Director, Program Operations

How You’ll Contribute

The Business Operations team supports the design, development, and growth of a well-functioning organization to maximize the effectiveness of the Society’s work. This team provides the Society with critical support functions, including the infrastructure, systems, policies and processes that help us achieve our mission in a responsible, accountable, efficient and ethical manner. The Business Operations team is comprised of a number of departments, including Program Operations, Measurement Evaluation and Research, Digital + Technology, Library + Archives, Operational Initiatives, and General Services & Facilities.

The Director of Program Operations fills a critical role in realizing successful outcomes for National Geographic Society Programs. The director leads a team of embedded analysts who implement effective business processes and ensure system adoption for programmatic work. These activities enable accurate and effective reporting and operational efficiency in accordance with the organizational policies and priorities of NGS. The director will guide the operational, analytical, and technical expertise of the organization to opportunities aligned with the mission of National Geographic Society. They ensure strategic discovery processes are leveraged to identify and define opportunities, bringing structure to business cases for new or evolving workflows, systems, and technology/special projects. They supervise and amplify the work of the embedded staff by promoting collaboration and learnings across the organization. They offer important grounding and strategic insight for NGS as a unifying point of contact to increase transparency and streamline communication. Through thoughtful partnership with Digital Product and Technology teams, they ensure best in class systems are created and deployed to deliver efficient workflows, easy to access analytics, and exceptional constituent experiences. Working in partnership with Measurement, Evaluation, and Research (MER), they co-direct the definition, articulation, and prioritization of data access, reporting, and analytic needs of the company, delivering business intelligence, data visualization, and analysis to inform key business decisions. They value collaboration and transparency, promoting these attributes across all work ensuring efficiency and driving successful outcomes.

Your Impact

Responsibilities Include

• Team Building and Supervision (25%): Direct, mentor, and coach embedded leads as a cohesive unit to deliver exceptional work through continuous learning and adapting. Build effective workflows within the Program Operations unit to ensure timely and effective responsiveness to the data, process, and system needs of program units across NG.
• Strategic Planning (20%): Co-lead and facilitate activities and special projects assigned to Business Operations to develop and execute enterprise strategies. Monitor progress towards objectives and adapt plans for future evolutions.
• Reporting, Analysis, and Data Compliance ( 20%): Work with business owners and the MER team to understand measures of success and reporting needs. Design and produce reports and dashboards to inform business decisions through the prioritization and delivery of cross-functional requests for data, reporting, and analytics. Partner with Business Operations teams to document and inform architectural needs, data definitions, and ensure National Geographic’s programmatic data practices, critical business rules and processes are in compliance with enterprise standards.
• Workflows and Business Process ( 10%): Direct the documentation of workflows and processes generating future state recommendations and solutions which create value, efficiencies, and drive key results against defined goals. Amplify the work of the embedded business analysts to assess, optimize, and cultivate best practices, standard operating procedures, and use cases for business-critical applications (project management and CRM tools as examples). Working with the broader Business Operations team, promote connections across divisions to inform a cohesive staff and end user experience across platforms.
• Requirements Elicitation and Documentation ( 15%): Supervise the documentation of operational business requirements in the form of clearly defined problem statements, use cases, and user stories. Partner with Technology leads and business units to refine functional requirements and acceptance criteria. Direct the definition and discovery for requests to include current state process maps, timelines, information models, and other assets to complement and accelerate the teams working to develop and deliver business solutions. Identify, prioritize, and maintain cross-functional enhancement requests maximizing value of NG systems. Stay up to date on platform features and marketplace opportunities across the tools used by National Geographic Society.
• Training and Stakeholder Management (10%): Direct a support framework for staff including overseeing the development of reference guides and the deployment of a strategic adoption, engagement, and role specific training program tailored to support adoption of National Geographic Society’s tools, systems, and procedures. Oversee ongoing collaboration and coordination efforts to engage cross-division stakeholders in user groups, change management, and continuous improvement feedback for enterprise initiatives and platforms.

What You’ll Bring

Educational Background

Bachelor's degree, Master’s degree or equivalent experience preferred

Minimum Years and Type of Experience

10+ years of proven leadership in business systems analysis, project and/or product management;

5+ years of management experience. Proven success in designing and delivering business functional solutions especially in an environment with shifting and competing priorities

Necessary Knowledge and Skills

• Expertise in producing and optimizing reports and visualizations that support data-driven decision making
• A history of leading successful projects and developing top performing teams
• Experience creating detailed reports and dashboards and giving presentations
• Skilled in elicitation of business requirements with the ability to communicate functional design objectives to technical teams
• Ability to clearly communicate complex technical concepts to business and project managers
• Writing skills including a history of writing business cases, user stories, use case, standard operating procedures, process flows, and data definitions
• Deep understanding of the business’s application of systems integration, web technologies, database architecture, design thinking and Agile methodologies, CRM management, and project management best practices

Desired Qualifications

• Deeply collaborative work style with the ability to engage with and bring together diverse areas of thought and personalities through effective facilitation
• Superior interpersonal communication skills at all levels and across functional groups with the ability to influence stakeholders and work closely with them to determine solutions
• Excellent planning, organizational, and time management skills and the ability to execute against numerous work streams concurrently

Supervision

3+ direct reports

W e encourage you to apply even if your experience is not a 100% match with the position. We are looking for someone with relevant skills and experience, not a checklist that exactly matches the job description. We want to help you grow and in return, you help us grow into a stronger, more inclusive organization.