Vice President, Strategic Finance

The mission of Acelero, Inc. is to design and deliver research and evidence-based approaches to eliminate the gaps between young children's inherent potential and their achievement in school and life. With our partners, we accelerate child and family outcomes that honor all of the aspirations and cultures of the communities we serve. Our values: Data-Informed Learning; Transparent & Open Communication; Growth Mindset; Championing Equality; Caring Teams & Communities.

About Acelero and the Opportunity

Acelero is backed by a premier group of mission-aligned institutional investors committed to both financial performance and measurable social impact. BlackRock Impact Opportunities Fund, Builders Fund, and A-Street are among the organization's largest equity partners, supporting Acelero's continued growth, innovation, and long-term impact for children and families.

Acelero, Inc. is a national early childhood education organization operating across a complex, multi-entity platform that includes federally funded Head Start programs and Shine Early Learning partnerships. With approximately 1,800 employees supporting over 60 schools, Acelero combines deep mission commitment with the scale and complexity of a growing enterprise.

This role offers a senior finance leader the opportunity to shape the next phase of Acelero's financial strategy and infrastructure. Working closely with the Chief Financial Officer and senior leadership, the Vice President, Strategic Finance will strengthen enterprise planning and forecasting, sharpen the analysis behind growth and investment decisions, and help leaders translate data into stronger operational and strategic decisions.

Job Summary

The Vice President, Strategic Finance is a high-impact executive responsible for the organization’s enterprise financial planning, analysis, and strategic decision support. This role serves as the primary architect for enterprise-wide financial planning, building the scalable models and planning processes necessary to support Acelero Inc. and Shine Early Learning.

The VP, Strategic Finance leads the transition from traditional reporting to forward-looking, driver-based insight, overseeing a high-performing team to deliver rigorous budgeting, dynamic forecasting, and complex capacity analysis across federal and commercial funding streams. By pairing rigorous financial analysis with strong business partnership, this leader provides the data-informed insights and operational stability required to support the organization’s growth and corporate and impact initiatives. This role provides direct supervision to the Senior Directors of Head Start and Shine Finance, the Director of Budgets and Compliance, and Shine Fiscal Consultants.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Budgeting Lifecycle Ownership: Own the end-to-end management of the annual budgeting process, including the technical consolidation and QA of all budgets across federal delegates, Acelero Inc., Shine business lines, and overhead.
• Dynamic Forecasting: Lead the organization’s shift to dynamic forecasting and forward-looking scenario analysis (e.g., 9+3 rolling forecasts) to drive agile decision-making and annual re-forecasting.

• Commercial Growth Modeling: Oversee the financial design for new products and partnerships, ensuring consistent revenue recognition standards (ASC 606) and margin expansion targets.

• B2A & Performance Reporting: Direct the monthly Budget-to-Actual (B2A) process and variance analysis, partner with business unit leaders, diagnosing operational bottlenecks and mandate proactive, corrective fiscal actions across the enterprise.

• Payroll & Capacity Analysis: Oversee complex staffing capacity analysis and monthly payroll allocation updates, ensuring optimal resource utilization across Federal and commercial streams.
• Narrative Leadership: Architect Board-level financial presentations, translating complex operational data and long-range forecasts into a cohesive strategic narrative for executive leadership and external stakeholders.

• Systems Roadmap: Partner with technical teams and external vendors to set priorities for the financial technology landscape (currently Vena and NetSuite, with HubSpot and Workday integrations), ensuring the multi-year roadmap supports planning, reporting, and decision-making needs.
• Reporting & Dashboards: Guide the use of BI and data visualization tools (e.g., PowerBI) to reduce manual reporting and provide real-time dashboards and predictive growth-lever modeling to budget owners.
• Process Automation: Identify opportunities to automate manual financial processes, including grant spend-down tracking and cross-system data flow, and partner with technical owners to prioritize and implement them.
• Data Integrity: Partner with systems and data owners to maintain consistent, reliable financial data across platforms.

• Consultant Oversight: Provide executive leadership to the group of fiscal consultants delivering direct support to Shine partners, ensuring high-quality technical assistance and coaching.
• Grant & DRS Strategy: Lead the development and quality assurance of complex grant budgets, including competitive Designated Renewal System (DRS) applications and blended/braided child care subsidy models.
• Partner Performance: Act as the principal financial strategist for Shine partners, advising on financial and grant management strategy, ensuring their fiscal integrity through robust compliance frameworks, and influencing their long-term sustainability by blending/braiding funding sources.

• Senior Leadership: Supervise, coach, and develop a senior team including the Senior Director, Shine Finance; Senior Director, Head Start Finance; Director, Budgets and Compliance; and Shine Fiscal Consultants delivering direct support to Shine partners.

• Culture of Excellence: Foster a culture of technical proficiency and strategic partnership, ensuring the finance team is leveraged as a high-value consultant to the broader organization.

Non-Essential Duties:

• Perform any and all other duties (or functions) as assigned.

Job Specifications

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to carry out each essential duty in a satisfactory manner. The job specifications listed are representative of the education and experience, the physical requirements, as well as the knowledge, skill and/or ability (KSAs) that are generally necessary for the role. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Job Requirements:

1. Education: MBA or Master’s in Finance/Accounting preferred; CPA a plus.

2. Experience: 10+ years of progressive finance experience, including senior leadership in a complex, multi-entity environment. Experience in a PE-backed, investor-backed, privately held, or high-growth organization is preferred. Education-sector experience is not required.

3. Financial Modeling & Systems: Expert-level financial modeling and driver-based planning skills, with a track record of designing and directing sophisticated models. Experience leading or significantly improving a planning, EPM, or finance-systems implementation is preferred; expertise in specific platforms (e.g., NetSuite, Vena) is not required.

4. Domain Expertise: Experience with commercial revenue models and revenue recognition, including familiarity with ASC 606. Knowledge of Federal Grant management (Uniform Guidance) and Head Start is a plus but can be learned on the job.

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities:

• Strategic & Technical Fluency: Ability to build complex financial models and partner effectively on the systems that power them, aligning financial objectives with mission and growth priorities.

• High-Impact Execution: Ability to operate with high autonomy and influence at the C-Suite and Board level.

• Communication: Proven ability to translate complex financial data into actionable insights for non-financial stakeholders, executive leadership, and Boards.

• Change Leadership: Demonstrated ability to lead complex organizational change, build stakeholder commitment, and drive sustained adoption of new processes and ways of working.

• Analytical Rigor: Exceptional ability to master detail while maintaining a high-level strategic perspective.

• Technical Proficiency: Expert-level financial modeling skills and working familiarity with mid-to-enterprise level accounting and budgeting software (e.g., NetSuite, Vena, MIP).

• Agility: Comfort operating in a fast-paced environment with shifting priorities across public and private sectors.

Location, Travel & Compensation

• Location and Travel: This is a fully remote, U.S.-based position. The Vice President will participate in periodic in-person leadership meetings, the annual Finance Summit, operating-site and partner visits, and occasional Board-related meetings. Light quarterly travel expected (5-10% annually).
• Compensation: The anticipated base salary range is $180,000-$200,000. The position is also eligible for an annual performance incentive, comprehensive benefits, and a meaningful VP-level equity award.

Application Process

Acelero has retained DGW Group to lead this search. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis; to be considered, candidates are encouraged to complete the application here by October 15th.