact, respond to emerging regional needs in real time, serving as a strategic thought partner and problem-solver.
• Oversee the operational backbone of program delivery (LMS, Zoom, etc.) to ensure a seamless experience, while serving as the point person to troubleshoot any technical issues for participants.
• Contribute actively to team learning and collaboration in a newly established function, operating with an appetite for innovation, ambiguity, and iteration

Enablement Program Ops Management & Evaluation (15%)

• Build cross-functional change management workflows and determine strategic cadences to publish updates that ensure all content remains a reliable source of truth over time.
• Monitor and assess regional health across an assigned portfolio, focusing on key areas; lead the coordination of foundational interventions to proactively address risks and ensure program fidelity and performance outcomes.
• Engage in a culture of curiosity and feedback gathering, surfacing challenges, and co-developing adaptive solutions with teammates and central partners.
• Triage ongoing communications and support with the Regional Success team and other central teams regarding technology tools, data management/reporting, implementation challenges related to operations, etc.

• Manage learning program lifecycles from planning to measurement, leveraging data, feedback, and KPIs to measure impact and improve effectiveness. 

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree
• 5-7 years of progressive experience in learning and development, internal enablement management, organizational effectiveness, or a related field 
• Demonstrated experience leading end-to-end learning and development initiatives using an LMS, including instructional design, curriculum development, and accessible program facilitation for diverse audiences
• Ability to travel to Braven’s regions 1- 2 times per quarter and for organizational-wide convenings 1-2 times per year. 

Preferred Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in leading and managing learning and development teams, including strategy development, program design, and implementation.
• Proven ability to develop and execute comprehensive learning and development strategies aligned with organizational goals and growth objectives.
• Expertise in adult learning principles, instructional design methodologies (e.g., ADDIE, SAM), and various learning modalities (e.g., e-learning, blended learning, in-person workshops).
• Familiarity with learning technologies (LMS, Articulate Rise, Storyline, Skilljar, Captivate, video editing) and proficiency in other tools such as Google Suite, Confluence, Lattice, Slack, and Jira.
• Advanced data fluency with a proven ability to analyze learning outcomes, measure program effectiveness, and leverage data to drive continuous improvement and demonstrate ROI of L&D initiatives.
• Exceptional project management, communication, and interpersonal skills, with a track record of successfully collaborating with senior leadership and cross-functional teams to drive L&D initiatives.
• Highly skilled at leading laterally across peer groups, teams, and occasionally external collaborators; demonstrated ability to drive peer alignment and collaboration; and skillfully leads cross-functional groups of varying levels of complexity and timelines.
• Strong attention to detail and diligence, especially in documentation, onboarding, and resource management; and a track record of strong customer service and stakeholder engagement, including responsiveness, professionalism, and relationship-building.
• Experience directly supporting externally-facing teams (e.g., educators, support professionals, sales, customer success, account management) and possesses a high level of specialized knowledge in a core function as well as cross-regional/cross-functional understanding.
• Demonstrated commitment to building strong and welcoming cultures that help to develop others; exemplification of Braven’s core values; and experience that has informed your belief in Braven’s mission and has prepared you to work with or for Braven’s student Fellow population.

Please know that no one ever meets 100% of the preferred qualifications. If much of this describes you, we encourage you to apply.

Work Demands

• Ability to work in person in either Chicago (IL), or Newark (NJ), 3 days per week
• Travel up to 3-4 times per semester to the Braven regions in your portfolio

Additional Requirements

• Authorized to work in the U.S.
• Braven doesn’t offer employment visa sponsorship

Application & Interview Process

While the interview process may vary slightly, the general process will be:

• Phone screen with a Talent Team member
• Performance Task
• Interview with Hiring Manager
• Panel Interview with Key Partners
• Reference Checks

Compensation and Benefits

Braven offers competitive base salaries based on the midpoint of the market among not-for-profit organizations of similar size, with opportunities for salary growth over time. We believe in compensating staff members fairly in relation to each other, their qualifications, and their impact on behalf of the organization, and take internal and external equity seriously. Given our commitment to equity, Braven does not negotiate salary offers; instead, each salary offer is determined carefully using external and internal benchmarking.

New hires can expect a starting salary at the beginning of the range to allow room for growth with performance, and so that Braven maintains internal equity. The salary ranges, by geographic market, for this role are set forth $83,600-$104,400 in Chicago, and $92,000-$114,900 in Newark. This is a full-time, regular, exempt, and benefits eligible position where you will be working at 100% capacity.  

Braven also provides competitive, comprehensive benefits, recognition, and career development. While Braven reserves the right to change benefits at any time, current benefits include: 

• Unlimited vacation time in addition to org-wide holidays and week-long shutdowns in July and the end of the calendar year (this is a minimum of 19 days per year)
• Braven supports your path to parenthood and beyond with $25,000 in lifetime Carrot benefits for fertility, family-building, and hormonal health
• Match of your 401K contribution up to 5% of your base annual salary, starting your first full month
• Coverage of 85% of health insurance premium for employee and dependents
• 12 weeks of paid parental leave
• A one-month paid sabbatical after 4 years on staff

Please note that Braven is firm in its compensation philosophy; therefore, only candidates who believe that our total rewards package matches what they are looking for in their next opportunity are encouraged to apply. 

Location

We gather in the office 3 days a week (Tuesday through Thursday) and work remotely 2 days a week (Monday and Friday). Therefore, this role requires teammates to live within commuting distance of one of our hubs: Chicago or Newark. We believe in the magic, connection, and collaboration that happens when people work together face-to-face, and we believe in giving people the flexibility to focus, balance personal priorities, and save themselves two commutes per week.

Braven is an equal opportunity employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected factor.  We encourage talented individuals of all backgrounds to apply.