VP, Strategic Insights and Business Operations

About Niche

Niche is the leader in school search. Our mission is to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. With in-depth profiles on every school and college in America, 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search tools, we help millions of people find the right school for them. We also help thousands of schools recruit more best-fit students, by highlighting what makes them great and making it easier to visit and apply.

Niche is all about finding where you belong, and that mission inspires how we operate every day. We want Niche to be a place where people truly enjoy working and can thrive professionally.

About The Role

The Vice President of Strategic Insights and Business Operations is a new leadership role reporting into the CFO with responsibilities spanning diverse functions, including: driving execution and oversight of the company’s business plan and strategic initiatives, assessing and managing both organic and inorganic business opportunities including acquisition, mergers, and JVs, and leading our internal Analytics team to derive critical and impactful insights from our data.

A natural “Analyst”, the Vice President of Strategic Insights and Business Operations will possess a solid understanding of capital markets, business casing and be excited to quickly weave opportunities into the company’s already ambitious Business Plan. 

What You Will Do

• Manage the strategic roadmap, planning calendar and relevant business oversight
  • Work with senior leaders to establish a comprehensive strategic roadmap and implement short and long-term objectives and initiatives to drive business results, and to provide fact-based thought leadership on key strategic and financial decisions
  • Quarterback the corporate strategic planning process – providing thought leadership, plan templates, market & business analysis, recommendations, and surrounding materials preparation with the support of the Finance team
  • Drive the company OKR process to set ambitious goals that will lead to continued growth and innovation
• Ensure execution against critical priorities
  • Develop the Business Case methodology – establish a standardized way for leadership to test new business initiatives that are candidate projects or programs including but not limited to: scorecard/benchmarking of initiatives, assessing project prioritization, and evaluating risk assessments
  • Execute key strategic priorities and projects in partnership with the Executive Leadership Team, and working with other functions and stakeholders as required
• Lead an insight driven Analytics team with wide ranging influence across the organization
  • Develop and execute data strategies that align with business objectives and drive actionable insights
  • Translate data insights into clear, actionable recommendations for stakeholders
  • Work closely with senior leadership, product, engineering, data science, marketing, sales and finance to optimize data solutions and foster cross-functional collaboration
• Maintain a market pulse and recommend significant events with both direct and indirect oversight of resulting transactions
  • Corporate Development - work with our investors and advisors to identify and pursue potential opportunities, while representing the organization during any part of the proposal process and lead the post-transaction integration process
  • Work closely with the Finance team on the business case process, investment analysis, analytics, scorecard/benchmarking of initiatives, cash flow modeling, and evaluating return. This analysis is used to prioritize initiatives, evaluate resource needs based upon a strategic business assessment

What We Are Looking For

• 10+ years of work experience acquired (ideally) at a top-tier consulting firm and/or in an internal strategy department for a high growth organization
• Bachelors degree, MBA preferred
• A successful track record in evaluating business and/or major strategic initiatives that have had a high impact on a high growth company.
• Direct responsibility within a prior acquisition, fundraise or major corporate transaction; understanding of P&L drivers
• Experienced in growing functions from the ground up and growing to teams of ~10+; exerts influence across broad array of senior stakeholders
• Fluent in negotiating trade offs between business domains and reconciling to solutions
• Has led strategic planning exercises for organizations of 300+; conversed in translating business objectives to line-level outcomes
• Expert ability to forecast the surrounding landscape an