Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Position Overview

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) is a strategic and operational leader who is responsible for ensuring that the organization operates in a smooth and values-aligned way. This includes ensuring that the organization attracts, develops and retains top-notch and diverse talent and ensuring that we use technology, operational expertise, and our physical spaces to maximize our impact.

Specifically, the COO will oversee the following functions of the Strategic Services Team, which works to support our 14 schools: Recruitment & Selection, Human Resources, Talent Operations, School-Site and Network Operations, Real Estate and Facilities and Technology.

As a member of the organization's Network Leadership Team, the COO will play an integral role in shaping the organization's culture, serving as a critical strategy partner to network and school leaders and owning key strategic initiatives to realize Summit's mission and vision.

This COO will report directly to the Chief Executive Officer and will work closely with other key internal and external stakeholders.

What if all students graduated high school with the knowledge, skills and habits they need to lead a fulfilled life? This is the question that guides our mission at Summit Public Schools.

Summit is a leading network of public schools that prepare a diverse student population for success in a four-year college and to be thoughtful, contributing members of society. We operate 14 schools serving over 4,500 students in the Bay Area and Washington state. 100% of Summit graduates are college ready and Summit graduates complete college at double the national average.

We need exceptional, diverse, and mission-aligned teachers to join our team to help prepare our students for a fulfilled life. Join us!

Strategic Services Team

• Lead, coach and manage six of the organization's vertical leads, who each have sizable teams with these responsibilities:
• Lead and manage Talent team to ensure that the organization is attracting, developing, and retaining excellent and diverse talent while ensuring that the organization is compliant and is reducing and mitigating talent and human resources challenges
• Note: Talent includes Recruitment & Selection, Talent Operations and Human Resources, each of which represents a vertical
• Lead and manage Technology team to ensure that Summit is using technology thoughtfully to work better and smarter, while reducing and mitigating risks.
• Lead and manage Real Estate and Facilities team to ensure that all Summit schools and the Summit home office have facilities that are highly conducive to Summit's approaches to working and learning, and that are sustainable and safe.
• Lead and manage the Operations team, ensuring that our operational systems and processes are sound, school-site operations teams are supported, we are operationally compliant and audit ready, and we are addressing operational challenges directly in order to better support the core teaching and learning functions of our schools.
• Collaborate with vertical leads to ensure that the Strategic Services team is oriented towards ensuring the organization operates in a smooth and values-aligned way, that every part of the Strategic Services team is continuously improving and becoming more impactful and more efficient, and the team operates sustainably and practices effective budget management.
• Collaborate with Chief Financial Officer to ensure that Strategic Services and Finance Teams are closely aligned and working together effectively to develop and manage the budget and mitigate risk.

Network Leadership Team

• Serve as a member of Network Leadership Team, engaging in long-range strategic planning, evaluating success of objectives, improving programs and processes, and acting as a leader to advancing our work to be ever more anti-racist and anti-biased
• Play a critical role in planning and executing key strategic initiatives for the organization within Strategic Services functions
• Provide strategic partnership to other members of Network Leadership Team and School Leadership Teams on Talent, Operations, Real Estate and Facilities and Technology

Board Engagement

• Ensure that board items from Strategic Services team align to the vision for the Board, which involves working with the organization on high-level strategy
• Lead on some governance-related board items and support with board recruitment and management

Key Qualities and Skills

• 3+ years leading a sizable team to high levels of performance
• 1+ years in a senior leadership role in a high-performing charter management organization
• 3+ years in talent, technology, facilities and/or operations
• Bachelor's degree required; Master's degree in public administration, business, or related field preferred
• Experience with Google Platforms, including Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google Docs, and Google Slides preferred
• Clear TB test and background check

About You

• Experienced strategic leader and manager:
• Outcome-driven and able to ensure clarity of roles, responsibilities and outcomes for Strategic Services Team in complex environment
• Able to motivate, inspire, develop, and collaborate with a diverse group of experienced leaders
• Lifelong learner with interest in continuous improvement, operations and systems, management and leadership
• Able to manage groups through fast-paced iterative design cycles
• Excellent interpersonal and communications skills:
• Excellent people skills; will lead by developing strong working and interpersonal relationships across all levels of a multidisciplinary, diverse, and dynamic organization
• A natural bridge-builder internally and externally
• Strong facilitator; able to drive alignment and build relationships with diverse constituencies, including teachers, school leaders, senior leaders, board members, parents, and students
• Able to provide honest, actionable and timely feedback that results in improved performance
• Effective at keeping key stakeholders (CEO, CFO, and others) up-to-date on matters related to overall priorities or needs
• Able to synthesize divergent views and coalesce all constituents around a shared plan
• Mission aligned and values driven:
• Has a fundamental belief that all children can succeed in college and in life, and an unwavering commitment to the organization's mission and core values
• Champion for diversity, equity and inclusion; reflective and self-aware about identify and privilege; committed to making hard choices that will make our organization more diverse, equitable, and inclusive
• Leader in building a robust organizational culture who will drive team retention efforts
• Staunch supporter of the benefits of personalized learning; has the breadth of knowledge of the field required to communicate effectively with stakeholders

Summit offers competitive salaries and benefit options for full-time employees, including covering 75% of the health, dental and vision plan costs. We fully cover life and disability insurance. We have a "take what you need" PTO policy, 11 paid holidays and 3 weeks of organizational-wide closure during the year.

Summit is an equal opportunity employer. We believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion are directly intertwined with education. We are ALL better when we are able to bring our whole selves to work and honor each other's voices across identities, cultural backgrounds, and life experiences. We welcome and encourage applications from individuals who are members of historically marginalized communities. Spanish language proficiency is a plus.