Address
Form of work
The Organization:
World Education Services (WES) is a non-profit social enterprise dedicated to helping immigrants, refugees, and international students achieve economic, social, and educational inclusion in the United States and Canada. For nearly 50 years, WES has helped people learn, work, and thrive in new places and helped society recognize the value of people’s education and experience. As WES evolves its social enterprise model, it seeks to deploy 100% of its resources in a mission-aligned way. At the enterprise level, the team is pioneering a mission-aligned investment approach to invest all its unrestricted reserves in service of financial and mission stewardship.
The Opportunity:
WES is seeking an Investments Platform Manager to join its growing Investment team. The Platform Manager role is a new function on the team and will lead the development of the platform experience and value creation for WES investee partners. This is a unique and exciting opportunity to help shape our investment strategy, demonstrate a trust-based investment approach which shifts power to proximate leaders. You will be responsible for managing portfolio-wide financial and impact tracking and reporting, supporting WES’ investee partners, and collaborating with leading organizations in the impact investing and philanthropic fields.
The Role:
The role reports directly to the Director of Investments and will work closely with members across multiple departments and divisions. You will have exposure to members of WES Executive Leadership Team, and members of the WES Board of Directors.
You will play a central role in building external relationships with investee partners and sharing relevant knowledge and insights internally with WES leadership to unlock strategic value for the organization and our partners. Internally within the organization you will lead the development of key infrastructure, systems, and processes to manage WES’ growing investment portfolio.
Your Experience:
You will have a deep commitment to the mission of WES and centering justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in our work. You will thrive in an environment that values transparency, accountability, collaboration, and an orientation for results. You will be able to demonstrate and leverage your experience at an accelerator, incubator, venture studio, or start-up, with broader knowledge of the startup ecosystem. Having strong knowledge of impact measurement and management frameworks and approaches and an entrepreneurial mindset, you will be able to garner your experience to generate systems and processes along with new approaches or innovative actions that maximize opportunities for WES.
Your deep-rooted intellectual curiosity and openness to diverse ideas and perspectives, will ensure that the function continues to develop and evolve. You will have a can-do mindset and effective collaborative, trust-based working approach, which will ensure that you quickly establish credibility in new areas of work and mobilizing people at all levels towards collective goals.
Your Responsibilities:
Partner Support, Platform Development, and Knowledge Management – 40%
- Support a portfolio of investee partners, developing and implementing opportunities for WES to provide strategic value to them, and for them to provide meaningful insights back to WES.
- Establish and manage trust-based relationships with WES’ investee partners.
- Provide tailored partner support, meeting their individual needs (e.g., design and oversee capacity strengthening initiatives, strategic communications support, etc.).
- Foster community, connection, and peer support across our investee partner and grantee partner community. This could include initiatives such as communications and events strategies to create a community investee experience or organizing virtual and in-person partner gatherings.
- Systematize processes to identify strategic partner support areas and track progress throughout the year.
- Identify and uplift industry trends, portfolio stories of impact, and other insights internally.
- Design and execute approaches to enable dynamic learning and knowledge sharing among WES’ investee partners, other WES teams and departments, and the broader field.
- Act as an internal connector and advocate for mission-aligned investing within the WES ecosystem, operating as a knowledgeable resource and fostering integration across WES’ teams and departments.
- Select and manage relationships with external consultants and strategic advisors, as needed.
Portfolio Management, Financial and Impact Performance Monitoring and Reporting – 40%
- Proactively analyze and track WES’ investment portfolio performance, including investee partner financial and impact performance monitoring and reporting.
- Develop an impact measurement and management strategy and approach to expand WES’ capabilities as a mission-aligned investor, including working with the research team on measurement and evaluation.
- Track and review investee partner deliverables, payments, and outcomes.
- Synthesize data into financial models, impact dashboards, and presentations.
- Partner with internal and external teams to design and implement our mission-aligned investment strategy, including the development of key policies, systems, processes, technology, indicators, and more.
Thought Leadership and Ad-Hoc Organizational Support - 20%
- Serve as a thought-leader in specific strategy areas (e.g., trust-based investing, impact measurement and management, opportunity, wealth, power, justice), drafting blogs and opinion writing to highlight investee partners, synthesizing, and uplifting insights from across the field with support from Communications colleagues.
- Represent WES at external events, working groups, and other forums to disseminate key learnings and raise the visibility of investee partners and supported initiatives.
- Develop written content and copy in partnership with the Communications and Investment teams, such as blogs, social media, collateral, and talking points.
- Develop materials to inform and enable decision-making, presenting clear and appropriate updates to the Executive Leadership team and Board of Directors.
- Leverage project management tools to support WES leaders in meeting and managing key milestones and goals related to its investment activities.
- Manage graduate interns with the potential to manage more junior team members as the Investment team grows.
- Occasional travel to meet with partners, attend conferences and to WES’ NYC and Toronto offices.
What you’ll bring:
- Proven experience in impact investing or an adjacent field such as venture capital, venture philanthropy, private equity, community development financing, fund investments, social enterprise development, investment banking, consulting, and/or private debt.
- 7+ years of related work experience or 5+ years of work experience with an MBA or Master’s degree in a similar field is
- Self-starter who is proactive and takes initiative, demonstrated resourcefulness in previous roles.
- Bring lived experience from immigrant and refugee communities and communities of color, as well the issues that the Investment team focuses on.
- Adept at identifying opportunities to add value to stakeholders and building the execution roadmap.
- Exceptional project manager who thrives on a dynamic team, delivers high-quality work, enjoys managing multiple projects, and has a strong learning orientation.
- Proven ability to strategize, develop, and formalize processes that are repeatable and reliable.
- Demonstrated analytical skills to assess situations, break down complex problems, identify strategic tradeoffs, and apply learnings in a larger context.
- Comfort working with and drawing insights from financial data and models.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills that convey complex information, including quantitative and qualitative data, to stakeholders in compelling and adaptive formats.
- Good at building internal/external stakeholder relationships and engaging with organizational leadership to leverage organization assets, promoting investee partners both internally and externally.
- Good interpersonal skills, including tact, diplomacy, and flexibility, and demonstrated experience building trust with diverse stakeholder groups.
- Strong command of technology tools, including Microsoft Office (especially PowerPoint, Excel, Word, and OneDrive), Salesforce or other CRM systems, Tableau, and Google Apps.
What's in it for you?
Our people are the foundation of our success, and we place a high priority on offering a wide range of benefits that make our team happier and healthier:
- Flexible and supportive work arrangements with generous vacation time, paid parental leave and an ability to work remotely.
- A comprehensive benefits package and 401a/403bk plans that have competitive matching provisions.
- Paid professional development, tuition reimbursement, professional fees reimbursement, student loan repayment, and a focus on skills development.
- A focus on wellness with a suite of wellness activities, corporate gym membership and EAP support.
Our Values:
We look for people who embody our values:
- Opportunity – We open doors so people can build better futures.
- Inclusion – We become stronger, more creative, and more resilient when we embrace diversity.
- Equity – We uphold fairness and justice in our work and actions.
- Enterprising – We are resourceful, inventive, and driven.
- Expertise – We challenge ourselves to be the best at what we do.
EOE Statement: World Education Services provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, World Education Services complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.
