Partner, Portfolio Director - Rural

Start Date: Immediate
Role Type: Full-time
Team: Rural Portfolio 
Reports to: Taina Torres, Managing Partner  

Location/Travel: Remote (U.S. based); willingness to travel approximately once a month, ~20% travel 

Who We Are

Transcend is a national nonprofit that helps communities reimagine and redesign schools so every young person can thrive in a rapidly changing world. Across the country, communities are recognizing that classrooms built for the industrial age aren’t preparing learners for what’s next. Instead, schools must be designed for continuous evolution: relevant, resilient, and ready for the future. For more than a decade, Transcend has partnered with school and system leaders to build the capacity for bold, lasting change—change led by the people who live it every day. We’ve worked with nearly 500 schools and 200 districts serving over 225,000 students in 35 states. Together, we’ve seen what’s possible when communities lead redesign with proven methods, insight, and support. From that work, we develop and share tools, research, and models that help schools everywhere make the leap to extraordinary learning—for every child, in every community.

For more information, visit our website or follow us on LinkedIn.

The Opportunity 

The Rural Portfolio partners with rural communities across the U.S. to redesign schools in ways that reflect the local community context and advance 21st-century learning for all. 

We’re looking for a Partner, Portfolio Director to help drive our Rural Schools Portfolio’s impact. This role is at the heart of the Rural Portfolio’s operations, culture, and strategy—responsible for keeping our team aligned, organized, and leveraging data to drive impact, all with a thriving team culture. In this role, you’ll build relationships and lead key cross-functional workstreams that may span state-based strategies, Career Connected Learning, and other Rural-adjacent initiatives, ensuring that cross-cutting efforts stay connected and move forward. You'll also utilize strategic thinking and project management skills to lead internal communications, coordinate team meetings and retreats, track budgets, and create strong systems for progress monitoring, knowledge-sharing, and decision-making. You’ll partner closely with Taina Torres, Managing Partner, and teammates across the portfolio to ensure seamless coordination and execution, all while staying grounded in both our portfolio strategy and broader organizational priorities.  You’ll problem-solve and learn alongside the team; while this is an individual contributor role, it is highly collaborative, requiring skills in project management, data, strategy and a deep commitment to people and culture.

In your role as Partner, Portfolio Director on the Rural team, you’ll focus on the following workstreams. The time spent on each may shift over time.

• Create and manage cohesive systems to organize and track internal portfolio and cross-functional work by providing guidance, structure, collaboration mechanisms, and processes. 
• Lead cross-functional workstreams ensuring that key priorities and goals are met by bringing together teams & driving the work forward. 
• Steward project execution by and support Project Leads through project set up, clear timelines, project plans, aligned goals, accountability and tracking systems and deliverables ensuring every project results in meaningful, goal-aligned experiences. At times, this may include working with internal operations teammates and/or operations contractors, and external vendors.
• Support the development, stewarding, and shared ownership of the portfolio’s culture by ensuring the team’s norms, visions, and operations are aligned to our core values and problem-solving when any needs emerge.
• Synthesize portfolio-wide learnings and progress-to-goals to lead the annual collaborative planning process toward defining and advancing the portfolio’s strategic direction.
• Drive smooth logistics for internal and external meetings by supporting the facilitation of meetings, preparing agendas/slide decks, taking meeting notes, and sending follow-ups. 
• Own the planning and facilitation of portfolio events and portfolio operations for all project needs, including in-person workshops with school teams, team retreats and community-building activities, school visits, and day-to-day logistics and coordination. 

More specifically, your work will be divided across these core buckets:

Portfolio Management - 40-50% 

Working closely with the Managing Partner, oversee the day-to-day coordination, systems, and internal communications that keep the Rural Portfolio running smoothly and aligned. This includes building and managing processes across the following: 

• Develop and lead the cohesive process standing up new projects as they come in with Project Leads across the portfolio 
• Coordinate and manage both portfolio-wide and project-specific team meetings, including logistics and follow-ups 
• Design, refine, and maintain teamwide systems, structures, and calendars for key projects, activities, goals, deliverables, decision-making, and knowledge-sharing across the portfolio ensuring these are codified and clear for the team
• Lead internal communications, including the Rural Rundown (weekly team newsletter), Slack updates, and post-meeting summaries
• Monitor the Portfolio’s budgets in partnership with Project Leads and the Managing Partner; track individual project budgets and align resourcing with team capacity, project goals and the portfolio’s strategic priorities
• Synthesize and integrate portfolio learnings to collaboratively reflect, adapt, and build around the portfolio’s strategic direction on an annual basis 

Portfolio Operating & Systems - 20%

Lead the implementation of the Portfolio’s operating mechanisms and processes for collecting and synthesizing learnings. This includes: 

• Design and refine data systems that support project teams in consistently collecting, organizing and learning from data
• Provide training and support to Project Leads to implement learning and data  systems effectively
• Plan and facilitate team learning spaces, including data stepbacks and knowledge-sharing sessions
• Regularly synthesize key insights and elevate them to the Managing Partner through clear narratives, presentations, and artifacts for both internal and external audiences (e.g., funders, Transcend community)
• Work with the Managing Partner to reflect, plan, and drive accountability to the portfolio strategy to ensure goal alignment, resource allocation, and consistent progress monitoring 

Portfolio Culture - 10%

Cultivate a thriving team culture by designing intentional systems, routines, and events that foster connection, alignment, and shared ownership of the portfolio’s values, agreements, and ways of working. For example: 

