Ascendium Education Group

Title: Director of Strategic Communications, Education Philanthropy Location: Madison, Wisconsin, 53718, United States Department: Managers Job Description: The Director of Strategic Communications will lead the development and execution of a comprehensive communications strategy for Ascendium’s Education Philanthropy. This role ensures that the philanthropy’s perspectives, insights, and impact are clearly articulated and amplified across key audiences, including grantees, policymakers, partners, and peer funders. While the broader organization maintains a centralized communications function focused on execution (e.g., digital, design, and production), this role serves as the embedded strategic communications leader for the philanthropy. The Director brings deep subject-matter expertise in philanthropy, postsecondary education, workforce training, and access to opportunity—translating program priorities into clear, compelling narratives.This is a highly collaborative, hands-on leadership role requiring both strategic vision and day-to-day execution. This hybrid role is based in Ascendium’s Madison, Wisconsin, headquarters location and will generally work in the office three days per week (Tues.-Thur.) and have the option of two days working remotely. The planned salary for this position is approximately $130,000 with potential for higher compensation commensurate with experience. Job Responsibilities On a day-to-day basis, you may do the following. Strategic Leadership - Develop and lead a strategic communications agenda aligned with Ascendium’s philanthropic goals and priorities. - Define and refine Ascendium’s voice, narrative, and positioning as a funder across key issue areas addressed through its grantmaking. - Identify opportunities to elevate the work and impact of grantees and influence broader field-level conversations and policy deliberations, particularly in service of specific grantmaking portfolio objectives. - Translate complex programmatic strategies into clear, compelling messaging for diverse audiences. Content Development & Thought Leadership - Oversee the creation of high-quality written and multimedia content. - Serve as a senior writer and editor, directly producing and refining key communications and supporting other staff in writing pieces for public distribution. - Ensure consistency and quality across all external-facing materials. - Partner with staff across units within the philanthropy to surface insights, stories, and lessons from grantmaking. Internal Communications & Alignment - Lead internal communications efforts within the philanthropy team to ensure alignment across teams and initiatives. - Collaborate proactively across the philanthropy leadership team to gather input, synthesize perspectives, and align messaging. - Support communications to and engagement of the Board of Directors, including preparation of materials and messaging. - Operate effectively within a matrixed organizational structure, balancing multiple stakeholders and priorities. External Engagement & Partnerships - Oversee strategic media and field engagement efforts, including partnerships with journalists, outlets, and thought leaders, and strategic use of conference sponsorships. - Oversee initiatives that position the organization as a leader in key issue areas. - Provide strategic leadership for convenings, events, and public engagements that advance strategic goals. Team Leadership & Management - Supervise and develop an initial team of two staff (currently a writer/comms manager and a senior program officer for strategic engagement), with responsibility for scaling the team over time. - Foster a collaborative, high-performing team culture focused on quality, clarity, and impact. - Provide coaching and professional development to team members. Cross-Organizational Collaboration - Serve as the primary liaison to the organization’s central communications team, which manages digital channels, social media, and design. - Translate programmatic priorities into clear communications plans and requests that align with centralized processes and timelines. - Advocate for and ensure that subject-matter expertise and strategic intent are reflected in final outputs. - Coordinate messaging and execution across teams to maintain consistency while enabling flexibility and responsiveness to program needs. - Build strong working relationships that support both efficient execution and high-quality, mission-aligned communications. Budget & Vendor Management - Manage a communications budget, including planning and allocation of resources. - Identify, source, and manage external consultants and contractors as needed. - Ensure high-quality deliverables and strong return on investment from external partners. Knowledge and Skill Requirements A highly qualified candidate will possess the following. - 8–12+ years of experience in strategic communications, public affairs, journalism, or a related field. - Demonstrated experience developing and executing communications strategies in complex organizations. - Deep familiarity with issues related to philanthropy, postsecondary education, workforce development, or related policy areas. - Proven ability to translate complex ideas into clear, compelling narratives. - Exceptional writing and editing skills, with experience producing a wide range of content. - Strong strategic thinking and ability to connect communications to organizational goals and impact. - Experience working in matrixed environments with multiple stakeholders. - Strong interpersonal and collaboration skills; ability to influence without direct authority. - Experience managing staff and developing teams. - Ability to balance strategic leadership with hands-on execution. - Experience managing staff and developing teams. - Ability to balance strategic leadership with hands-on execution. - Knowledge equivalent to the completion of a bachelor’s degree in