Program Director of Virtual Mentoring

i Mentor is a national nonprofit organization that believes every student has potential, and we work to ensure each student can reach it fully through our lens of Mentorship.

For 26 years i Mentor has served over 45,000 students in our direct service communities of New York, Chicago, and Baltimore.

Now, with our customary intrepid and creative approach, and in response to years of requests, we seek to establish a virtual community of mentors outside our three flagship cities, and we seek a Program Director of Virtual Mentoring (PDVM) to help conceive of, build, and kick off our 26/27 Pilot Year.

The Program Director will serve as i Mentor’s internal owner of this virtual mentoring pilot, coordinating the external partnership, corporate partner activation, mentor experience, program learning, and future growth strategy.

We have important objectives with this pilot: (1) to connect more students with caring adults who can help them build the knowledge, confidence, and support networks needed to successfully navigate postsecondary education and career pathways, and (2) to activate enough corporate partners and mentors to meet participation goals, delivering a strong mentor experience, establishing effective processes with the external partner, and producing a data-informed recommendation for future scale.

Reporting to i Mentor’s Senior Vice President of Impact Programming, this is a role for an entrepreneurial spirit who gets fired up at the junction of innovation, data analysis, strategic outreach and recruitment, and cross functional partnership.

Responsibilities

• Lead activation of virtual mentoring partnerships following handoff from External Relations, translating partner commitments into successful implementation
• Partner with corporate contacts to drive employee participation and deliver a best-in-class mentor experience from onboarding and training through ongoing engagement and support
• Track participation, engagement, and experience, partnering with External Relations to support strong stewardship, renewal, and growth
• Apprise corporate partners of their involvement’s progress; foster continued and ideally deeper partner involvement over years
• Collaborate with i Mentor’s Strategic Communications department to create written and online materials that will inspire corporate partnerships & increase mentor recruitment
• Assist in creating and executing Mentor Training for new mentors prior to their being matched with a student, and then ensuring they have ongoing support and answered questions throughout their pair engagement
• Act as primary point of contact with our Technology Partner, itself a leader in the mentorship space, UStrive, whose main responsibilities will include recruiting the students for the pilot, supplying the technology platform that mentors and mentees will use to communicate with each other, and implementing the program and associated pair support
• Build a deep understanding of the UStrive program model, and their approach to virtual mentoring
• Report back to all involved parties regularly in order to determine what program components need to be tweaked and celebrated
• Track and monitor critical program assessment using quantitative and qualitative data from students, mentors, corporate partners, and our external program partner to identify what is working, diagnose challenges, recommend changes during the pilot, and ultimately develop recommendations and roadmap for scale
• Partner with the Organizational Learning & Impact (OLI) team to define and monitor measures of pilot success, including mentor recruitment and engagement, quality of mentor-mentee relationships, participant experience, program implementation, and indicators of student impact
• Assess what the pilot is teaching IMentor about the conditions required for high-quality virtual mentoring and develop recommendations for the program's future design, scale, and impact
• Balance growth and implementation goals with program quality and participant outcomes, using data and feedback to understand not only whether a program is reaching people, but whether it is delivering meaningful value

Qualifications & Requirements

• Success building or launching a new program, initiative, product, or service, ideally from concept through implementation
• Proficiency managing corporate partnerships, employee engagement, volunteer recruitment, business development, or another external-facing function; traditional fundraising experience is preferred, but not required
• Experience with volunteer recruitment, customer/user acquisition, partnership development, or another form of audience growthwhere success required persuading people to participate
• Strong project/program management skills, including the ability to coordinate multiple internal and external stakeholders and move complex work from strategy to execution
• Ability to use quantitative and qualitative data to assess performance, identify problems, test improvements, and make recommendations
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and building systems and processes where they do not yet exist
• Strong communication and facilitation skills, including the ability to inspire external partners and translate strategy into clear action.
• Experience with a tech-enabled program and/or working with a technology partner, understanding user experience, and interpreting data
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience required
• Our organization works in partnership with district public schools across the country.

In doing so we must meet all compliance requirements of those districts including background checks.

• i Mentor is committed to ensuring healthy and safe environments for our staff, mentors, and the students we serve.

In order to fully comply with the NYC Vaccine mandate, all i Mentor employees (regardless of role or region) are required to be fully vaccinated prior to their start date

Benefits & Compensation

• Salary $86,000 - $95,000 commensurate with experience
• Up to 100% employer-funded comprehensive medical and dental coverage
• 18 days paid annual vacation (increasing annually to 21, 23, 25), 13 paid holidays + your birthday + one floating holiday, i Mentor closed between Christmas and New Year’s Day, plus 6-7 sick days annually
• 401K match up to 4%
• Fully remote working arrangement; i Mentor will provide a laptop and other standard technology needed for the role.

Occasional travel may be required for team meetings, partner engagement, organizational events, or other program-related needs.

• Pre-tax commuter benefits
• Dependent care and health care flexible spending plans
• Every staff member is eligible for organization-sponsored professional development annually
• 1 hour of wellness time off per week for wellness activities of your choosing
• 9 weeks of paid parental leave
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