Student Success Director, Break Through Tech (NYC)

Culture of Inclusion and Community Standards ​:

As a university founded to be a place where “…any person can find instruction in any study,” diversity and inclusion are at the core of our values and mission. We strive to be a welcoming, caring, healthy, and equitable community where students, faculty, and staff with different backgrounds, perspectives, abilities, and experiences can learn, innovate, and work in an environment of respect, and feel empowered to engage in any community conversation. As a member of the Cornell University community, it is important to recognize our shared responsibility to each other to cultivate a culture of inclusion for all.  Cornell Core values

As a people manager and university leader you will model and support a culture of diversity, equity, inclusion, and wellbeing by fostering an environment where everyone has the ability to thrive and navigate work and life’s challenges because they feel like they belong and have the tools and support they need.    

While position responsibilities vary greatly, the Skills for Success and Leadership Skills for Success are foundational to what is expected of every employee and leader working at Cornell.  These skills are essential for individual and organizational success. Staff Skills for Success; Leadership Skills for Success

Department Background:

Break Through Tech empowers, trains, and connects students from different lived experiences to influential tech opportunities. We are focused on launching a generation of diverse tech talent into the workforce with an emphasis on Black, LatinX, Native American, low-income women, and gender non-conforming individuals because those who break into today’s tech jobs will be writing the rules that will shape the future for all of us.

Rewards and Benefits:

Competitive compensation, generous time-off, and great benefits …More on Cornell Benefits

Position Summary:

Break Through Tech is seeking an experienced player/coach to join us as our first Student Success Director. In this role, you will build and lead the systems and teams that will define and launch our new Student Success function in order to effectively support our students throughout their journey with Break Through Tech. This function will ensure that we have the right accommodation, intervention, support and engagement structures in place to maximize persistence and completion of our programs.

In this role, you will enable success for our program participants and alumni across the nation. This role will manage a small direct team and also be responsible for matrix managing members of other teams as well as vendors and partners to achieve our goals.

In this role, your responsibilities would include:

• Leveraging learnings from Break Through Tech’s pilots as well as best practices from your prior experience to define and launch a suite of Student Success offerings to all participants and alumni across all programs:
• Successfully delivering Student Success offerings to Break Through Tech participants and alumni, in partnership with program delivery teams and external partners.
• Defining and tracking measures of success, including leading and lagging indicators.
• Cultivating and maintaining collaborative relationships with other departments and external partners to support the work.
• Building and managing a team of direct reports, internal staff in other departments and external volunteers to achieve goals.
• Serving as a member of Break Through Tech’s Program Delivery Center of Excellence, informing and shaping the future of operations and participant experience across our organization

While position responsibilities vary, all people leaders are expected to foster a culture of belonging and a psychologically healthy work environment by being trustworthy; respecting all individuals; being flexible; supporting work/life integration as well as healthy boundaries; inviting new ideas, alternatives, and perspectives; speaking up and taking action if others are being excluded or treated inappropriately; and recognizing the contri