[Hiring] Director of Operations @Merit America

Role Description

The primary mission of the Director of Operations is to serve as the connective tissue of Meritus College, ensuring priorities, information, and decisions move effectively across functional areas and that teams have the clarity and infrastructure they need. As Meritus College launches and builds in real time, you will connect dots across the College, proactively identify and unblock issues, escalate issues as needed, and serve as a trusted first line of feedback and thought partnership across the organization.

You will also play a critical role in building the systems, operating rhythms, and infrastructure of the College as it grows, often creating the process while simultaneously moving the work forward. This role sits at the intersection of strategy, operations, and culture, requiring exceptional resourcefulness, critical thinking, and stakeholder management skills to move fluidly between seeing the big picture, building what’s missing, and driving the details forward.

The Director of Operations will report directly to Melinda Day, Chief Academic Officer, and will work cross-functionally across Meritus College teams.

Responsibilities

• Drive alignment and accountability across Functional Leads through regular status meetings, 1:1 connects, and follow-ups.
• Introduce and standardize practices, tools, and approaches that strengthen both execution and communications.
• Maintain a clear view across all College workstreams, connecting priorities, dependencies, decisions, and information across functional areas.
• Proactively identify and resolve blockers, working with Functional Leads and escalating issues to leadership when quick decisions or intervention are needed.
• Build a strong, supportive culture among Functional Leads, fostering trust, collaboration, shared accountability, and connection across teams.
• Own and continuously improve key College operating rhythms, meetings, workflows, and ways of working.
• Proactively spot gaps in systems, processes, communication, or ownership and design and implement practical solutions.
• Jump into emerging priorities and problems that don’t yet have a clear owner or playbook, bringing structure and momentum to ambiguous work.
• Own key College-wide forums, including All Hands meetings, gathering updates from Functional Leads and developing materials.
• Help shape communications and sharebacks to Merit America staff and leadership, tailoring the message, context, and level of detail for different stakeholder groups.
• Support change management and proactively build practices and rituals that strengthen communication, collaboration, accountability, recognition, and culture across the College.
• Serve as a trusted thought partner and first line of review, pressure-testing work, providing feedback, and determining what requires senior leadership input or approval.
• Surface patterns, risks, opportunities, and organizational needs to leadership based on a close understanding of what is happening across the College.
• Develop first drafts of key narratives, presentations, and materials for College leadership across important internal and external moments.
• Partner with leadership to work through the College’s stickiest problems, bringing structure, sound judgment, and a bias toward action to complex or ambiguous challenges.

Qualifications

• Committed to Merit America’s mission to pave pathways to family-sustaining careers, break the poverty cycle, and create upward mobility for low-wage workers.
• Demonstrated history of embodying our values, which inform our work and drive our organization's culture.
• Shared sense of responsibility and ownership for our collective work in making a positive impact on the community we support, true to our value of Win & Lose Together.
• Committed to continuous learning and growth in advancing inclusive excellence and closing gaps across lines of difference.
• Passionate about fostering a workplace culture that embraces and values individual differences, aligned with our core value of inclusivity.

Requirements

• 10+ years of relevant experience, ideally including Chief of Staff, operations, consulting, program management, or similar roles in complex, multi-stakeholder organizations.
• Bachelor's degree required; an MBA or other master's degree is a plus but not required, particularly for candidates with substantial operations or consulting experience in fast-scaling organizations.
• Experience building in a 0→1 environment, including a startup, agency, nonprofit, or fast-scaling organization.
• Highly organized with strong program management instincts, able to keep multiple interconnected workstreams moving while maintaining attention to detail and follow-through.
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills, with the judgment to navigate different perspectives, build trust, and tailor communication and approach to different audiences.
• A systems thinker and proactive problem solver, able to see around corners, connect dots, identify what’s missing, and build practical solutions.
• Strong executive communication skills, able to synthesize complex information and turn it into clear, compelling narratives, presentations, recommendations, and decisions.
• High capacity and resourcefulness, comfortable moving between strategic thinking and hands-on execution.
• Comfort with AI and emerging technologies, with good judgment about where they can strengthen systems, workflows, and decision-making.
• Sound judgment and executive presence, with the ability to serve as a credible thought partner to senior leaders while building strong relationships across all levels of the organization.

Benefits

• Medical, Dental and Vision insurance (100% Paid Employee Only Coverage)
• Flexible Spending Account and Health Savings Account
• Dependent care Flexible Spending Account
• Health Reimbursement Account fully funded by Merit
• Education & personal development reimbursement
• Catalog of courses for professional learning and development
• Short and long-term disability
• Flexible PTO (after a 90-day introductory period)
• Paid Parental Leave and Adoption benefits (after 1 year of employment)
• 11 federally recognized holidays
• 2 week holiday office closure in December/January
• 401(k) retirement plan with automatic Merit contribution
• Wellness Benefits/Wellness Resources
• Discount perks at work program
• Phone/technology stipend
• Home office setup stipend
• Affinity groups and community building via virtual, in-person, and/or regional meetups