Partner, Design Journey Content Lead

Start Date: Immediate
Role Type: Full-time
Reports to: Kirsten Dargis, Managing Partner
Team: Journey Supports Team

Location/Travel: Remote (U.S.-based);  ~1-2 trips per quarter (6-8x / year)

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 Journey Supports Team (JST) builds the tools, resources, and learning experiences that make it possible for the school design coaches we call Design Partners to support communities through locally-driven, multi-year design journeys. On these journeys, schools form design teams made up of leaders, teachers, students, caregivers, and other community members to envision and build a new model of school that fits their community's needs and aspirations. The JST creates and curates the tools Design Partners need to lead that process well.

The JST sits within Transcend's Program team, alongside work focused on org foundations (the core concepts and frameworks that underlie all of our work), usable knowledge (the research and tools that inform the design choices communities make), and tech and innovation (the infrastructure that ties it all together).

The Journey Supports Team includes:

• 3-4 Design Journey Content Leads each holding deep expertise in a particular part of the design journey
• 2 Builders who develop and refine the tools and experiences that make that expertise accessible and usable
• A Partner of Systems & Operations who keeps the team running smoothly
• A Managing Partner who provides overall team leadership and direction

Design Journey Content Leads are the intellectual leaders of their part of the design journey. They hold Transcend's evolving point of view on how that work gets done, build the tools and resources that help Design Partners do it well, and stay deeply connected to what's actually happening in the field so that our guidance stays grounded in reality. The best Design Journey Content Leads are constantly learning from how the work plays out in schools and communities, and using that learning to make our centralized materials stronger. It's worth noting that Content Leads do this not by working directly with school partners, but by staying closely connected to the Design Partners and Project Leads who do. This is a program team role: the work is about building the guidance and tools that make it possible for others to lead that work well.

We are currently seeking a Design Journey Content Lead for Later Stage work. Later Stage refers to the part of a design journey when schools move from envisioning their design to implementing, refining, deepening, and sustaining it: typically Years 2+. This is where extraordinary and equitable learning for all students either becomes real and durable, or stalls out. Getting this right is critical to Transcend's mission.

The Later Stage Content Lead will inherit a strong foundation: a well-developed conceptual understanding of what later-stage work entails and what it requires. The work ahead is to build from that foundation, translating concepts into practical guidance and tools, getting those ideas into the water across the organization, and continuing to learn, test, and grapple with the questions that remain unanswered. 

In This Role, You Will: 

Build and hold expertise in later-stage work

• Develop and maintain deep expertise: Deeply understand Transcend's foundational schemas and how they connect to Later Stage work. Know what strong Later Stage work looks like at both a conceptual and practical level, and stay current on how others in the field approach implementation and school transformation.
• Stay rooted in the work on the ground: Maintain active touchpoints with projects where Later Stage work is happening. Learn what is being used, what is being adapted, and what is being built at the project level. Use that learning to continuously inform and strengthen our centralized guidance and tools, while resisting the pull toward over-prescription or guidance that is too removed from the complexity of use on the ground.
• Coordinate with other Design Journey Content Leads: Tend to the connections between Later Stage work and earlier stages of the design journey. Ensure that learning is happening robustly across stage areas without overwhelming projects with too many touchpoints.

Compile guidance, tools, and resources

• Own the Later Stage product roadmap: Hold a clear view of what exists, what needs to be built or refined, and what to prioritize. Maintain a clear, organized hub of all tools and guidance that Design Partners need to lead Later Stage work effectively.
• Build and refine guidance and tools: Lead the development of tools and resources that cover the full scope of Later Stage work, building out what remains and strengthening what exists. Build in a way that is clear, accessible, and designed for people who will adapt and apply the guidance in their own contexts.
• Ensure coherence across the library: Build in a way that is aligned with Transcend's broader foundations, our wider collection of journey guidance and tools, and our team's specs. What you build should feel like a coherent extension of what already exists, not a standalone product or set of ideas.

Make our products accessible and actionable

• Be a thought partner to the people doing the work: Provide launch support and ongoing touchpoints for Managing Partners, Project Leads, and Design Partners leading Later Stage projects, staying close to how the work is actually unfolding in communities.
• Contribute to structured capacity building: Play an active role in how Later Stage work is represented in onboarding and other centralized learning experiences, in collaboration with Portfolio leadership and the School Design Learning & Development team.
• Keep guidance accessible and organized: In collaboration with the broader Journey Supports Team, ensure that Later Stage tools and resources are clearly organized, easy to navigate, and genuinely useful to the people who need them, not just comprehensive on paper.

