Head of Operational Excellence

Thanks for your interest in Success Academy! Running a large, fast-growing, and high-performing network of public charter schools takes a village - families, children, teachers, staff and faculty, advocates, and supporters alike. We are growing fast in New York and expanding to Florida, and we would love to welcome you to our community! We work tirelessly every day to ensure children have access to a fun, rigorous, whole-child education regardless of zip code or economic status. When you join SA, you play a part in giving every student who walks through our doors a fair shot at reaching his or her potential.

Company Overview

Success Academy’s mission is to reimagine public education. From the classroom to the halls of government, this means finding profoundly different approaches to delivering a high-quality education at scale. We re-conceive every aspect of school design, from writing rigorous new curricula to drawing regularly on the advances in technology and business that are transforming every sector except education.

This school year marks the 20th anniversary of Success Academies and the launch of our mission to drive public education as an excellent, efficient, and equitable pillar of American society. During this time, Success Academies has grown faster than any charter network in the nation, building a vibrant network of 59 elementary, middle, and high schools. Our 20,000 children – from underrepresented communities – are outperforming students at top city and suburban schools across New York State. Looking forward, our goals are even more ambitious: to grow to 100 schools and educate 50,000 children across New York City through a uniquely holistic pre-K-12 system that brings transformational change here and across the country through extraordinary school quality.

About the Role

Success Academy is seeking a Head of Operational Excellence (Head of Edge) to lead a team of Lean/PE and Project Management practitioners, with full leadership responsibility for all strategic operational improvement and change management activities across the enterprise. In this role, you will be the owner of the PE strategy and pipeline, accountable for driving measurable performance improvement across the company. You will strategically partner with all leaders across SA to: identify and continuously improve business processes where performance improvements are required; drive a PE mindset and ensure an appropriate foundation of PE skills in the organization; and provide coaching and training to leaders and employees as they enable improvements and sustain results using PE tools, analytics, and improved performance reporting. 

Key Responsibilities

• Roadmap Ownership: Develop the PE roadmap, aligned with business priorities, in partnership with senior leadership and business and functional leaders to achieve annual targets, functional KPIs, and strategic plan objectives.


• Diagnose Problems: Promote and facilitate the diagnosis of workflow impediments and other wastes throughout the business, and provide expert counsel on appropriate PE tools to eliminate them.


• Driver of Change: Lead focused Problem Solving Process (PSP) and Kaizen events to drive process improvement and cross-functional communication.


• Driver of PE Mindset: As the owner of PE tools, promote their use and improvement (Standard Work, Transactional Process Improvement (TPI), Problem Solving Process (PSP), Daily Management, Kaizens) to foster continuous improvement throughout the organization.


• Lead PD & DM: Be an active leader in Policy Deployment (Strategic Transformation / Hoshin Kanri) and Daily Management initiatives in partnership with business leadership.


• Learning & Development: Own, deliver, and improve the PE training program. Promote and facilitate employee training in PE Fundamentals, Lean tools, and other PE training sessions as required. Evaluate and approve candidates for the Certified Practitioner level.

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of demonstrated process improvement / operational excellence or lean business system experience with proficiency in applying lean or growth principles in a variety of situations.


• Effective coaching skills/developer of talent with demonstrated ability to work effectively in a team environment, with a track record of building and developing high-performing cross-functional problem-solving teams.


• Experimentation mindset – able to help teams take and manage risk, drive experimentation to facilitate learning.


• Demonstrated ability to lead an organization through significant change without losing momentum; ability to inspire continuous focus on key business drivers, as well as Success Academy Charter Schools' mission and values.


• Strong communicator, both verbal and written, to engage, influence, and get buy-in from all levels of internal and external stakeholders.Mastery of a variety of PE tools (specifically: Lean, DMAIC/PSP, Daily Management, Kaizen, Standard Work, and Policy Deployment/Strategic Business Transformation) and proficiency in applying them to deliver measurable results.


• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Engineering, or another relevant field.

Success Academy Charter Schools is an equal opportunity employer and actively encourages applications from people of all backgrounds. Compensation is competitive and commensurate with experience. Success Academy offers a full benefits program and opportunities for professional growth.

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We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our organization. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We actively seek applications from people of all backgrounds to strengthen our community and the perspectives needed to flourish in a multicultural world. Success Academy offers a full benefits program and opportunities for professional growth.

Success Academy Charter Schools does not offer employment-based immigration sponsorship.