Senior Advisor, Kindergarten Readiness (P4)

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Summary

Save the Children’s U.S. Programs (USP) division is committed to ensuring that all children in rural America have a healthy, strong foundation to thrive as learners and in life. Our contribution to a full cradle-to-career continuum is focused on the early years, birth through elementary school; and our goals are to increase kindergarten readiness and grade-level literacy and math proficiency for children in under-resourced rural communities. Save the Children does whatever it takes to be there for children in times of crisis. Always at the ready, we are among the first to respond and the last to leave, staying as long as it takes to help children and families recover from their losses, restore their lives, and build resilience for years to come.

We are seeking a Senior Advisor, Kindergarten Readiness. In this role, you will lead program design and innovations, support quality implementation, and successfully lead a team of national Advisors supporting our Kindergarten Readiness programming in rural America. The ideal candidate will have extensive content expertise in early learning, experience working in rural communities, and deep knowledge of effective practices for advancing early education outcomes for our youngest learners.

What You’ll Be Doing (Essential Duties)

Program Development & Design (35%)

• Serve as technical content expert, specializing in early childhood development and education within the national Program Design & Impact team; provide strategy development support, inform design of monitoring and evaluation plans, and provide oversight of kindergarten readiness programming, projects, and initiatives.
• Ensure early learning programs are culturally relevant, backed by research, are best practice, and effectively accelerate kindergarten readiness outcomes for children.
• Ensure program adaptations and alignment to community needs and insights; maintain continuous feedback loop between national, state, and local partners to match program offerings to identified needs.
• Develop new models, strategies, and resources to broaden impact and fill programmatic gaps within the early learning domain; ensure alignment to tiered strategic approach of balancing deep impact and broad reach.
• Stay abreast of field trends, engage in continued professional learning opportunities, and utilize program-specific data to inform program design, refinements, and to enhance results.
• Collaborate closely with key Program Design & Impact team leads to align, integrate and coordinate across programmatic areas; support seamless transition of supports and services from early childhood to and through school-aged education programming, and across community-based initiatives.
• Provide oversight and management functions to successfully lead functional team of kindergarten readiness-focused Advisors; ensure effective leadership practices, team cohesiveness, accountability, and performance.

Program Implementation (30%)

• Serve in a technical advisory and trainer capacity to support kindergarten readiness program implementation; work in collaboration with state-based leadership and program staff to ensure high quality implementation of programs, practices, and strategies across rural communities.
• Lead development and support delivery of trainings, resources, and technical assistance to build programmatic competencies of state-level staff, regional and national partners, focused on direct programs and general content to a broad audience of key rural stakeholders; liaise with Training & Integrated Services team to support Training & Technical Assistance (TTA) strategy development and delivery.
• Collaborate with MERL team to support evaluation planning, tools, and subsequent data collection, analysis, goal setting and reporting for kindergarten readiness programming; monitor technical quality of implementation ensuring programs are on track to meet key metrics (child outcome measures, reach expectations, other grant deliverables).
• Promote best practices and ongoing learning through community of practices, standing TA, and increased awareness of and access to professional development opportunities.
• Work alongside state teams, state educational agencies (SEAs), and various community partners to innovate and adapt approaches, align strategies, and meet common goals.
• Collaborate with national and state team leadership to solve complex challenges and identify innovative solutions; thought partner with state leadership to troubleshoot/deploy direct reports when state-based staff vacancies, expansive start-up, and other complex situations arise.
• Develop content-specific onboarding processes for associated kindergarten readiness staff, support recruitment and onboarding on an ongoing basis.

Operational Excellence (35%)

• Train, develop, coach, lead, and supervise staff, clearly communicating organization, division, and department priorities, and how their work contributes to our mission, ensuring that the working environment continually fosters diversity, inclusion, and belonging – supporting Save the Children values.
• Provide inputs to develop annual kindergarten readiness budget and strategic plan.
• Prioritize cross-team collaboration across various functional units within USP and the agency, including resource development, MCF, operations, partnership development, PAC/SCAN.
• Work directly with fundraising colleagues on an ongoing basis, within both private and public teams, to support program growth, donor relations and communication, development of fundraising toolkits, and proposal development.
• Support the development and execution of communication and media strategies to increase program visibility and thought leadership through external communications, presentations, and other related activities.
• Foster collaboration between technical advisor teams and field implementation teams; ensuring strategic approach is effective and in alignment with best practice and local contexts/needs.
• Cultivate and manage external partnerships, consultants and vendors supporting kindergarten readiness programming, in coordination with USP partnership development team as applicable.
• Work in partnership with PAC/SCAN colleagues to align program to policy steers, provide case studies and impact stories, raise awareness of rural issues, and provide general collaborative support for early childhood policy and advocacy efforts.
• Ensure that Save the Children is safe for children by promoting awareness and prevention to mitigate the risk of, or actual, harm that may come to children by representatives across all programming, operations, campaigns, and activities.
• Plan, monitor and manage overall team operations, overseeing project planning, budgeting, and spending, grant management, and staff resourcing.
• Responsible for establishing a healthy workplace culture and setting the team pace and direction; promoting staff development, engagement and well-being while holding supervisors and staff accountable for achieving results, demonstrating the organization’s core values, and operating within our ethical standards.

