Current Openings

Director of Strategy & Operations

Reports to: Vice President of Partnerships and Strategy 

The Role

Chicago Ideas is a platform for progress. We inspire, connect, and enable the curious and the committed to build a more thriving, more joyous city for everyone. At Chicago Ideas, you'll find accessible, high-quality experiences designed to inspire, and ways to find and activate your purpose within our community and beyond.
We’re seeking a Director of Strategy and Operations who is passionate about creating and scaling systems, connecting people, and social impact. This position will work in partnership with leadership team and will be responsible for driving the development of strategic planning, process and systems management with the end goal of supporting the team in meeting annual goals and objectives.

You

You are organized, detail-oriented, energetic and collaborative. You are fearless when it comes to suggesting new ways of doing things if it means improving the end result. You approach new challenges with curiosity and excitement. You’re as comfortable with self-direction and independent thinking as you are with collaboration. You’re a good listener and empathetic, but also use data to inform your decision-making. 
The ideal candidate will have a proven track record of driving strong operating practice within an organization and have experience collaborating across an organization to achieve the desired end product. You are comfortable in entrepreneurial environments, and have experience starting new projects from scratch. You’re able to channel the sentiments of individual team players into productive systems and love working with teams to make them run better. You’re proud of how resourceful you are in identifying ways to achieve a desired goal while preserving capital, and you have demonstrated experience managing multiple moving parts in the same direction. You’re tech savvy and understand how technology and data can be an asset when creating systems.

Additional responsibilities of the role of Director of Strategy and Operations include:

• Identify and target areas in which a business can improve operations; implement new initiatives and oversee existing systems and processes at the organization and team-level that drive towards operating effectively and transparently
• Participate in annual strategic planning with the CEO/leadership team and own the goal-setting process; ensure the organization has developed a strategic plan to reach goals that reflect impact agenda and core values
• Collaborate with CI teams to ensure that an efficient and transparent process is established and managed for creating CI’s annual events and activation calendar, and that those events reflect our organizational priorities and goals
• Working across teams, ensure that CI has a plan/process for regularly assessing and reflecting on the impact and effectiveness of programs and activities; apply a metrics-based approach to assess wins/losses and optimize for future improvement
• Develop and execute a plan for transparent communication/reporting on progress against goals
• Work with all teams to ensure CI’s annual operating budget is efficient, transparent and reflective of the organization’s priorities; oversee financial operations inclusive of invoice processing and expense reviews
• Work with strategic partnerships team to ideate around new revenue streams and assist with sell-in of partnerships
• Support VP of Strategic Partnerships with oversight of select partner relationships, including partnerships aimed at strategic growth and focusing on leveraging existing partner relationships to drive conversions
• Develop and implement guidelines for employee evaluations, recruitment and promotion
• Develop and execute a strategy for organization-wide employee communication to ensure team members are connected, engaged and informed
• Initiate and lead special project development and scaling, ensuring alignment across employees, teams, leaders and the board

Qualifications

• Demonstrates ability to quickly understand and absorb new information; detail-oriented and can sift between important signals and noise
• Strong analytical skills; can structure and process qualitative and quantitative data and draw insightful conclusions and recommended next steps
• Track record of developing strategies to achieve goals in the long-term, with an ability to constantly focus on the end result in day-to-day decision-making and make quick and thoughtful decisions to achieve goals
• Experience managing and operationalizing an annual operating budget and/or P&L
• Exceptional project manager – effectively plans and executes long-term, complex projects, investing, managing, and communicating effectively with others to achieve objectives and meet deadlines
• Proven ability to build trust and effective relationships at all levels of the organization and externally
• Exceptional communication, written and verbal
• Embodies our core values

To apply: Please send resume and cover letter to

jessica@chicagoideas.com

.