Operations Manager

Start Date: Immediate
Role Type: Full-time
Reports To: Jennifer Perniciaro 
Team: Central Operations 

Travel: ~30-35% time. Willingness to travel approximately 2-3x per month for 2-3 days depending on the location and duration of trips. There will be four to six trips per year of longer duration, lasting ~4-5 days. The number of trips will vary from month to month - some months will have more, while others will have fewer. 

Location: Remote (U.S.-based); Midwest and East Coast preferred. This is a fully remote role, but given the location of our projects we’re prioritizing candidates located in the Central or Eastern Timezones. 

Who We Are

Transcend is a national nonprofit that helps communities reimagine and redesign schools so every young person can thrive in a rapidly changing world. Across the country, communities are recognizing that classrooms built for the industrial age aren’t preparing learners for what’s next. Instead, schools must be designed for continuous evolution: relevant, resilient, and ready for the future. For more than a decade, Transcend has partnered with school and system leaders to build the capacity for bold, lasting change—change led by the people who live it every day. We’ve worked with nearly 500 schools and 200 districts serving over 225,000 students in 35 states. Together, we’ve seen what’s possible when communities lead redesign with proven methods, insight, and support. From that work, we develop and share tools, research, and models that help schools everywhere make the leap to extraordinary learning—for every child, in every community.

For more information, visit our website or follow us on LinkedIn.

The Opportunity

At the heart of our work across projects and teams lies our operations and events work led by Operations Managers! Operations Managers are the backstage leaders of our work and go the extra mile to ensure everyone has what they need to be able to facilitate projects across Transcend. 

Operations Managers are home-based within our centralized operations team and are allocated to specific projects across teams to ensure strong coordination and execution. Across all project allocations, they are responsible for driving clarity, maintaining momentum, and ensuring high-quality outcomes. By asking thoughtful questions, anticipating needs, and deeply listening, Operations Managers help shape experiences that ensure partners and teammates feel prepared, supported, and valued.

Operations Managers partner closely with Portfolio Directors, Project Leads, and Senior Leaders to co-create project plans, lead operational decision-making, and ensure seamless execution across projects. They build and steward systems, manage complex logistics, and design experiences that are thoughtful, human-centered, and aligned to Transcend’s high bar for quality. 

A defining part of this specific Operations Manager role is support for and then ownership of Transcend's org-wide Team Retreat, our flagship all-team gathering that brings together 130+ teammates for three to four days each June. Alongside it, you will support smaller-scale experiences and events for our internal central coordination team, and may take on additional lead or support roles on other operational projects across portfolios.

More than our other Operations Manager roles, this one will have a large focus on Transcend's internal team experiences and support projects that create culture and community for our organization.

As an Operations Manager at Transcend, you will get to: 

• Foster strong relationships - with our partners, Portfolio Directors, Project Leads, and across our internal teams!
• Serve as a project manager for all things operations  – creating and managing timelines, supporting our coaches in anticipating and navigating through logistics and operational needs and constraints, and coordinating project plans and calendars across a scope of work and range of projects. 
• Grow from supporting to owning our org-wide Team Retreat Operations end to end. In your first cycle, you’ll primarily support an operational leader and learn from them as they guide the planning and execution of Transcend’s annual, all-team retreat, a three to four day convening held each June. Over time, you’ll take full ownership of this marquee, high-visibility project, which will be your primary body of work in this role.
• Lead other conference coordination - holding, stewarding, and coordinating a group of teammates and external partnerships to attend events and/or conferences. This includes preparing travel plans, planning and leading spaces we want to craft during the conferences, and communicating with conference attendees. 
• Craft and manage operations-focused communications with internal staff, school partners, and our learning cohorts and communities. This includes crafting emails, slack messages, participant guides, logistics memos, etc. with clear instructions and information for the team and/or school partners to ensure alignment on the overall experience and the small details. 
• Lead and manage operations and logistics for various workshops, inspiration visits, and events, both virtually through Zoom and in-person. This ranges from leading operations for 2-hour, 15-person Zoom calls; to operations for 4-day in-person events with ~100 participants. Additionally, some in-person events may require you to rent and drive a vehicle to transport materials, support team members, or handle other logistical needs.
• Create and analyze team survey data – writing and sending surveys (often in Google Forms), analyzing that data, and sharing back the summary and next steps with the team.
• Spearhead smooth internal operations such as scheduling internal team meetings and project events, preparing agendas, taking notes, and capturing (and managing follow-through on) the next steps.
• Manage conference/event budgets, and other team budgets as needed. With the support of the Finance team, support your project team and/or event to stay on budget. Operations Managers who support events and procurement also have and manage a Transcend credit card, including any actions needed to review and document expenses.
• Support team special projects which vary in sensitivity to Portfolio/team needs. These activities may include: planning team stepbacks, designing school application processes, supporting grant writing and reports, more in-depth analytics data work, video and media editing, creating internal team websites to organize resources/knowledge management, and creating and updating cohort websites through a website builder platform. Each portfolio/team has unique needs, and we explore those more fully throughout the interview process. 