counseling, education, business, or a related field of - Valid state-issued driver’s license. About Ascendium Ascendium is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has helped millions of learners pursue postsecondary education since 1967, when we were formed to help fulfill the promise of the landmark Higher Education Act of 1965. Over the years, we’ve grown to become the nation’s largest federal student loan guarantor, providing information, tools, and counseling to help millions of borrowers nationwide avoid default and keep the door to reenrollment open. Using our years of experience in the student loan industry, we’ve developed a suite of products and services that support academic achievement, financial wellness, and student loan repayment success. We use the net proceeds from our business operations to fund our education philanthropy. Our strategic grantmaking provides funding to organizations that increase the number of low-income learners who succeed in postsecondary education and workforce training as critical pathway to upward mobility, regardless of economic background, race, rurality, or history of incarceration, or other factors. Through grantmaking and related investments in evidence-building and strategic field engagement, we seek to identify emerging innovations and reforms, validate their effectiveness, and expand proven strategies to promote large-scale, systemic change. Our philanthropy is focused on addressing systemic barriers to upward mobility, which derive from class disparities in opportunity, as well as from policies and practices of exclusion and discrimination. As we strive to continually strengthen our potential for impact, we take responsibility as a funder for learning and evolving our practice to ensure that our grantmaking reflects the root causes of barriers to opportunity for all low-income learners. To that end, we are committed to ongoing learning to build our internal capacity and strengthen the ability of our grantmaking to advance equitable opportunity.

About Ascendium Ascendium is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has helped millions of learners pursue postsecondary education since 1967, when we were formed to help fulfill the promise of the landmark Higher Education Act of 1965. Over the years, we’ve grown to become the nation’s largest federal student loan guarantor, providing information, tools, and counseling to help millions of borrowers nationwide avoid default and keep the door to reenrollment open. Using our years of experience in the student loan industry, we’ve developed a suite of products and services that support academic achievement, financial wellness, and student loan repayment success. We use the net proceeds from our business operations to fund our education philanthropy. Our strategic grantmaking provides funding to organizations that increase the number of low-income learners who succeed in postsecondary education and workforce training as critical pathway to upward mobility, regardless of economic background, race, rurality, or history of incarceration. Through that grantmaking and related investments in evidence-building and strategic field engagement, we seek to identify emerging innovations and reforms, validate their effectiveness, and expand proven strategies to promote large-scale, systemic change. Our philanthropy is focused on addressing systemic barriers to upward mobility, which derive from class disparities in opportunity, as well as from policies and practices of exclusion and discrimination. As we strive to continually strengthen our potential for impact, we take responsibility as a funder for learning and evolving our practice to ensure that our grantmaking reflects the root causes of barriers to opportunity for all low-income learners. To that end, we are committed to ongoing learning to build our internal capacity and strengthen the ability of our grantmaking to advance equitable opportunity. Purpose of the Position In partnership with the Vice President—Planning, Learning & Impact (PLI), deputy directors in the planning, learning and impact team provide leadership and oversight for at least one of the PLI team’s core learning responsibilities: (1) Ascendium’s operations as a funder, (2) Ascendium’s grantmaking strategy and its execution, and (3) Ascendium’s North Star. This deputy director supports and supervises one team member primarily responsible for execution of activity in the first category. In addition, operating across all three categories, this role is to develop and implement a strong internal infrastructure to help facilitate collaboration and ongoing learning across Ascendium’s matrixed teams. It will help team members effectively elevate Ascendium Education Philanthropy’s achievements, challenges, lessons learners to continuously improve our work and advance progress towards our philanthropic goals. This position sits alongside three other deputy directors responsible for the core grantmaking strategies (Expand, Support, Connect) and another deputy director in planning, learning and impact. This role is currently a remotely based position, with the expectation of travel to the Madison, WI, headquarters for semi-annual staff meetings in addition to other travel as required for the position. The starting salary range for this position is $145,000-$160,000. Job Responsibilities On a day-to-day basis, you may do the following. Develop and oversee processes, practices, and tools required to support organizational learning. - Develop and steward a cohesive vision and implementation of the internal learning infrastructure for Ascendium Education Philanthropy. - Create and implement processes for engaging Ascendium Education Philanthropy staff in sensemaking and learning from work in ways that are relevant, timely, and applicable to their work. - Facilitate and further refine emerging processes that bring together staff to reflect on and improve execution of discrete