Partner, Design Journey Content Lead

Start Date: Immediate Role Type: Full-time Reports to: Kirsten Dargis, Managing Partner Team: Journey Supports Team Location/Travel: Remote (U.S.-based); ~1-2 trips per quarter (6-8x / year)

Who We Are

Transcend is a national nonprofit that helps communities reimagine and redesign schools so every young person can thrive in a rapidly changing world. Across the country, communities are recognizing that classrooms built for the industrial age aren’t preparing learners for what’s next. Instead, schools must be designed for continuous evolution: relevant, resilient, and ready for the future.

For more than a decade, Transcend has partnered with school and system leaders to build the capacity for bold, lasting change—change led by the people who live it every day. We’ve worked with nearly 500 schools and 200 districts serving over 225,000 students in 35 states. Together, we’ve seen what’s possible when communities lead redesign with proven methods, insight, and support.

From that work, we develop and share tools, research, and models that help schools everywhere make the leap to extraordinary learning—for every child, in every community. For more information, visit our website or follow us on LinkedIn . The Opportunity The Journey Supports Team (JST) builds the tools, resources, and learning experiences that make it possible for the school design coaches we call Design Partners to support communities through locally-driven, multi-year design journeys.

On these journeys, schools form design teams made up of leaders, teachers, students, caregivers, and other community members to envision and build a new model of school that fits their community's needs and aspirations. The JST creates and curates the tools Design Partners need to lead that process well. The JST sits within Transcend's Program team, alongside work focused on org foundations (the core concepts and frameworks that underlie all of our work), usable knowledge (the research and tools that inform the design choices communities make), and tech and innovation (the infrastructure that ties it all together).

The Journey Supports Team includes: 3-4 Design Journey Content Leads each holding deep expertise in a particular part of the design journey 2 Builders who develop and refine the tools and experiences that make that expertise accessible and usable A Partner of Systems & Operations who keeps the team running smoothly A Managing Partner who provides overall team leadership and direction Design Journey Content Leads are the intellectual leaders of their part of the design journey. They hold Transcend's evolving point of view on how that work gets done, build the tools and resources that help Design Partners do it well, and stay deeply connected to what's actually happening in the field so that our guidance stays grounded in reality. The best Design Journey Content Leads are constantly learning from how the work plays out in schools and communities, and using that learning to make our centralized materials stronger.

It's worth noting that Content Leads do this not by working directly with school partners, but by staying closely connected to the Design Partners and Project Leads who do. This is a program team role: the work is about building the guidance and tools that make it possible for others to lead that work well. We are currently seeking a Design Journey Content Lead for Later Stage work.

Later Stage refers to the part of a design journey when schools move from envisioning their design to implementing, refining, deepening, and sustaining it: typically Years 2+. This is where extraordinary and equitable learning for all students either becomes real and durable, or stalls out. Getting this right is critical to Transcend's mission.

The Later Stage Content Lead will inherit a strong foundation: a well-developed conceptual understanding of what later-stage work entails and what it requires.