Strategic Partnership Manager

About the Role:

The Children's Literacy Initiative is seeking a highly skilled and dedicated Academic Leadership Position to join our team in Northern New Jersey. As a key member of our organization, you will play a critical role in advancing equity in public education and ensuring Black and Latinx children achieve reading success by the end of third grade.

Key Responsibilities:

• Manage a team of literacy coaches across a portfolio of schools to support the coaching and development of teachers, improving daily instruction and student outcomes.
• Lead school and system instructional reviews through learning walks to diagnose needs and work closely with school and systems leaders to develop action plans in alignment with their values and resources to support instructional improvement.
• Serve as primary point of contact for district and school partners, answering questions, connecting with resources, providing information, and researching to solve targeted instructional challenges.
• Oversee partnership retention, lead and facilitate contract renewal conversations with current portfolio of partners, and support the executive director and/or regional manager in designing and facilitating regional presentations and training sessions for potential new partners.
• Support the development of vision, strategy, and services for our work, collaborate with the national content team to refine and develop practical tools and systems for internal staff members to support the work, and lead and support continuous reflection across the team to determine what working challenges exist and develop solutions moving forward.
• Responsible for client relationships and demonstrating effectiveness in ways that sustain or grow the partnership, build relationships with school and systems leaders to support the implementation of action plans and adjust course when necessary, create, design, and facilitate effective learning experiences for coaches through ongoing development, goal-setting, and progress-monitoring, and facilitate adult learning experiences for school and system leaders within and across systems.

Qualifications:

• 7+ years of education experience in schools that serve primarily Black and Latinx children.
• 3+ years as a K-5 language arts teacher in a classroom with predominantly Black and Latinx children.
• 3+ years of coaching and/or instructional leadership (assistant principal, school principal, or systems level).
• Strong and inclusive management skills and proven ability to develop adults.
• Knowledge of school leadership key levers, decisions, and implications for change management.
• Strong instructional and leadership instincts with a demonstrated record of success in student outcomes and teacher practice results.
• Deep early literacy content and comprehensive knowledge of pedagogy that affirms and sustains Black and Latinx children.
• Deep understanding of approaches to transformational coaching, adult learning, and development that emphasizes equitable and identity-affirming outcomes for educators and leaders.
• Comfort using web-based systems to track project deliverables and timelines.
• Exceptional organizational skills and ability to track progress, understand gaps, execute tasks, etc. with acute attention to detail.
• Experience designing and leading compelling and relevant professional development.
• Excellent written and oral communication.
• Bachelor's Degree.
• Bilingual and biliterate in Spanish and English preferred (NNJ).

About Children's Literacy Initiative:

Founded in Philadelphia in 1988, Children's Literacy Initiative (CLI) is a national 501c3 working to advance equity in public education in the U.S. by ensuring Black and Latinx children achieve reading success by the end of third grade. CLI accomplishes this through job-embedded coaching and professional development, seminars, and workshops, and providing the books and materials teachers and children need along their early literacy journeys.

Learning to read has significance beyond building skills - it is an act of liberation. By helping educators learn and apply high-impact, culturally sustaining instructional strategies and nurturing dynamic professional learning communities, CLI is building lasting capacity in teachers and principals to advance equity in education.

Children's Literacy Initiative (CLI) is recruiting Academic Leadership Positions. We are seeking abolitionist culturally sustaining educators with deep educator coaching experience, who see the genius in Black and Latinx children, the abundant capability in educator coaches, and liberatory power of literacy to propel children into fulfilling lives and to dismantle White supremacy, and advance equity for all.

The CLI Academic Leadership Position:

Serves as an academic leader who drives an instructional vision that aligns early literacy instruction and practice with culturally and linguistically relevant pedagogy, identity affirmation, and antiracist literacy instruction.

Demonstrates a deep commitment to anti-racism and educational equity and the building of an organization that reflects the community CLI serves; ability to hold self and others accountable for centering equity.

Demonstrates a deep commitment and willingness to act on dismantling white supremacy and systemic racism in schools/school systems.

Strives to ensure that Black and Latinx children experience the anti-racist early literacy instruction, support, and advocacy needed to create equity in education.

Demonstrates a deep commitment to anti-racism in their work and beyond, an unwavering desire to continually grow their own skills, and a passion for teaching & learning.

Thinks critically to make well-informed and timely decisions to achieve the best possible impact and outcomes.

Demonstrates a keen sense of self and knowledge of other's identities and can use this information strategically to inform decisions, grow, and make change in the school, workplace, and community.

Enables and models a constructive culture of feedback about both strengths and areas of growth.

Demonstrates a strong understanding of Systemic Oppression as a concept, its various forms, how it persists throughout society, and how to identify and work to mitigate and/or dismantle it in the school, workplace, and community.

Are highly reflective and adaptive to meet the needs of coaches, school, and district leaders.

What it's like to work at CLI:

We believe you should know that CLI aims to be an employer of choice. We know that our employees are our most valuable resource. So, in addition to providing great benefits, we are intentional to ensure we sustain a great culture.

Here's a look at what makes CLI a great place to work:

• DEIB - Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging is more than an initiative at CLI. In fact, DEIB is what drives every decision we make. We provide all our employees comprehensive DEI trainings every year and race and equity are a part of every conversation.
• We have established BIPOC Affinity Groups & White Ally Affinity Groups.
• We encourage a culture of feedback to ensure we are meeting the needs of our people.
• Collaboration is critical. We have an awesome collaborative approach toward our work. You would be aligning yourself with an organization that understands the power of collaboration and the Power of 3 (taking care of ourselves, each other, and our physical spaces).
• Benefits - Competitive compensation. CLI offers competitive compensation and benefits. We believe in providing robust benefits such as generous PTO, Full Medical, Dental, Vision & Prescription coverage, and full access to mental health resources via Teladoc and subscription to , as well as competitive and equitable salaries that commensurate with experience.
• Leadership - Professional Development - It's what we do. CLI believes that to ensure we deliver high impact coaching, we must continuously improve our approach to align with the most recent effective teaching practices. You will receive ongoing training & development.