Lead projects and facilitate decision-making

• Lead project teams: Serve as project lead for one or more build projects in a given quarter. Set clear direction and manage execution across a small team of JST teammates and other collaborators. Ensure that work is coherent and aligned with our centralized supports and broader org vision.
• Facilitate decision-making across stakeholders: Bring together Portfolio and Program leadership and other senior leaders to make clear, aligned decisions about Later Stage guidance and tools. Navigate complex dynamics, hold your ground when it matters, and drive decisions to resolution even when perspectives diverge.
• Contribute to the team: Be an active, collaborative member of the Journey Supports Team. Build and maintain strong relationships with strategic collaborators across the org, including Portfolio teams, the Usable Knowledge team, and the School Design Learning & Development team.

Who You Are

You are someone who gets genuinely excited about ensuring that teammates doing work in the field have what they need to do it well: the tools, the guidance, and the coherent body of ideas beneath them. You are energized by being one step removed from direct work with school partners because you understand that building strong guidance and tools has a multiplying effect: your impact shows up across every community whose Design Partner relies on what you've built. You have been close enough to the work of school transformation and model implementation — in schools and in organizations that support them — to know how hard it is and why it matters, and that closeness shapes everything you build. You nerd out on program design and take real pride in the coherence and quality of what you create, but you are not precious about your ideas: you seek out feedback constantly, and you let what you learn change your thinking. You know how to read a room, hold your ground, and move a group of people toward a decision even when the dynamics are complex or the path isn't clear. And you don't do any of this alone: you thrive working alongside a deeply collaborative team and staying tightly connected to the school design teammates whose work your guidance is ultimately meant to serve.

What You Bring

• You share a deep commitment to Transcend's mission of transforming education and a passion for designing learning experiences where all students thrive.
• You show up with curiosity, care, and a drive to make meaningful change — living into Transcend's values through how you work, connect, and lead.
• You bring school or system-level leadership experience and a background in K-12 teaching; you understand from the inside what it takes to lead change in a school community and bring that grounding to everything you build.
• You hold expert-level knowledge of implementation, continuous improvement, and sustained change management, grounded in multiple years of direct experience supporting schools or communities through this type of work. You are steeped in implementation science and are comfortable drawing on that research to inform guidance. Experience at an organization that supports schools to implement innovative models is strongly preferred.
• You have a builder's instinct: you can synthesize complex, sprawling ideas into clear, accessible, and actionable tools and guidance, developing and refining your work through multiple rounds of feedback.
• You have experience designing and facilitating learning experiences that build others' capacity to understand and apply complex guidance, with skill at meeting people where they are while holding a high bar for what strong work looks like.
• You are a skilled facilitator and decision-maker: you hold a clear point of view, you know how to navigate complex dynamics between senior leaders with differing perspectives, and you drive decisions to resolution even when the path is contested.
• You bring strong project management skills: you scope work clearly, coordinate contributors, set clear direction, and drive toward completion even in ambiguous conditions.
• You bring skill at navigating the tensions between program work and field work because you've been on both sides of that line. You know how easily centralized guidance can drift from reality, and you've built habits of listening, testing, and revising that keep your work grounded in what's actually happening in schools and communities.
• You are coachable and growth-oriented, actively seeking feedback early and often and letting it shape your thinking and your work. You thrive in environments where the guidance is still evolving, and you see iteration, including on your own approach, as a strength rather than a setback.
• You are proficient with Google Suite (required) and Notion (strongly preferred); you have familiarity with AI tools and a drive to keep learning as they evolve (required).

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.
• Panel interview with Kirsten and other members of the Journey Supports Team where we'd debrief the try-on task and dig into additional elements of the role.
• Interview with Kirsten, where we'd take a deeper look at your skills and engage in some scenarios you are likely to encounter in the role.
• Final interview with Ross Lescano Lipstein, Chief Program 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   $135,000-$180,000
• Geo Comp 2: Currently includes locations such as: San Diego; New Haven, CT; Ventura, CA   $128,250-$171,000
• Geo Comp 3: Currently Includes: Most other US locations   $121,500-$162,000

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!