Senior Manager - Growth & Insights

Company Description

Walden

More than 50 years ago, Walden University was founded to support adult learners in achieving their academic goals and making a greater impact in their professions and communities. Students from across the U.S. and more than 115 countries are pursuing a certificate, bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degree online at Walden.

We offer more than 100 online degrees and certificate programs. Walden University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission (hlcommission.org). Visit WaldenU.edu for more information, and follow Walden on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

We operate on a hybrid schedule with four in-office days per week (Monday–Thursday). This approach enhances creativity, innovation, communication, and relationship-building, fostering a dynamic and collaborative work environment.

Job Description

Opportunity at a Glance
Reporting to the VP, Growth and Insights, the Senior Manager - Growth and Insights will partner with the University's enrollment, advising, and product management teams – as well as Covista's centralized marketing, customer experience, and workforce solutions teams to; 1) develop data-driven insights that can drive short and long-term strategies for growth, 2) support and lead high impact, cross-functional growth projects directly related to Walden's transformation and 3) conduct analysis to monitor and assess project/initiative performance. In this role, the Senior Manager  will be key in supporting the University. its executive team, and functional leaders in growing the institution and winning market share. The Senior Manager will partner with the team to help drive revenue, enrollment growth, market share, persistence, gross margin improvements and student outcomes. In addition, the Senior Manager will track and drive insights from leading indicators such as lead mix and volume, website performance, admissions conversion rates, cohort retention rates, student satisfaction, graduation rates, employment outcomes, and program profitability. The ideal candidate should be an individual who can think strategically while supporting and driving results. They will have strong analytical capabilities and the ability to drive insights and then drive action from those insights. This individual will have a strong understanding of digital education or a comparable industry. A bias towards action and speed of execution will be beneficial as it is imperative for the University to improve its competitiveness and drive growth.

Responsibilities

• The Senior Manager will have a broad set of responsibilities, including:

• Develop strategy for high-impact growth initiatives:
  • Take on a prioritized set of strategic growth opportunities for the institution.
  • Diligence these opportunities, considering sources of insight including, but not limited to, internal interviews, market-level data, and internal data.
  • Work with leaders and teams – including front-line colleagues – in the University’s enrollment, student success, and academic functions, to identify risks and opportunities associated with implementation, and to refine the assessment of the opportunities accordingly.  
  • Develop business cases and high-level implementation timelines for promising opportunities.
• Execute on prioritized opportunities:
  • For opportunities that pass strategic diligence, lead initial execution of initiatives in a nimble, agile way, convening, inspiring, and steering the efforts of relevant colleagues across WU departments and the relevant corporate Covista functions, including, e.g., IT, Data and Analytics, Marketing.  
  • Monitor execution success of in-flight opportunities with a combination of leading KPIs (e.g., user satisfaction with new tools or processes) and core outcomes (e.g., student persistence and completion).  
  • For initiatives that experience early implementation success, identify the proper permanent owner in the enterprise, and transition ownership effectively.
• Conduct analytics and deliver data-driven insights:
  • Refine and (where needed) develop a comprehensive set of dashboards to track performance against PY and targets – with a focus on developing and integrating a suite of cross-cutting (e.g., across marketing, enrollment, retention, academics) key institution-level views – and the “roll up/roll down” versions of these at the team and individual levels to drive coherent performance management (analogous to the “CompStat” system used in government agencies).  
  • Independently, or in collaboration with the