Chief People Officer

Company Description

KIPP TEAM & Family Schools · Newark, Camden, Paterson, South Florida 

We serve more than 11,000 students today, and we plan to serve 15,000 by 2030. That growth depends on one thing: great people in front of our students and great leaders running our schools.

Most Chief People Officer roles are about keeping a system running. This one is about building the talent engine for a network that's growing by nearly 40% in four years, across four cities and two states. If you've wanted to design the people strategy for a growing organization, rather than just maintain one, keep reading.

Who we are

KIPP TEAM & Family Schools (KTAF) is a network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools in Newark, Camden, and Paterson, New Jersey, and in Miami, Florida. We're part of the national KIPP network. We exist to prepare our students for success in college and in life.  KIPP students are nearly three times as likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than their peers.

Today we have more than 1,500 staff and an operating budget of over $300 million. We're also growing our South Florida presence beyond Miami. Our network office supports our schools through teams like Leadership Development, Recruitment, Advocacy, Facilities, Finance, and People.

We believe the adults in our buildings shape our students' futures more than anything else we do. That's why this role matters so much.

What we stand for

Our Be the Change values shape how we make decisions, who we hire, and how we hold each other to a high bar. We’re early in the work of bringing them to life in every part of how we operate, and the Chief People Officer will lead this work.

• Kid Focus. Students First. Always.
• Radical Love. Fierce Care, Bold Belief.
• Excellence. Get Better Every Day.  
• TEAM. Together Everyone Achieves More.
• Fun. Joyful Culture, Serious Mission.

If you read this and see yourself in it, we’d like to meet you.

Job Description

The role

As Chief People Officer, you'll own the full employee experience for every teammate. That covers how we recruit and hire, how we develop and keep teachers and leaders, and how we pay, support, and manage performance.

We are building an organization where our values show up in every hire, every review, and every promotion. As Chief People Officer, you will be the executive most responsible for making that true.

You'll sit on the executive leadership team and report to the Co-President. You'll lead five functional leaders, covering Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, HR Operations and Payroll, Employee Relations, and Compensation and Performance Management. You'll work closely with regional leaders in all four cities.

This is a high-visibility, high-accountability role. Your work impacts every classroom, every school leadership team, and every one of our students' days.

Your first year

In your first 12 months, you will:

• Earn trust fast. Build strong relationships with the executive team, school leaders, and regional leaders in Newark, Camden, Paterson, and South Florida.
• Lead a unified People team. Lead five functions and four regions together as one team, with a shared vision rooted in our 2030 plan.
• Get close to the work. Spend time in our schools, several in each region, in your first 90 days. Listen to teachers, school leaders, and staff about what helps them support our students and what gets in their way.
• Staff for growth. Make sure our hiring and pipeline programs can fill the roles that new students and new schools will need.
• Modernize our systems. Assess our HR, applicant tracking, and performance management tools. Then lead the team’s transformation from reactive administration to proactive workforce planning, including the smart use of people analytics and AI.
• Put our values at the center of every talent practice. Work with leaders on the People team and throughout the organization to build values-aligned behaviors into how we hire, onboard, develop, evaluate, recognize, and promote.
• Set the compensation direction. Lay the groundwork for a pay strategy that is competitive, equitable, and transparent.

What success looks like by 2030

We've set clear, ambitious goals when it comes to our people work, and you'll own them.

• 90% overall staff retention, with a special focus on first-year staff and teachers.
• Less than 5% regrettable attrition. We keep the people we most want to keep.
• 90% of teacher, School Leader, and Director of School Operations openings filled from within, through our own pipeline programs.
• 95% of residents meeting or exceeding expectations in their first year in role.
• 90% of our schools and teams scoring above the 75th percentile on Gallup's core engagement questions.

What you'll lead

Strategy and culture. Set the multi-year people strategy, and serve as a true thought partner to the Co-President and CEO on organizational design and workforce planning. Embed the network's values and key behaviors into talent systems — job descriptions, interview rubrics, onboarding, performance management, recognition, and leadership development — so they are truly lived, not just stated.

