Director, Community Learning & Partnerships RTL

Position Title:

Director, Community Learning & Partnerships, RTL

Department:

Learning & Research

Corporate Area:

PBS KIDS

Status:

Fixed Term (Fixed Term), Full time Exempt

Manager Title:

Sr. Director, Early Learning Engagement

Position Overview:

This position is funded by a Ready To Learn grant from the U.S. Department of Education to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and PBS. It focuses on the development, dissemination, and evaluation of content across media and platforms to improve learning outcomes and increase school readiness for children ages 2-8, and providing support and educational services to educators, parents and caregivers.

The RTL Partnerships Director oversees key grant partnerships in service of educators, children, families and other members of a child’s learning ecosystem, together with stations. The incumbent is responsible for directing and measuring success of existing partnerships, thinking strategically about ways to scale successful models of distribution and engagement, and innovating and piloting new models to increase reach and engagement with families, partners and educators in RTL target communities.

The role is responsible for managing relationships with multiple stakeholders, including PBS member stations, education experts, researchers, and partners. The incumbent will collaborate across PBS KIDS to meet the goals of the project.

Key responsibilities will include, but are not limited to:

RTL Partnerships

• Serve as the primary contact between the RTL project team and RTL’s national partners, staying abreast of challenges, concerns, successes, and opportunities to increase distribution and the effectiveness of engagement initiatives.

• Together with stations and educators, iterate on the PBS KIDS Early Learning Champions program and inform broader educator engagement strategy and initiatives, to increase discoverability of PBS KIDS and recognize and amplify early childhood educators’ role as PBS KIDS ambassadors.

• Oversee Spanish translation strategy for grown-ups, working across Early Learning Engagement and Content Marketing teams in partnership with Spanish language and culture advisors, translation coordinator, and contracted translators to ensure a consistent and efficient translation process.

RTL Community Engagement & Grown-ups Research 

Together with the Ready To Learn research consortium, support the development and implementation of a research strategy for outreach content, and work with research partners to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness, impact and success of outreach and engagement models.

• Collaborate across the Learning & Research team to execute a flexible and scalable co-design activities around grown-ups content and engagement strategy, enabling teams to create responsive content, products and initiatives that reflect audience assets, needs, and voices. Manage development of co-design tools, resources, and co-design participant recruitment and facilitation best practices.  Partner with content developers and other stakeholders to assess needs and develop the co-design approach for each project as needed.

• Track project-related research, collaborating with product, user experience design, internal and external research teams with the goal of developing and tracking cohesive, values-based measures for grown-up engagement. 

• Conduct relevant competitive landscape and field scans for opportunities to innovate and experiment with emerging resource and distribution methods. 

• Operationalize communication of actionable insights from research and co-design efforts to key stakeholders that enable audience-first and relevant content creation and innovation.

• Perform other duties as assigned.

Requirements for success:

• A minimum of 5 years experience managing and implementing large scale, multi-faceted projects, preferably in education or media;

• A minimum of 5-7 years combined experience in one or more of the following areas: directing the development of digital content, co-design or user-centered design, or formative research; 

• Bachelor’s degree in communications, education, early childhood development or related field preferred; an equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered;

• Strong analytical and problem solving skills and ability to present concepts clearly and concisely;

• Detail-oriented, analytical thinker with excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to make effective presentations;

• Knowledge of project management tools and softwa