About the Foundation

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was founded by an act of Congress in 1906. Since then, it has pioneered a broad range of transformative advancements in K-12 and higher education, including the creation of the Carnegie Unit; TIAA; standards for schools of law, medicine, education, and engineering; the Educational Testing Service; the GRE; Pell Grants; the Carnegie Classifications; the U.S. Department of Education; and the use of improvement science to build the field’s capacity to improve.

Today, the mission of the Foundation is to catalyze transformational change in education so that every student has the opportunity to live a healthy, dignified, and fulfilling life. Carnegie will leverage its expertise, assets, partnerships, convening power, and social and reputational capital to address long standing educational inequities that impede economic mobility and exacerbate racial inequality. To accomplish these aims, the Foundation is pursuing three intersecting strategic priorities:

• Postsecondary Innovation: We transform the postsecondary sector to advance the social and economic mobility of underrepresented students.

• The Future of Learning: We mobilize and propel engaging and rigorous learning experiences that prepare all students to thrive now and in the future.

• Improvement Science: We advance the high quality use of improvement science to address the nation’s most important educational equity challenges.

The Role

The Foundation is seeking a Vice President who will lead, at a high level, one or more of the Carnegie Foundation’s strategic priorities and/or major areas of work (e.g., research and development, fundraising, and policy). Reporting to the President of the Foundation, the Vice President is responsible for internal leadership and management and external engagement with a wide range of partners and stakeholders.

The Vice President is responsible for building and executing ambitious, actionable strategies for the programmatic priorities and (working with the President and executive team) for the Foundation as a whole. This includes articulating a clear vision and strategy for success, regular review and refinement of project plans, support and mentorship to leadership and staff, and successful implementation of deliverables. The Vice President serves as a member of the Executive Team, and works with senior leaders and staff to build a high performing, entrepreneurial, equitable, and joyful organizational culture; model the Foundation’s values and community agreements, and; serve as a compelling champion for Carnegie’s mission.

Externally, the Vice President will be a thought leader in the field of education, expected to write, speak, and engage with diverse audiences in multiple contexts to forge connections and collaboration among a broad range of practitioners, community based organizations, policy makers, scholars, and philanthropies.  The Vice President will also have a central role in identifying, building, and maintaining essential partnerships to further Carnegie’s mission.

Essential Responsibilities

• Leads essential pillars of the Carnegie portfolio (50%)

  • Shapes, refines, and communicates priorities for their assigned areas of responsibility – establishing clear objectives, timelines, staffing requirements, and resources needed to achieve objectives.

  • Leads and manages the implementation of particular bodies of the work, in close collaboration with essential staff, course-correcting as necessary.

  • Forges strategic partnerships with institutions, community based organizations, key leaders, and other stakeholders to catalyze educational transformation at broad scale.

  • With the president and the executive team, identifies and cultivates new and existing investors to raise resources to support Carnegie’s strategic priorities.

• Represents the Foundation as a thought-leader in education (40%)

  • Represents the Foundation with a broad range of stakeholders, and participates in a broad range of Carnegie-convened and external engagements to raise awareness, understanding, and momentum.

  • Works in close collaboration with the Foundation’s Communications and Engagement Team to represent the Foundation as an education thought-leader at appropriate national conferences, convenings, publications, interviews, on social media, and other venues etc.

Non Essential Responsibilities

• Models transformational leadership every day within the Foundation (10%)

  • With the President and other leaders of the Foundation, fosters a healthy, vibrant organizational culture where all staff are inspired to do their best work

  • Collaborates with other Executive Team members and key leaders to ensure alignment and coherence across all aspects of the work and Foundation operations

Required Education & Experience 

• Bachelor’s Degree

• Fifteen (15) years of experience in the education field in roles of increasing leadership responsibility, with demonstrable evidence of impact at scale.

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Exceptional connectivity among K-12 and postsecondary practitioners, scholars, educational innovators, community based organizations, policy-makers, and philanthropy

• Demonstrated commitment to improving education for first generation, underrepresented, and low-income students.

• Comprehensive knowledge of the field of education in the United States

• Extraordinary communication skills – the ability to present and discuss complex topics clearly and effectively to a broad range of audiences

• Demonstrated leadership skills – the ability to establish strategy and successfully oversee the implementation of that strategy, especially as it relates to the incubation, spread, and scale of new ideas and institutions in education. Proven track record of building and leading high-performing teams.

• Exemplary management skills – the ability to assess performance, give timely feedback, and inspire staff to do their best work; ability to oversee the logistics of a department (budgeting, goal-setting, and staffing).

• Strong interpersonal skills – the ability to engage a wide range of stakeholders, build trust, and deliver results; the ability to have difficult conversations.

• Demonstrated success in engaging funders, securing grants, and driving timely completion of grant deliverables.

• Entrepreneurial –  Familiarity and/or experience with the design, incubation, launch, and scale of new products and/or ideas.  A results-oriented learner’s mindset. Innovative, creative, and forward-thinking.

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