Ventures Fellowship Coach

ORGANIZATIONAL OVERVIEW

CityBridge Education’s vision is for the nation’s capital to be the first city-level proof point for an excellent, equitable education system. A Washington, DC-based nonprofit, we incubate the people, ideas, and conversations needed for equity-centered innovation in DC’s public schools and social enterprises. We do this by identifying talented leaders and school designers who can solve the educational needs and challenges of DC families, deploying particular effort to recruiting leaders of color. We then incubate and invest in the best of their ideas and, together, bring to market the next generation of transformational public schools and education ventures.

One of CityBridge's signature programs for ventures is Design Fellowship, where early stage education innovators refine their ideas and pilot their designs to create a strong business model for an equity-centered, innovative venture in DC. Over the course of 5 months, these fellows participate in monthly workshops on topics ranging from creating a theory of change model to designing pilots.

POSITION SUMMARY

As a Venture Fellowship Coach, you will provide consistent personalized support to 2 Ventures Fellows and their teams in Design Fellowship. Our fellows come to us with a venture idea; your role as a coach will be to advise them on the venture's early stage development, with an eye towards piloting their critical assumptions. Most coaching is done virtually; however, the Coach will also participate in required monthly, in-person Design Fellowship workshops in Washington, DC. We include Coaches in these workshops to help drive continuity in our content and also ensure that fellows can engage with coaches during the program day.

For each venture team, you will execute a personalized coaching plan, detailing the critical milestones they need to accomplish before the end of Fellowship, taking into account our curriculum. As a coach, you’ll provide feedback, serve as a sounding board, and thought-partner to ensure their success.

CORE DUTIES

This contracted, part-time role is a hybrid position; we expect candidates to be able to attend monthly, in-person workshops in DC, and other coaching responsibilities can be done through Zoom/virtually.

1. Coach 2-3 Ventures Fellowship teams (50%): You will execute personalized coaching plans for 2 ventures teams in our fellowship. You will be expected to prepare for monthly coaching Zooms with your teams and drive outcomes through these calls. You should expect to spend approximately 6 hours/month on preparing for, executing, and following through on next steps in these calls. Coaches are also expected to maintain an up-to-date coaching data dashboard that is shared monthly with the CityBridge team.
2. Participate in monthly Fellowship workshops (40%): You will be an active participant and co-facilitator in our monthly Design Fellowship workshops. These full-day workshops (usually ~9am-3pm) are centered in our equitable design process and support our fellows in launching pilots to test critical components of their model. You will help drive session objectives in whole group and small group breakouts during these workshops. In addition, you will be a sounding board in sessions for fellows when they’re stuck or need guidance. We expect you to have approximately 1 hour of pre-work for fellowship workshops, as well as 1 hour of follow up after each fellowship day, on top of the full day hours of live instruction. This totals approximately 10 hours of work a month.
3. Participate in internal Ventures Working Group (10%): In addition to coaching and attending workshops, you will also be an active participant in our Ventures working group, a small internal group focused on the Ventures content and curriculum. You will bring insights and ideas to the table to help drive our work forward for our teams. We expect that this will be a 1-hour virtual meeting every few weeks.

TIME COMMITMENT

We estimate that coaches will spend 16 hours/month (see breakdown above) in this engagement, with the contract beginning in early September with onboarding activities and wrapping up in January with a project debrief protocol. There is the potential to renew this contract for the spring semester depending on the quality of work and our program needs.

COMPENSATION

The Venture Fellowship Coach will be paid a stipend of $15,000 across 5 months. Stipends will be paid in three disbursements of $5k each.

COMPETENCIES, EXPERIENCE & MINDSETS FOR SUCCESS

• 5+ years of aligned work experience as a leadership coach and/or education (or social impact) early-stage entrepreneurs or startups
• Have a background in social entrepreneurship or working with early-stage social entrepreneurs. Added plus if you have a background in K-12 education, business management, nonprofit, finance, or have launched your own education venture
• Have a track record of successfully facilitating adult learning and leading adults through challenging work
• Excellent strategic thinking, planning, and analytical skills
• Effective communication and relationship-building skills
• Experience with human centered design/design thinking and race equity tools are pluses
• Entrepreneurial mindset and problem-solving approach
• Able to take initiative with little guidance, regularly assess progress, and adjust course as necessary
• A strong commitment to racial and educational equity
• Willingness to embrace change, ambiguity, and fast pace in a start-up environment

CityBridge has a mandatory vaccination policy with the requirement that all employees, contractors, and guests be "up to date" on their COVID-19 vaccines unless they qualify for an exemption based on a medical condition, sincere religious beliefs, or other categories protected by applicable federal, state and local law.

APPLY 

To apply, submit a resume and cover letter here. A link to complete a brief one-way video interview to complete your application will be emailed to you shortly after you submit your written application materials via the application portal. The application deadline is Friday, August 12, 2022 at 5pm ET. The hiring process will include a Zoom interview.