Talent acquisition. With the Managing Director of Talent Acquisition, develop and refine KTAF’s current recruitment strategies that prioritize high quality talent by leveraging KTAF’s mission, brand and value proposition.  Recruit exceptional, mission-aligned teachers, school leaders, and staff across every region, at the pace our growth requires.

Talent development. With the Managing Director of Talent Development, grow our teacher pipeline programs, leader residency, and teacher-to-leader pathways, so our next leaders come from within. Develop and implement a continuum of professional development  for all home office and school-based staff and managers that fosters strong succession planning for internal growth.   

HR operations and payroll. With the Managing Director of Human Resources, modernize HR systems and evaluate people-analytics and AI tools, moving the team from reactive to proactive workforce planning. Oversee compliant payroll in two states and own benefits strategy and administration, balancing cost, competitiveness, and employee experience. 

Employee relations. With the Managing Director of Employee Relations, keep our policies clear, fair, and consistent across all four regions Oversee employee relations strategy and support for schools.  Partner with legal counsel on complex matters.

Compensation and performance. Build pay and performance systems that recognize strong performers. Equip managers across the network to set clear expectations, give useful feedback, and keep their best people.

Qualifications

Who you are

• A builder. You're energized by growth and comfortable with ambiguity. You've built systems that outlasted your time in a role, and you want to do it again at a large scale.
• A people leader. You've managed senior leaders and helped them get better. You make tough calls, have hard conversations with care, and hold a high bar.
• Obsessed with the frontline. You keep teachers, school leaders, and school staff, the people who serve our students every day, at the center of your thinking. You spend time in classrooms and schools, and you judge every policy, system, and process by whether it helps them better support our students or gets in their way.
• A systems thinker. You connect individual programs to organizational results. You see how a change to compensation affects retention, and how retention affects what students experience.
• Data-driven and practical. You use recruiting, retention, pay, and performance data to make decisions, and you're curious about how new tools, including AI, can help.
• A bridge builder. You earn trust with school leaders, executives, and the board. You can lead one unified team while respecting what's different in each city.
• Committed to equity. You center racial equity and cultural responsiveness in how you design programs and lead teams. You believe deeply in what our students can achieve.
• Rooted in our values. You see yourself in Kid Focus, Radical Love, Excellence, TEAM, and Fun. You can describe a time you made values real inside an organization, including a time it was hard. You take the work seriously, not yourself.

Sound like you? We'd love to hear from you.

What you bring

Required

• 10+ years of progressive HR or talent leadership experience, including at least 5 years in a senior role overseeing multiple HR functions
• Working knowledge of employment law, HR compliance, and payroll across multiple states
• Strong written and verbal communication, with the ability to influence senior leaders and boards
• A bachelor's degree
• Willingness to travel regularly between Newark, Camden, Paterson, and South Florida

Preferred

• Experience leading HR or talent across multiple sites or regions, ideally in an organization of 1,000+ employees
• Experience in K-12 education, charter schools, or another mission-driven, people-intensive sector
• New Jersey and Florida employment law experience
• An advanced degree in Human Resources, Business, Organizational Development, or a related field

Additional Information

The salary range for this role is $250,000 - $290,000. Salary ranges at KTAF are set based upon the role level and function using benchmarks in the education and non-profit sector and allow for growth within the role. Individual compensation will be set based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to: relevant professional experience and qualifications; education, skills, and training; and market conditions.

In addition to a competitive salary, KTAF offers a generous benefits package including, but not limited to, the following:

• Robust benefits that include medical, dental, and vision
• KTAF 403b retirement plan, including matching contributions
• Generous Time-Off Policy
• Up to 12 weeks 100% parental leave for primary caregivers
• Employer-paid life insurance
• Extensive optional ancillary benefits including short-term and long-term disability and accident and hospital indemnity

Our organization is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, gender, age, religion, national origin, citizen status, marital status, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Our organization will make a reasonable accommodation to known physical or mental limitations of a qualified applicant or employee with a disability unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of the organization. No questions on this application are asked for any unlawful purpose.

How to apply

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. Click the "I'm interested" button to submit your resume and screening questions for the role. You'll be given the opportunity to share a message with the hiring team. We strongly encourage you to use that space to tell us why this moment at KTAF is right for you, which of our values resonates most with you, and where you’ve lived it.

#LI-NJ