Portfolio Director, Harvard Institutes for Higher Education

As integral members of the HGSE Professional Education team Portfolio Directors join a dynamic group of colleagues focused on empowering educators to build competencies, skills, and networks necessary to have positive impact in the field of education. Directors build, lead, and cultivate a portion of Professional Education program offerings. All programs are designed to support our mission of equipping education leaders, practitioners, and advocates with knowledge and skills to improve student access, opportunity, and success.

The Portfolio Director for the Harvard Institutes of Higher Education (HIHE) is responsible for designing and implementing a strategy to nurture, assess, refine and expand a portfolio of professional development offerings for higher education professionals, faculty, and leaders across the US and globally. Programs may be delivered in a variety of modalities including on-campus, at client sites in the US and overseas, online live with facilitation, asynchronous online programs, and on-demand models. The HIHE Director leads and manages this portfolio in close collaboration with PPE leadership, HGSE and Harvard faculty, and key institutional stakeholders.

Position Description

Portfolio Development and Management

• Serve as an administrative leader of a portfolio of executive education programs and related professional development opportunities as part of HGSE’s Professional Education program designed to support educational leaders across the US and globally.

• Build and maintain a deep understanding of the broad landscape of professional development programs serving higher education leaders and proactively cultivate robust relationships with lead organizations, colleges, universities, and individuals to stay abreast of trends in the field.

• Work with HGSE faculty to explore new HIHE programs that best serve the needs of the field as informed by data and active discourse with sector leaders and key PPE client organizations.

• In collaboration with the Senior Portfolio Director, research, propose and vet ideas regarding a strategic direction for the overall size and shape of the portfolio with attention to portfolio coherence as well as program quality, relevance, accessibility, and sustainability.

• Collect, analyze, and utilize data to inform and implement PPE decisions about program frequency, updates, and retirements.

Program Design and Delivery

• Collaborate with faculty on overarching program vision and architecture. Work with faculty chairs and the Marketing team to develop program learning objectives and descriptions, and to determine the characteristics of target audiences. Collaborate with and work in support of faculty chairs to determine program presenters and learning activities. Identify, train, and manage program facilitators.

• With support from the Finance team, develop and manage program budgets, contributing to cost-effective program management.

• Inform, monitor, and participate in marketing and admissions processes for assigned programs to develop optimal cohorts, identify growth opportunities, and suggest mitigation strategies for enrollment challenges in partnership with PPE’s Marketing and Client Engagement teams.

• Work closely with the PPE Program Delivery Team to collaboratively plan and execute all aspects of program delivery to ensure a high-quality learner experience in every program modality (residential, live online, asynchronous online, blended).

• Collaborate with PPE’s Innovation and Insights Team to conduct program debriefs. Identify and drive follow-up on strengths and areas for development. Leverage best-practices in learning design to foster interactivity and the application of learning to problems of practice.

Strategic Outreach and Internal/External Relationship Management

• Plan and implement strategic outreach to organizations, colleges, universities, government agencies, and/or donors to build robust participant pools for programs in the portfolio.

• Conduct sector outreach (webinars, conferences, direct relationship-building with clients), engagement, and program alumni relations activities, ensuring that prospective and past participants have ongoing connection to each other, HIHE, and HGSE.

• Initiate and steward relationships with internal and external stakeholders and expand our network to advance potential new partnerships and programs.

• Develop custom engagements for learners and organizations within and outside the U.S. as applicable, with a particular focus on international universities.

• Identify subject areas where HGSE and Harvard faculty bring unique value to the field.

Other duties as assigned