portfolios. - Develop and then execute processes that bring together staff to reflect on and improve execution of three overall strategies (Expand, Support, Connect). - Identify and then build cross-strategy learning opportunities about shared strategy components (e.g., state policy, technical assistance). - Create, along with the Senior Strategy Officers and leadership team, opportunities to learn about and deepen our commitment to the learner populations named in our North Star. - Liaise with other internal committees and roles, which have responsibility for supporting targeted learning needs across the division, to help create calendar of cohesive, intentional learning opportunities through the year. - Create tools that undergird structured strategy review and planning processes that support staff in understanding the impact of and learning from its work. - Support staff to— and, at times, directly— extract, synthesize, share, organize and apply strategic insights and lessons learned. - Regularly plan and facilitate staff meetings related to systematic learning for ongoing strategy refinement and improved funder operations. - Prepare reports and other materials to communicate strategy learning to Ascendium’s board of directors and others, in partnership with Vice President—Planning, Learning and Impact. - Provide internal and external expertise on topics related to learning within philanthropy and represent Ascendium’s philanthropy in strategic field engagements. Deputies attend 6 to 8 conferences or other offsite meetings annually. - Develop and maintain relationships with other philanthropic staff responsible for monitoring, learning and evaluation and for strategy planning to exchange information and leverage each other’s efforts. Manage and develop a team member focused on learning about Ascendiums’ operations with contributing to the leadership team. - Provide day-to-day management of one existing team member focused on leading the design, collection and use of data and evidence to improve the funder practices, policies and procedures most directly in our control. - Recruit, vet, and oversee a hiring process for new team members when the opportunity arises for new hires, in partnership with Ascendium’s HR team and the Vice President – Planning, Learning and Impact. - Provider regular performance feedback, coaching and support, including identifying and supporting direct report’s professional development in alignment with their roles and strategy objectives. - Serve as a member of the Education Philanthropy leadership team supporting development and execution of cross-team priorities within division-wide annual goals, development and accountability for annual administration budgets, conducting periodic policy reviews, and practicing shared accountability towards common goals. Collaborate within and across units - Collaborate with the deputy director in planning, learning and impact to design processes that support people to skillfully leverage findings from research and evaluation, as well as other forms of data, to support internal learning, sensemaking, and well-evidenced storytelling. - Collaborate with Vice President and deputy directors in education grantmaking to ensure learning processes effectively inform refinements to strategy design and execution, as well as funder operations. - Collaborate with the Director, Grantmaking Policy & Operations and the Grants Management teams to maximize the use of our grants management database for strategy learning. Knowledge and Skill Requirements A highly qualified candidate will possess the following. - Knowledge equivalent to an advanced degree, with training in social science, education, public policy, nonprofit or business management, organizational change, or other related fields. - At least 7-10 years of professional experience, with prior experience working at or in close partnership with philanthropic organizations. - Knowledge of key topics in postsecondary education and workforce training. - A track record of supporting group learning, including developing structures and practices to collect and synthesize a wide variety of inputs, from experience gained on the job to formal evaluation findings - Experienced facilitator that creates psychologically safe spaces where staff can make meaning out of data and identify opportunities to act on those findings - Proficient in integrating work across various strategies and breaking down siloes to unlocked shared insights - Familiarity with research and evaluation, including both qualitative and quantitative methods - Strong project management skills with demonstrated ability to facilitate the work of multiple teams Other Information Ascendium offers an outstanding benefits package designed to provide employees and their families with a high degree of security. These benefits include, but are not limited to: - Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance. - Employer-provided legal insurance. - Generous time off, including up to eight weeks of paid parental leave. - Student loan repayment assistance and tuition reimbursement. - Retirement savings plan with employer match. Ascendium provides equal employment opportunity to all individuals regardless of their race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, creed, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by state or federal law. H-1B sponsorship (initiation or transfer) is not available for this position. If you would like assistance with the application process, please email Ascendium Human Resources. We invite all applicants to complete the Voluntary Affirmative Action questions when submitting application materials. The questions are found at the end of the online application process. To learn more about our commitment to Equal Employment Opportunity, please visit the Ascendium Careers webpage. Ascendium requires criminal, employment, and education background investigations before hiring. #LI-DNI