• Design and lead team-wide efforts to support a thriving team culture, including planning and executing internal team retreats and stepbacks that strengthen team connection and alignment
• Maintain and evolve team agreements and routines, including planning celebrations, birthday shoutouts, and intentional moments of community-building
• Engage teammates in shaping the portfolio’s systems, structures, and strategies through community-based design processes
• Ensure the portfolio’s ways of collaborating are aligned with Transcend’s values and solve emerging needs as they arise

Strategic Projects & External Engagement - 20%

Provide flexible support across a variety of strategic projects, such as: 

• Set-up and drive cross-functional projects, as needed, especially for high-priority work, such as aligning on new, collaborative projects or frameworks
• Join conversations with external Transcend partners and synthesize key takeaways to inform portfolio-wide project scoping and decision-making  
• At times, lead external event planning with partners from vision to execution (either directly executing or coordinating with other teammates or contractors to do so) 
• Manage the portfolio’s presence and logistics for external conferences and engagements

Who You Are

You equally love all things project management, data tracking, leveling up systems, and centering people in all you do. You bring top-notch project management, are an incredible communicator, and have strong organizational skills–and you can apply them with clarity, vision, and care. You know how to set up human-centered systems, support people to be aligned, keep the work moving forward, and proactively notice trends/gaps—even across a range of personalities, working styles, and functions. Whether it’s coordinating across complex projects or making sure the team gathering has enough coffee, you bring joy and intention to the details—synthesizing input from every direction into a clear, thoughtful path ahead. And underneath it all, you have a strategic knack: you see the patterns others miss, ask the right questions at the right time, and help teams move with both purpose and precision.

And, to all of this, you bring: 

• A wholehearted dedication and passion for Transcend's unique mission 
• A deep eagerness to embrace and live into Transcend’s core values in your daily work 
• Flexibility, enthusiasm, and trust—enabling you to build positive relationships and collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, readily stretching high and low, doing whatever it takes to get the job done
• A calm and grounded presence that allows you to lead and support teams through influence by creating clarity where there is ambiguity. While this role is an individual contributor position, it is uniquely positioned to influence, organize, and galvanize project teams through lateral leadership and strong collaboration
• A strategic instinct that complements your operational strengths. You naturally zoom out to spot patterns, ask the questions that reframe the problem, and connect the day-to-day work to the bigger picture in ways that help teams move with both clarity and purpose 
• Exceptional project management and organizational skills, with the ability to juggle multiple priorities and lead complex workstreams across a dynamic portfolio team
• A strong ability to design and maintain clear, user-friendly systems that support a portfolio team. You know how to anticipate needs, plan ahead, and follow through with consistency and care
• Comfort with data, spreadsheets, and basic analytics
• Exceptional written communication skills, with the ability to translate complexity into clear, compelling narratives. Whether drafting a team newsletter, synthesizing data for funders, or crafting a tight agenda that keeps a meeting on track, you know how to meet every audience where they are
• A genuine love of the details. Not as an end in themselves, but because you know that the quality of the small things (the well-timed follow-up, the airtight tracker, the agenda that actually matches the conversation) is what makes the big things possible 
• A strong ability to thrive in a remote work environment and have strong personal organizational systems
• And above all, you care deeply about people. You help shape and steward a portfolio culture that is grounded in relationships, reflection, and shared purpose—ensuring that our ways of working not only drive results but reflect who we are and what we stand for

Application & Hiring Process
We review applications on a rolling basis and are committed to a thoughtful and people-centered hiring experience that helps candidates feel what it’s like to work at Transcend. Here’s what you can expect if you are selected to move forward:

• Initial interview with the team via Zoom to learn more about your interest and experiences. A note on compensation: during your initial interview with the team, we will confirm your location and accompanying salary range. *More on how we determine this is below 
• Try-on activity to engage in a role-aligned exercise. This helps us get a sense of how you approach the work and gives you a feel for what the role might be like 
• A 1:1 with the hiring manager where you will learn more about the team and the work 
• Interview with the hiring manager and other Transcend team members, where we’d debrief the try-on task and engage in some scenarios you are likely to encounter in the role
• Final interview with Lavada Berger, Chief Portfolio Officer 
• Reference checks to learn more about your superpowers and working style 

Salary 

As a national team, we apply a cost-of-labor adjustment by adjusting salaries into 3 geographical bands (geo-band) in order to offer competitive compensation for all employees across the US. These geo-bands help us tailor compensation appropriately based on the specific location of each teammate. Below are the three salary geo-bands for this role, and we will confirm the individual range for your location during this initial interview, if you move forward in the process. 

• Geo Comp 1:  Currently Includes: NYC metro area, CA Bay Area, Boston City, LA City, Washington, D.C, Seattle -  $105,000-$135,000
• Geo Comp 2: Currently includes locations such as: San Diego; New Haven, CT; Ventura, CA -   $99,750-$128,250
• Geo Comp 3: Currently Includes: Most other US locations -  $94,500-$121,500

A Few Nuts & Bolts
We are an experienced team focused on extraordinary learning for all. We welcome candidates who are passionate about ensuring that all students thrive. We are also committed to providing our colleagues with a competitive benefits package and offer medical, dental, and vision coverage options, org-wide holidays, paid time off, paid parental leave, professional development opportunities, and fully remote work. We take pride in our collaborative environment, exceptional team, and shared commitment to principled, impactful work.

We look forward to learning more about you!