Director - Improving Practices and Outcomes Team

About Us

Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW) is a national workforce policy non-profit that partners with government, business, education, and community leaders to cultivate good jobs and the skilled workers to fill them. Since 1991, CSW has catalyzed change in educational and labor market systems, focusing on scalable improvements in worker skills, job quality, and access to opportunity.

Position Summary

CSW seeks a director to lead its Improving Practices & Outcomes (IPO) team. The Director will lead, develop, and manage a portfolio of work centered on strengthening the capacity of workforce professionals and organizations to develop effective services and policies to increase economic mobility for low-wage workers.

The IPO Team envisions a workforce system that produces equitable and inclusive outcomes, values the expertise of workforce practitioners, and meaningfully centers workers and learners. We work with workforce organizations, professionals, and funders across the country to strengthen their capacity to improve outcomes for workers, learners, and employers. Our work ensures workforce professionals have regular access to knowledge about effective strategies and practices from peers and experts in the field, relevant evidence-based tools and resources, and the skills needed to be more effective on the job.

It is expected that the Director will provide strategic support for the expansion of Workforce Benchmarking Network (WBN) cohorts and enhance the Workforce Benchmarking Network survey. While subject to change, the Director will also engage in specific projects such as co-facilitating a WBN cohort in New York City and supporting a landscape assessment of youth serving workforce organizations that supports the strategic direction of a national funder.

This strategy area’s focus includes:

• Continuously improving workforce program services and practices with the use of data and feedback, a racial equity lens, and technical assistance, as currently supported through The Workforce Benchmarking Network (WBN).
• Facilitating peer learning and networking through regional, national, and grantee learning cohorts.
• Collecting data from workforce programs through the WBN National Survey that provides field-wide performance benchmarks with program and worker outcomes disaggregated by demographics.
• Developing shared workforce metrics for a city or region.
• Capacity building, coaching and technical assistance for workforce organizations, with a large focus on identifying and addressing gaps in data capacity and identifying mechanisms to center learner and worker voice.
• Implementation focused strategic advising and research for workforce organizations, and workforce funders.
• Learner and worker centered program design, research and evaluation, including piloting how workforce organizations can measure outcomes developed by learners and workers.
• Supporting the advancement of workforce professionals through the Workforce Leadership Academy.
• Developing tools and practice guidelines to inform program continuous improvements.

The Director has recognized expertise in their understanding of the workforce system, public and privately funded innovation initiatives, and policy and practice at the national, regional, and community levels. They will have a minimum of 7-10 years of relevant experience leading national, regional, or statewide projects and recent experience and success at engaging with philanthropic organizations to fund initiatives, staff, or projects. A preference is for an individual who has direct service experience, either through working directly with job seekers or employers.

The Director will have solid experience managing a team and conducting sales and business development. The Director will oversee a portfolio of initiatives, provide strategic guidance on projects to their team, and work directly on projects. The Director will have strong experience with workforce service provider strategies and implementation practices focused on a variety of job seeker populations and business sectors. This member of our team will demonstrate an understanding of adult learning, instructional design, and effective facilitation strategies across a variety of platforms (in-person, virtual, asynchronous) and regions. The Director will also have experience advancing systems change, understanding the various levers required at the individual, organizational, and regional level to advance real change. The Director will use this expertise and their experience with using both quantitative and qualitative data to develop leading-edge ideas and fundable high-impact initiatives focused on improving workforce provider performance and equitable results for job seekers.

The Director will work closely with CSW’s leadership team and will report to the President and CEO. They will manage a team of between 3 and 5 Senior Policy Associates and multiple funder and partner relationships.

Essential Responsibilities

Knowledge and Expertise

Self-directed contributor who promotes the health and vitality of CSW to achieve its mission and values. Establishes a vision for workforce program services and public policy and practice at multiple levels. Builds on, adapts, develops, coordinates, and manages CSW’s IPO portfolio to meet the needs of workforce organizations and practitioners. Designs, develops and promotes the use of effective national and local workforce program models. Experience in effective adult learning and facilitation processes and engages with partners and clients through various methods such as the development of promising practices, models, front-end assessment, evaluation, strategy development, reporting, facilitation and advising.

Market and Business Development and Sales

Creates a point of view to describe this programmatic area as a value proposition. Develops, coordinates, and manages the IPO team’s line of business. Leads the development of new revenue generating concepts and proposals or those that build on existing projects to propose to funders or respond to RFPs. Identifies potential products or processes that fill a client/community need within and across projects and/or the workforce system. Leverages existing relationships and builds new mutually beneficial ones with funders, peer organizations, corporations, and government entities to fund projects. Maintains and develops a variety of partnerships to advance the work of CSW while remaining connected to work at the ground level. Co-develops a communication strategy and contributes content (blogs, thought pieces, webinars, conference submissions) to support CSW and strategy area development.

Racial Equity and Inclusion

Assesses the degree to which privileged and marginalized status affects program initiatives and outcomes. Applies strategies to increase equity on all projects and through their own internal work. Threads social justice into programs, projects, and goals. Uses reflective and critical thinking to gain insight into assumptions, world views, bias, and beliefs. Threads social justice into project actions to ensure equity is addressed. Engages in professional development opportunities for increasing economic advancement of learners and workers.

Project Management

Builds strategies to engage clients in projects based on needs, expectations and culture. Establishes project team roles and responsibilities based on expertise, availability and workload. Works with project managers to monitor project scope, timely completion and quality standards for deliverables, to ensure client satisfaction and project successes. They ensure that project learnings are articulated and shared within and across CSW teams to improve future opportunities. Expands CSW’s organizational knowledge and understanding of the strategy team’s portfolio and its intersection with the field.

Organizational Development

Leads and creates strategies to guide the direction of the IPO team. Identifies ways for CSW to engage in continuous innovation grounded in mission and values. Champions and supports the organization's leadership, policies, practices and ways of doing business, including promoting the use of tools and technologies. Takes decisive action to resolve organizational or project challenges, even in the face of ambiguity, and facilitates continuous improvement. Recognizes and leverages staff expertise, interest, and talent to create and implement a program development strategy. Supports and facilitates individual staff development, learning and career aspirations.