Required Qualifications

• Minimum of a Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience, plus at least 7 years of relevant experience
• Experience with Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) home visiting programming and evaluation.
• Professional proficiency in MS Office suite
• Professional proficiency in spoken and written English
• Demonstrated ability to communicate and collaborate effectively with individuals and teams at all levels, both internally and externally
• Demonstrated commitment to fostering and maintaining and environment of diversity, inclusion, and belonging.
• Demonstrated ability to engage, and comfort working with, a wide range of stakeholders including advisory groups, coalitions, forums, foundations, high-level donors, corporate sponsors, and practitioner groups.
• Strong working knowledge of kindergarten readiness practices and policies at the local, state, and federal levels
• Experience developing funding proposals and reports for grants, foundations, private donors and public funders.
• Professional proficiency in spoken and written English.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate and collaborate effectively with individuals and teams at all levels, both internally and externally.
• Demonstrated commitment to fostering and maintaining and environment of diversity, inclusion, and belonging.
• Ability to travel regionally and nationally up to 25% of the time.

Preferred Qualifications

• Professional proficiency in spoken and written Spanish

Compensation

Save the Children is offering the following salary ranges for this position, dependent on candidate location:

• Geo 1 - NY Metro, DC, and other locations with labor costs significantly above national average: Target Salary for this position is $108,800 – $121,600 base salary
• Geo 2 - Locations around the US National Labor Cost Average: Target Salary for this position is $98,600 – $110,200 base salary
• Geo 3 - Locations significantly below the US National Labor Cost Average: Target Salary for this position is $88,400 – $98,800 base salary

The salary ranges listed above are for US based candidates. For candidates located outside of the US, salary ranges will be based on the salary scales of the local employer of record.

Actual base salary may vary based upon, but not limited to, relevant experience, base salary of internal peers, business sector, and geographic location (more information on job structure is available here). Employee may be eligible for an incentive program. Save the Children also offers paid vacation, accrued at least 12 days a year, depending on paygrade and length of service, paid safety and wellness leave of at least 1 day per month worked for a full-time employee which is pro rata reduced for employees working less than a full time schedule, and at least 10 paid holidays a year. Employees may be eligible for additional bonus compensation. Save the Children US also offers outstanding benefits that include health, dental, vision and life insurances, short-term and long-term disability coverage, an Employee Assistance Program, a retirement savings plan with employer contribution, family leave, paid parental/adoption leave of 60 days, commuter benefits, paid caregiver leave days, 1 paid volunteer day a year, paid critical child illness leave days, dress for your day, and much more.

Why you should join the Save the Children Team…

Save the Children US offers outstanding benefits that include health, dental, vision and life insurances, short-term and long-term disability coverage, an Employee Assistance Program, 403(b), generous vacation, personal sick leave, family leave, parental/adoption leave, commuter benefits, dress for your day, and much more.

Click here to learn more about how Save the Children US will invest in YOU!

About Save the Children

No matter your role, when you join Save the Children, each and every day you will challenge yourself to devote your skills, talent and expertise to changing the world for kids. It’s an ambitious goal, and a meaningful one no matter how you see yourself professionally: an accountant, a writer, a data analyst, a teacher, a driver, a designer, or any one of the hundreds of dozens of roles we’re looking to fill every day.

You see, Save the Children believes every child deserves a future. In the United States and around the world, we give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. We do whatever it takes for children – every day and in times of crisis – transforming their lives and the future we share.

Our work for children and their families requires that we commit—at every opportunity—to work together to identify and dismantle persistent systemic and structural racism, inequality, and any other forms of discrimination in this country and beyond. As an anti-racist organization, Save the Children will not tolerate discrimination in any form—in our employment practices, amongst our staff, in our leadership or toward the people we serve. We stand in solidarity with all people to fight for equal rights, justice, inclusion, and belonging.

We provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, ancestry, sexual orientation, national origin, age, handicap, disability, marital status, or status as a veteran. Save the Children complies with all applicable laws.

Save the Children is committed to conducting its programs and operations in a manner that is safe for the children it serves and helping protect the children with whom we are in contact. All Save the Children representatives are explicitly prohibited from engaging in any activity that may result in any kind of child abuse. In addition, it is Save the Children’s policy to create and proactively maintain an environment that aims to prevent and deter any actions and omissions, whether deliberate or inadvertent, that place children at the risk of any kind of child abuse. Allour representatives are expected to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with this commitment and obligation.

Save the Children is committed to minimizing safety and security risks for our valued employees, ensuring all are given training, support, and information to reduce their risk exposure while maximizing the impact of our programs for children and families. Our shared duty, both agency and individual, is to seek and maintain safe working conditions for all.