To see this role in action and further details about what these buckets of work would look like, check out these sample projects. 

Who You Are

You love all things project management and have incredible organizational superpowers. You approach managing operations and projects on a team, both internally and externally, with people at the core of experiences. You do so by taking the time to get to know the people you’re working closely with, forging strong relationships, and creating a sense of community and connection. Your passion for planning and event operations shines through as you meticulously craft and manage smooth logistics, and you know that the real craft is in the details that make people feel held, such as the personalized touch, the perfectly timed moment of delight, or the care that turns a well-run event into one people are still talking about weeks later. Taking initiative and managing your time effectively are second nature to you, and you take immense pride in your stellar organizational systems. You also thrive in, and enjoy, working behind the scenes in a fast-paced environment where things can change quickly and operate with resolute calmness! 

And above all, you love that your everyday work is in service to a mission that matters. You believe deeply in the power of education to change lives and believe in reinventing schools so that young people can live a life of limitless opportunities. You are excited to contribute your operational expertise to making this work possible!

To all this, you bring:

• A commitment to Transcend’s mission of building and spreading extraordinary learning for all. 
• Outstanding project management and organizational skills that include strong attention to detail and allow you to gather and organize multiple work streams and logistics efficiently. 
• Prior experiences planning and executing large-scale, multi-day conferences or retreats, alongside prior experience with planning and executing in-person and virtual events for a variety of groups - from small < 10-person events to convenings that bring large groups of people together. 
• Exceptional relationship-building instincts and initiative where you build trust quickly with peers and with leaders at every level of the organization and are equally comfortable partnering closely and pushing back with care when something needs it.
• Familiarity with facilitating logistics for virtual events through Zoom. 
• A deep love for planning and executing a variety of events.
• Curiosity and drive to develop clear, effective, and efficient operational processes.
• A strong commitment to designing meaningful, thoughtful, and community-centered experiences—whether in the events you manage, the way you communicate, or how you approach your work—to ensure that participants, partners, and teammates feel genuinely valued and included.
• A willingness to travel up to 2-3 times/month(most trips 2-3 days. Four to six trips/year of longer duration, likely 4-5 days), to support in-person operations.
• Flexibility, optimism, and a desire to learn and grow.
• Eagerness to embrace and live into Transcend’s core values.

Application & Hiring Process

We review applications on a rolling basis and are committed to a thoughtful and people-centered hiring experience that helps candidates feel what it’s like to work at Transcend. Here’s what you can expect if you are selected to move forward:

• Initial interview with the team via Zoom to learn more about your interest and experiences. A note on compensation: during your initial interview with the team, we will confirm your location and accompanying salary range. *More on how we determine this is below
• Try-on activity to engage in a role-aligned exercise. This helps us get a sense of how you approach the work and gives you a feel for what the role might be like
• A panel interview with the hiring manager and members of our team, where we’d debrief the try-on task and engage in some scenarios you are likely to encounter in the role
• Final interview with our Chief Portfolio Officer 
• Reference checks to learn more about your superpowers and working style  

Salary 

As a national team, we apply a cost-of-labor adjustment by adjusting salaries into 3 geographical bands (geo-band) in order to offer competitive compensation for all employees across the US. These geo-bands help us tailor compensation appropriately based on the specific location of each teammate. Below are the three salary geo-bands for this role, and we will confirm the individual range for your location during this initial interview, if you move forward in the process. 

• Geo Comp 1:  Currently Includes: NYC metro area, CA Bay Area, Boston City, LA City, Washington, D.C, Seattle  $75,000 - $105,000
• Geo Comp 2: Currently includes locations such as: San Diego; New Haven, CT; Ventura, CA  $71,250 - $99,750 
• Geo Comp 3: Currently Includes: Most other US locations  $67,500 - $94,500

A Few Nuts & Bolts

We are an experienced team focused on extraordinary learning for all. We welcome candidates who are passionate about ensuring that all students thrive. We are also committed to providing our teammates with a competitive benefits package and offer medical, dental, and vision coverage options, org-wide holidays, paid time off, paid parental leave, professional development opportunities, and fully remote work. We take pride in our collaborative environment, exceptional team, and shared commitment to principled, impactful work.

We look forward to learning more about you!