Director of Strategic Implementation & Operations

Reports to: Managing Director

Lane: Investment Lane

Job Summary

The Director of Strategic Implementation & Operations reports to the Managing Director and plays a critical leadership role in advancing Thread’s place-based strategy. This role drives site-based management and vitality by partnering with Directors of Communities, program leaders, and cross-functional stakeholders to create and reinforce repeatable behaviors, consistent operating routines, and replicable outcomes across all Relational Resource Hubs.

The Director leads large, complex projects within Investment and coordinates bodies of work that span Investment, Involvement, and Infrastructure. This role is responsible for translating strategy into disciplined execution by aligning stakeholders, managing dependencies, surfacing risks, maintaining clear project plans, and ensuring shared priorities move forward with clarity and accountability.

This role also owns key operating routines that support the stability, visibility, and effectiveness of the place-based strategy. By strengthening project execution, site-level follow-through, knowledge-management practices, and reporting rhythms, the Director ensures greater continuity and coordination across all Relational Resource Hubs while helping leaders make timely, data-informed decisions.

The Director is a key driver of core quantitative reporting for the place-based strategy, inclusive of site-based, citywide, and statewide metrics. To ensure alignment with Thread’s broader data strategy and infrastructure, this role partners closely with the back office functions and other system owners to consume and operationalize Thread’s existing data systems, dashboards, and reports rather than designing, building, or maintaining those systems.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & Cross-Functional Integration 

• Serve as a strategic implementation partner to the Managing Director and Investment leadership, helping translate lane priorities into clear projects, operating routines, reporting rhythms, and decision points.
• Orchestrate work  across Investment, Involvement and Infrastructure by synchronizing stakeholders around shared goals, roles, timelines, dependencies, risks, and definitions of success.
• Provide thought partnership and recommendations to senior leaders on implementation barriers, operational patterns, site-level variability, data trends, and opportunities to strengthen consistency across Relational Resource Hubs.
• Strengthen Investment’s culture of disciplined implementation, shared ownership, continuous learning, and data-informed decision-making.
• Model and reinforce Thread’s core values and core competencies in all aspects of cross-functional work, including meeting facilitation, documentation, communication, follow-up, escalation, and accountability.
• Coach and support program and site leaders in using project plans, operating calendars, playbooks, dashboards, reports, and knowledge-management tools to improve execution and sustain adoption over time.
• Build trust and accountability across teams by communicating clearly, naming tradeoffs, escalating barriers early, and ensuring leaders have the information needed to make timely decisions.

• Lead and coordinate large, complex initiatives that advance the place-based strategy and strengthen recruitment, engagement, and retention of students, volunteers, and collaborators.
• Own clear implementation plans from initiation through close, including goals, milestones, owners, dependencies, decision points, timelines, risks, communications, and follow-up actions.
• Coordinate cross-functional projects that span Investment, Involvement and Infrastructure, ensuring shared bodies of work remain aligned, visible, and on track.
• Provide site-based implementation support by partnering directly with program and site leaders to plan, execute, monitor, and improve work at their sites.
• Lead implementation planning and project management for annual priority initiatives and major operating “big rocks,” such as Student Enrollment, summer engagement (Youthworks, summer school), OTTC, Volunteer Leadership Recruitment, Volunteer Leadership Retreat, and other strategic initiatives as assigned.
• Project manage external partnership with Point Source Youth, including coordinating training, timelines, stakeholder communication, implementation milestones, and follow-through across relevant teams.
• Project manage relational technology initiatives that support the place-based strategy, ensuring clear coordination across users, internal stakeholders, timelines, requirements, adoption needs, and implementation milestones.
• Attend meetings with and independently of program leadership, ensuring that decisions, action steps, risks, and follow-ups are accurately captured and translated into project plans and software systems.
• Ensure project and strategic updates are posted on time according to established schedules and that key stakeholders have visibility into progress, risks, upcoming decisions, and needed action.
• Anticipate roadblocks and stuck points, surfacing them early to leadership along with recommended solutions or decision options.

Site-Based Operations & Vitality

• Reinforce standards established by Directors of Communities and Director of Practice, Learning & Quality through aligned execution, follow-up, communication, and monitoring across sites.
• Help reduce performance and outcome variability across Investment by supporting consistent site-level execution, monitoring progress against shared expectations, and escalating barriers that may affect sustained adoption or stability.
• Build predictable, year-over-year continuity across Investment by strengthening consistent site-level routines while preserving space for thoughtful customization based on the needs of specific site communities.
• Partner with Directors of Communities and site leaders to identify where routines, tools, communication, training, or follow-up need to be strengthened in order to support reliable implementation.
• Track implementation and operational patterns across Relational Resource Hubs and identify where additional support, clarification, training, or leadership attention may be needed.
• Support leaders in moving from one-time project completion to sustained operating practices that reinforce consistency, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Coordinate quality assurance activities as assigned, ensuring that follow-up, documentation, and learning are incorporated into ongoing operating practices.

