Senior Director, Business Strategy

BACKGROUND:

Grads of Life (GOL), the advisory arm of Year Up United (YUU), is  a team of consultants that partner with leading employers to create skills-first talent strategies that deliver both business benefits and social impact. Our aim is to build an employer movement to close the Opportunity Divide and create a future where all people have access to quality jobs, financial stability and economic mobility.

As Grads of Life continues to increase its impact with employers of influence to create and support inclusive hiring practices, the Senior Director, Business Strategy will build processes and infrastructure to support the growth and operational excellence of Grads of Life in conjunction with Talent Networks (TN) and YUU overall. The potential to grow Grads of Life’s service offerings is extensive but requires the right leader with the ability to effectively structure and enable our client services work and the broadening and execution of our “go to market” strategy. The person in this position will help us leverage our positioning to ultimately close the Opportunity Divide in our country.

OVERVIEW:

The Senior Director, Business Strategy, is a strategic leadership role responsible for driving the organization’s growth and market expansion across multiple functional areas. Reporting directly to the Managing Partner, the Senior Director will have oversight of strategic priorities, product sales, coalition support, operational efficiencies, and exploratory business opportunities. The individual in this role will work closely with cross-functional teams to align business strategy with execution, ensuring the organization’s offerings are innovative, scalable, and impactful.

We are open to candidates living in any of the states in which Year Up United operates https://www.yearup.org/locations. East Coast time zone preferred.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Strategy Management and Execution

• Work with the Managing Partner to ensure the success and achievement of the GOL Go-to-Market Strategy
• Develop and execute strategies to enhance product sales for learning and advisory services.
• Take ownership of assigned strategic components (e.g., goals, objectives, initiatives) and drive the execution and completion of activities required to successfully accomplish those strategic components; contribute to reporting efforts via status updates on strategy progress and performance.

Market Assessment and Employer Engagement

• Deepen the organization’s understanding of the skills-first employer market by analyzing trends, competitor outlooks, risks, and mitigations.
• Explore and implement strategies to improve employer talent management practices.
• Identify opportunities to establish and expand coalition support; design and develop coalition support SOWs, playbooks, and arcs of topics that can be leveraged to create a standardized, repeatable coalition platform.

Business Development

• Strengthen efforts in business development by focusing on client recapture, upselling, and identifying strategies to expand advisory offerings, including targeted outreach to new and existing clients.
• Collaborate with the YUU Devo team to identify and pursue grant and research opportunities.
• Provide support for exploratory lines of business, leveraging market research and stakeholder feedback.
• Collaborate with the YUU Corporate Engagement (CE) Team to identify opportunities for bundling services with existing offerings.
• Provide strategic oversight for the development and implementation of scalable, productized offerings, including exploring opportunities for automation.
• Conduct ad-hoc analyses and business-related initiatives as requested by the Managing Partner.

Operational Support

• Lead the design and implementation of operational frameworks to forecast pipeline and upcoming delivery
• Set the vision for the creation and maintenance of robust reporting structures to track performance metrics and inform decision-making; provide recommendations based on performance, risks, and perceived mitigations.
• In partnership with TN, strengthen internal operational practices to support scalability and efficiency.

Client and Team Collaboration

• Work with the team, to include TN, to deliver high-quality support to clients (e.g., tool deployment, facilitation, material development), ensuring consistent alignment with organizational goals.

• Act as a thought leader and subject matter expert on employer trends, providing guidance to internal and external t