The right person for this role has spent a career proving that great process is a force multiplier — not bureaucracy — and has the instinct to feel the line between too much process and too little, and to stay on the right side of it.
Responsibilities
1. Planning & Roadmapping
Co-design and steward the cross-functional planning calendar for the Product organization — coordinating annual planning cycles, aligned artifacts, delivery expectations, and planned moments of alignment with Sales and GTM. The calendar that actually gets used is the one the people running it helped shape; you build it with Suite Leads, the Resource Allocation team, and GTM partners — not in a vacuum.
Resolve the misalignment that exists today — inconsistent work planning methodologies across suites, mismatched planning timeframes (platform, digital product, and suites all on different cadences), lack of backward planning for cross-team dependencies, and rolling release cycles out of sync with the school year — by introducing the lightest framework that genuinely solves the problem.
Maintain dynamic business unit and cross-product roadmaps and ensure alignment across all other planning functions, building shared visibility into where the portfolio is headed and how dependencies fit together.
2. End-to-End Launch Planning & Related Processes
Design the standardized end-to-end launch process across business units — including launch readiness checklists, health checks, cross-stakeholder touchpoints, release documentation, and clean flow of data from product to supply chain.
Co-develop the launch playbook with Go-To-Market, Sales, Customer Experience, Marketing, and Supply Chain — building it with the functions executing against it, not imposing it on them. The teams who run launches today have hard-won knowledge; your job is to surface and codify it, not overwrite it.
Codify ready-to-launch protocols that ensure pricing is finalized, manufacturing and distribution are confirmed, market collateral is approved, and Sales and CX teams are fully enabled — every time, regardless of which suite is launching, and without adding meaningful overhead to the teams doing the work.
3. Stage Gates & Decision Frameworks
Steward and continuously evolve the five-gate stage gate process that the organization is currently rolling out — including the differentiated tracks (e.g., new programs, new markets, in-market management) so that gating is right-sized to the investment and not a one-size-fits-all forcing function.
Co-develop refinements with suite leaders and stage gate sponsors as pilots (Science V2, CA K-8 Literacy, and others) generate real-world learnings. The gate process should feel like it belongs to the people running it, not like compliance imposed from outside the suite.
Manage gate review orchestration — scheduling, materials, decision documentation, and tracking — so decisions made in stage gate meetings actually stick. You stop the “decisions get unmade” pattern that has dogged the org, without turning gate prep into a second job for the teams.
Own scope change management — the process for evaluating and approving changes after a gate has been passed — so the organization can respond to legitimate new information without descending into the “culture of yes” that erodes delivery.
Partner with Finance & Analytics to link funding and resourcing decisions to gate readiness, helping deliver against the 2026 KPI that 60% of 2027 R&D spend is vetted through stage gates or an independent strategic framework.
4. Spot Gaps and Build Lightweight, Co-Developed Process
Identify new areas where process infrastructure is needed: you scan the organization continuously — listening to Suite Leads, project managers, and shared services about where work is breaking down — and you triage where new process is genuinely the answer (versus better tools, clearer ownership, or simply leaving things alone).
Build process that earns its keep: your default is the lightest possible framework that solves the problem at hand. You instinctively distinguish between rigor that protects delivery and overhead that drains it, and you reach for the former without slipping into the latter.
Retire and simplify as actively as you create. When a process isn’t working, you change it; when a process isn’t needed, you retire it. You see the absence of a framework as a hypothesis to test, not a mandate to fill.
Build and lead the central team that designs, iterates on, and supports critical processes and associated tools and templates — while making sure business units have what they need to execute consistently.
Establish a continuous improvement loop — instrumenting the processes you own, learning from pilots, and iterating quickly based on what you (and the people doing the work) observe in the field.
Who You Are…
A Lightweight-First Process Designer: Your instinct is always toward the lightest framework that solves the problem. You see overhead as a tax on delivery, and you have the judgment to know when more process is the answer and when it isn’t. You can feel the line between too much and too little process — and you stay on the right side of it.
A Co-Creator, Not an Imposer: You build process with the people who will live with it. You start every engagement with deep listening — to suite leaders, PMs, designers, content leads — and you ship frameworks that feel like extensions of how teams already work, not corrections imposed from above.
A Gap-Spotter: You actively scan the organization for places where process infrastructure could unlock impact — and equally for places where existing process should be simplified or retired. You triage thoughtfully: not every gap needs a framework, and not every framework is worth keeping.
An Operator’s Operator: You have run real launches, real planning cycles, and real stage gates — and you bring that experiential credibility to every conversation with suite leaders. You know what overhead feels like from the receiving end, which is why you’re so careful not to create more of it.
A Continuous Improver: You see every pilot as a learning opportunity, every miss as a signal, and every win as a stepping stone. You instrument your work and let the data — and the people doing the work — guide refinement.
An Expert Navigator: You know how to build influence across a matrixed organization to get things done without formal authority. You are the person leaders trust to make a fair call when process and urgency are in tension.
Basic Qualifications
8+ years of progressive experience in business operations, program management, process design, or product operations leadership — ideally in technology, education, media, publishing, or another product- and content-driven business.
Demonstrated track record of building lightweight, well-adopted process: frameworks that teams actually use rather than binders that gather dust. Bonus points if you can point to a process you deliberately simplified or retired.
Proven experience designing and rolling out core operating processes at scale — stage gates, planning cadences, launch readiness frameworks, scope change governance, or analogous frameworks in complex, multi-product organizations.
Strong bias toward partnership and co-creation: you have designed and rolled out processes by listening first, prototyping with operators, and iterating publicly. You don’t ship V1 from a corner office.
Track record of leading cross-functional product launches end-to-end — including the GTM, Sales, CX, Marketing, and Supply Chain coordination that turn a “ready to ship” product into a successful one in market.
People management experience — you have built and led teams of process designers, program managers, or business operators, and you’ve grown talent in those roles.
Comfort with both strategy and execution — you can articulate the “why” of a new process to senior leadership and the “how” to the program manager building the template.
K–12 or education context preferred — familiarity with curriculum development, the school adoption cycle, or the general complexity of the American education system is a meaningful advantage.
Educational foundation: Undergraduate degree required; MBA or advanced degree preferred.
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