Knowledge Management & Operating Rhythm

• Own the design, structure, and ongoing improvement of Investment Lane knowledge-management systems, ensuring that place-based strategy materials are organized, accessible, current, consistently used, and aligned to the operating needs of Relational Resource Hubs.
• Serve as the Investment Lane owner for the Thread Guide update process, ensuring needed updates are scoped, prioritized, assigned to the appropriate content owners, completed on clear timelines, and incorporated into the broader knowledge-management system.
• Establish and maintain the systems, routines, and schedules that ensure Investment Lane materials — including the Thread Guide, playbooks, policies and procedures, intranet content, event templates, programmatic checklists, work guides, project plans, and other operating tools — are reviewed, updated, maintained, archived, and communicated in a consistent way.
• Partner with content experts, Directors of Communities, functional leaders, the Director of Practice, Learning & Quality, and other stakeholders to clarify ownership for updates to the Thread Guide and related materials, ensuring the people closest to the work own the content while this role owns the process, timeline, structure, and follow-through.
• Partner with the Director of Practice, Learning & Quality to ensure practice standards, playbook content, coaching priorities, and quality-reflection findings are reflected in Investment Lane knowledge-management systems and daily operating tools.
• Maintain and strengthen the knowledge infrastructure that helps program and site leaders know where to find information, how to use shared tools, what has changed, what actions are required, and how core practices should be implemented across sites.
• Champion the integration of the Thread Guide, playbooks, policies, work guides, and operating tools into daily operations, ensuring they are not only documented but actively used, reinforced, and improved across teams and sites.
• Own and maintain the annual place-based operating calendar, ensuring site-based and city/statewide routines, events, deadlines, reporting cycles, Thread Guide review cycles, playbook review cycles, training touchpoints, project milestones, and planning processes are clearly coordinated, visible, and up to date across relevant teams.
• Use project management software, knowledge-management systems, and other operating tools to help program and site leaders deliver on the core elements of Thread Guide guidance and playbooks while preserving space for site-specific customization.
• Identify gaps in how information is captured, organized, shared, reviewed, and acted upon across Investment, and lead improvements to strengthen clarity, consistency, usability, and follow-through.
• Ensure changes to core materials, operating routines, project plans, Thread Guide guidance, and reporting expectations are communicated clearly and incorporated into the Investment Lane operating rhythm.

Insights, Reporting & Data Operations

• Ensure scorecards, dashboards, and reports connected to the place-based strategy are distributed, reviewed, understood, and acted upon throughout the Investment team.
• Partner closely with the back office functions and other data/system owners to ensure Investment leaders can effectively use existing reports, dashboards, and data tools.
• Review data reports and perform targeted analysis to identify patterns, risks, gaps, root causes, and opportunities for improvement.
• Translate quantitative and qualitative data into accessible, compelling, and decision-ready insights for leaders and stakeholders.
• Make clear, actionable recommendations to leadership based on findings from project implementation, site-level execution, operating routines, and data analysis.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders to ensure programmatic data-hygiene tasks are completed on time, recommending new tasks, training adjustments, or edits to data-capture methods based on observations and feedback.
• Support lane meeting, leadership, and board-level reporting by helping analyze data, identify the most relevant insights, and develop the narrative needed to communicate progress, risks, opportunities, and key decisions.
• Monitor whether reporting routines are helping leaders understand progress against the place-based strategy and recommend improvements to strengthen visibility, accountability, and learning.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience, Master’s strongly preferred.
• Six or more years of project management experience, ideally managing multiple complex, cross-functional projects simultaneously.
• PMP (Project Management Professional) certification is a plus.
• Demonstrated experience with project and process management tools and practices.
• Experience driving consistency, adoption, and replicable outcomes across multiple sites, teams, or locations is a plus.
• Experience with knowledge management—building and maintaining playbooks, process documentation, and intranet or knowledge systems.
• Excellent project management skills with the ability to organize complex tasks and prioritize multiple assignments.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, especially the ability to deliver quantitative and qualitative data in a compelling way.
• Comfort using data tools such as Salesforce and Tableau to pull and interpret reports and dashboards; building or maintaining these systems is not required for this role.
• Collaborative approach to finding solutions.
• Prior non-profit experience or knowledge is a plus.
• Ability to clearly communicate and live out Thread’s core values and core competencies.

Thread Employment Benefits (Full-time) 

• 12 weeks of Paid parental leave 
• Competitive salaries, meaningful equity; 403(b) plan 
• 100% employee coverage of Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance
• 10 Paid holidays 
• 4 weeks of PTO in year 1, increase to 5 weeks in year 2 
• 5 days of sick and safe leave 
• 3 floater holidays 
• Annual Health and Wellness reimbursement 
• Access to counseling/therapy at no cost 
• Paid Sabbatical after 6 years of employment