Job Description
Company Description
About the Organization
KIPP Public Schools is a national network of tuition-free public charter schools that prepares students with the skills and confidence to create the future they want for themselves, their communities, and us all. We are a network of 279 schools, nearly 16,500 educators, and nearly 210,000 students and alumni.
Our mission: Together with families and communities, we create joyful, academically excellent schools that prepare students with the skills and confidence to pursue the paths they choose—college, career, and beyond—so they can lead fulfilling lives and build a more just world.
Our vision: Every child grows up free to create the future they want for themselves and their communities.
The KIPP Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports KIPP public charter schools across the country. The KIPP Foundation helps to develop outstanding educators to lead KIPP schools; provides tools and resources for excellent teaching and learning; promotes innovation; and facilitates the exchange of insights and ideas across KIPP and other public schools and organizations.
About Our Values:
Excellent Results for Students: We value results over effort and know that our work is not finished until all students thrive. We maintain high expectations for self, team, and students. We drive outcomes by operating with agility, removing barriers, differentiating support, and prioritizing student-centered solutions—especially for those at the margins.
Collective Impact: We are one team. We win together. We embody a one-team mindset by working collaboratively across teams, aligning goals, and leveraging the strengths of all teammates. We build trust-based relationships and ensure inclusive decision-making by engaging those closest to the work. We provide clarity through simple, repeatable systems and goals that enable transformational outcomes.
Courageous Action: Our belief in what we can achieve is unwavering, fueling our optimism and commitment to overcome any challenge. We demonstrate an unwavering belief in students’ potential and a commitment to addressing systemic inequities. We approach challenges with resilience, a solutions-focused mindset, and adaptability. We foster a psychologically safe environment centered on trust and accountability where feedback is encouraged. We leverage data to reflect on progress, own setbacks, celebrate successes, and continuously improve to maximize impact.
Job Description
About The Position
The Chief, Regional Impact is a new and critical role at the KIPP Foundation — one that sits at the heart of how we deliver excellence for students across every KIPP region, every day. This is a rare opportunity to shape the trajectory of an entire network of schools by ensuring the leaders closest to students and communities are operating at the highest level.
The Chief of Regional Impact reports to the Chief Schools Officer and is responsible for executing the One KIPP strategy across the network. The role has three mission-critical functions: (1) managing Regional Superintendents, who lead coordinated teams that deliver educational services to KIPP regions; (2) partnering with Regional Superintendents to support and hold regional Executive Directors accountable for delivering best-in-class academic and postsecondary outcomes; and (3) overseeing the national ED pipeline program to ensure a ready bench of leaders prepared to step into regional ED roles as openings arise. The CRI also supports a subset of regions with approved growth plans to add seats and open new schools, and maintains a dotted-line reporting relationship to the CEO on Executive Director performance, accountability, and regional board effectiveness.
At its core, this is an outcomes-accountable leadership role. The Chief of Regional Impact co-owns the academic and postsecondary performance of KIPP’s regions and is responsible for delivering measurable results across the network. The CRI manages a team of four Regional Superintendents and drives results through them — setting a high bar, holding the line on performance, and ensuring the systems, supports, and consequences are in place for every region to deliver. The CRI also coaches and develops Regional Superintendents into stronger and more effective leaders. This person must be a clear thinker, a decisive operator, and a credible presence with senior internal and external stakeholders, including regional boards.
The Chief of Regional Impact reports directly to the Chief Schools Officer and works in close, ongoing partnership with the CSO to deeply understand and operationalize the vision of regional excellence across the network. This is a high-trust relationship — the Chief of Regional Impact must be able to take that vision and translate it faithfully into systems, expectations, and leadership development without needing to be managed at every step. Success in this role means the CSO’s vision is alive and well in every region, every day.
Responsibilities
Regional Accountability and Support
Hold all KIPP regions accountable for achieving their goals on all anchor measures through the management of Regional Superintendents by insisting they set a high bar, hold the line on performance, and build the systems necessary for every region to deliver.
Design and implement the system by which we monitor results across anchor measures for all KIPP regions through a team of Regional Superintendents and intervene when performance falls short. This includes owning and managing escalations across academics, governance, and operations.
Envision and establish the strategy by which the KIPP Foundation supports regions to set priorities aligned with our One KIPP strategy across the functional areas of student outcomes, talent health, operational execution, and financial sustainability.
Identify cross-regional patterns and partner with content/program owners to scale effective practices and address systemic gaps in service of our shared goals.
Executive Leadership & Leader Accountability
In close partnership with the Chief Schools Officer, define the role that Executive Directors play in driving strong academic outcomes.
Lead Regional Superintendents to enact the accountability and support necessary in each region for EDs drive strong academic outcomes.
In alignment with other program leaders (KIPP Forward, Operations, Talent), define the role that the Executive Director plays in driving strong non-academic outcomes and set up Regional Superintendents to develop and support their portfolio of EDS to play that role with consistency across regions.
