Senior Director, Product Strategy Lead – Career Labs

OVERVIEW: 

Year Up United is seeking a strategic, innovative, and adaptable Senior Director, Product Strategy Lead – Career Labs. Reporting to the Managing Director, Talent Networks, the Senior Director will own the strategy, packaging and continued rollout of Career Labs. Career Labs is Year Up United’s essential skills curriculum product developed to enhance career readiness of talent through external partnerships. Career Labs is Year Up United’s fastest growing product, with potential to reach tens of thousands of young people in communities across the country through four primary customer segments: K-12, Community Colleges, Community Based Organizations, and Employers. The curriculum is backed by Year Up United’s proprietary teaching methodology and content that has served over 40,000 Opportunity Talent as part of our evidence-based model. Maximizing the potential of Career Labs will require new & innovative thinking, extensive partnership development, effective change management, and a nose for operational effectiveness, top skills embodied by members of the Talent Networks team, Year Up United’s innovation arm.

In keeping with Year Up United’s values, the Senior Director will also have the opportunity to interact with students as a mentor, group facilitator, and advocate, participating in building a positive educational environment. 

The location for this role is flexible and is open to candidates in any state where Year Up United operates (https://www.yearup.org/locations). 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES: 

Product Strategy Development and Execution 

• Setting the Product Vision and Strategy: Further define the overall vision and strategy for Career Labs. This includes setting goals, identifying market and customer segment opportunities, and aligning the team’s efforts with the company’s strategic objectives. 
• Market Research and Analysis: Ensure strategies are grounded in market research to understand emerging trends, customer needs, and competitive landscapes.  Identifying new business opportunities and potential areas for innovation. 
• Product Packaging and Sales Support: Craft compelling product narratives. Create sales and marketing strategy and materials that highlight the unique value propositions of the product for each customer segment. Develop and deploy training and support to those tasked with selling the product.
• Identify and Secure Resources: Determine what internal and external resources are needed to achieve product vision and strategy. Lead the development of strategic partnerships to secure, maintain, and appropriately evolve these internal and external resources.
• Customer Engagement: Lead engagement with K-12, community college, and non-profit leaders to vet opportunities, evaluate partnerships, and close impactful deals that support the vision of Career Labs, leveraging expertise in these education and non-profit sector.
• Stakeholder Management: Engage with key stakeholders, including customers, partners, and internal teams, to gather feedback, build relationships, and ensure alignment.
• Performance Monitoring and Reporting: Determine what success looks like for the product. Develop processes to monitor, track, analyze, and communicate key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of product. Provide regular reports to Managing Director and adjust strategies as needed. 
• Innovation and Continuous Improvement: Implement and enhance feedback loops and mechanisms to gather insights from end-users and stakeholders. Lead effort to iterate on product based on feedback, market trends, and emerging needs. Promote a culture of continuous improvement by encouraging experimentation and learning from failures.
• Risk Management: Identify potential risks and develop mitigation strategies to ensure the successful execution of product plan.

Team Leadership and Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Cultivate, oversee and balance the workload of the small but strong Career Labs team, assigning projects to team members and reallocating where necessary based on capacity.
• Determine what the future state of the Career Labs team needs to look like to support planned product growth and bring that future state team to fruition.
• Collaborate effectively with key cross-functional internal partners, including Program Delivery, Finance, Marketing, and Technology. Serve as a main point of contact for internal partners to understand what they need to support the product. Lead through influence in the development of cross-functional solutions. For example:

• Work with Finance to