Oversee Executive Director performance management in partnership with Regional Superintendents and provide biannual updates to regional board chairs on each EDs’ progress toward goals – including strengths and opportunity, with particular emphasis on driving strong academic results.
Recommend talent decisions across the portfolio, including selection, development, and transitions of senior regional leaders.
Pod Leadership & Performance Management
Create a consistent model across all four Regional Superintendents to hold EDs accountable and coach them in the areas required to drive results. Support Regional Superintendents to apply this model consistent with regional context and scale.
Manage and develop a team of four Regional Superintendents, providing direct and candid feedback on how they are building systems of accountability, leading their teams, and delivering results across their portfolios.
Manage Regional Superintendents to design and drive a cross functional plan for each region that is aligned with our One KIPP Strategy.
Coach Regional Superintendents to effectiveness in their roles – with particular focus on their ability to hold the line of accountability, the quality of their leadership, their ability to develop EDs, and their execution across multiple streams of work in their regions in alignment with our programmatic strategies.
CEO Pipeline and Performance Management
Manage the development and execution of an ED pipeline program that systematically identifies high-potential candidates from across the network and prepares them to successfully lead a KIPP region.
Oversee ED performance management including recommendations about ED retention and support aligned with an ED vision of excellence and anchor metric results.
Partner with talent and program leaders to define the competencies, experiences, and development pathways that set future EDs up for success from day one.
Governance & Enterprise Influence
Manage Regional Superintendents to effectively partner with Chiefs and regional boards to resolve complex challenges and maintain alignment across the network.
Oversee our KIPP Network Growth strategy development and execution.
Serve as the primary point of escalation for all regions on non-academic matters — including finance, growth, and board governance — and exercise sound judgement when escalations require the attention of the Chief Schools Officer or CEO.
Qualifications
Skills and Mindsets
Mission and Student Focus: Demonstrates passion and commitment to KIPP’s mission and possesses the desire and ability to uphold KIPP’s core values (Focus on Excellent Results, Collective Impact, and Courageous Action)
Self-Awareness: Practices self-awareness at work, understanding that it is foundational to leading self, leading people, and leading results; uses reflection, self-understanding, and feedback to grow, and persist through challenges, and as a result, are cognizant of the impact of their behavior on others, and intentional about the decision to adjust or not adjust their behaviors. Displays an owner’s mindset by taking ownership of successes and failure.
Self-Management: Demonstrated record of setting and achieving ambitious goals at a systems level; co-creates long-term and annual cascading goals with their team, ensures clarity on ownership of goals and priorities, roles and responsibilities, and regularly uses data to plan and move the team towards establishing excellence in goal setting and achievement of goals; builds a positive team culture in which teammates feel ownership and accountability for their own and the broader team’s work and results.
Effective Work Management: Able to engage in long-term planning and vision setting for the organization; effective at building systems and culture that facilitate continuous improvement, ensure organizational health and viability, and enable cross-functional collaboration to drive results
Effective Teaming and Stakeholder Management: Makes decisions that promote cross-functional collaboration by dedicating resources to key org-level priorities and shifting teams accordingly. Effectively builds, maintains and leverages teams and systems to move work forward
Communication and Change Management: Able to set a compelling organizational directive for change efforts, catalyzing teams to achieve change at scale. Effectively navigates internal and external political dynamics and stakeholders to drive change efforts at the systems level; Champions KF and network-wide change and recruits internal and external sponsors.
Experience and Qualifications
15+ years of work experience including experience as a Chief Executive Officer or ED of a school system.
Bachelor’s Degree required
Ability to build operational systems and proficiency with the tools that support that system
Additional Information
Work Conditions
Travel: Extensive (~40%)
Full, exempt role
Location
It is preferred, but not mandatory for this role to be based out of a KIPP Foundation office. This role also has the option of working from a remote office full-time. KIPP Foundation offices are in NYC and Chicago.
Compensation and Benefits
In compliance with local law, we are disclosing the compensation, or a range thereof, for roles in locations where legally required. Actual salaries will vary based on several factors, including but not limited to external market data, internal equity, and relevant experience. The salary range for this position is $312,000 - $390,000. In addition, KIPP Foundation provides a variety of benefits to employees, including:
25 holidays for + 18 days additional flexible PTO days (flexible PTO increases to 23 days for years 3 and 4 and to 28 days for years 5+).
100% paid parental leave
100% coverage of the premium for employee and 75% for employee + family’s medical/dental/vision plans.
Wellness benefits such as fitness reimbursements, discounted tickets to theme parks/attractions, backup care support for children and adults/elders, and our employee assistance program
Finance Security benefits include such as a 401K retirement plan with 4% match, employer-sponsored legal plans, life/disability insurance, and flexible spending accounts
KIPP Foundation embraces the opportunity to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of the students and communities with whom we work and the world that’s around them. Being an equal opportunity employer means that we take seriously our responsibility to consider qualified candidates on the basis of merit, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, mental or physical disability, and genetic information, marital status, citizenship status, military status, protected veteran status or any other category protected by law.
