[Hiring] Manager, Strategic Planning and Analysis @Institute for Study Abroad

Role Description

Are you a life-long learner, curious about the world around you? Are you passionate about inclusion and the profound impact of global learning? Are you ready to bring your unique skills to a mission-driven organization? If so, we would love to welcome you to our global community as Manager, Strategic Planning and Analysis!

The Strategic Planning & Analysis Manager is an enterprise planning, strategy, and decision-support role that helps leadership determine priorities, sequence initiatives, allocate resources, and align functions around shared strategic goals. The role translates evidence into practical choices, resource implications, and leadership recommendations.

This role strengthens enterprise planning by connecting organizational evidence to decisions about strategy, investment, sequencing, resources, and capacity. It integrates inputs from Research, Finance, Academic Programs, IT, Career Readiness, International Markets, and other teams to support timely, aligned decisions.

This is an individual-contributor role that leads enterprise planning processes through analysis, influence, facilitation, and cross-functional partnership rather than through direct supervision of staff.

In this position, your responsibilities would include:

• Strategic Planning & Prioritization: Lead annual, multi-year, and scenario-based planning processes that help leadership evaluate opportunities against organizational goals and determine enterprise-wide priorities. Recommend sequencing while balancing growth, risk, resources, feasibility, and capacity.
• Enterprise Portfolio Management: Assess competing initiatives across departments, programs, markets, and operations. Develop portfolio frameworks that compare strategic alignment, impact, cost, risk, feasibility, dependencies, and resource requirements, and recommend where resources should increase, decrease, shift, or be delayed.
• Executive Decision Support & Scenario Modeling: Translate complex research, data, and organizational context into actionable recommendations. Develop strategic scenarios, model potential outcomes, identify implications and dependencies, and present leadership with clear options and recommended courses of action.
• Cross-Functional Alignment & Enterprise Coordination: Coordinate planning across departments, functions, and regions so teams work toward shared organizational objectives. Facilitate stakeholder discussions, integrate distributed information into coherent planning outputs, and help build consensus around strategic direction.
• Market, Environmental & Organizational Intelligence: Analyze competitive trends, market developments, customer and partner needs, industry shifts, emerging risks, and internal performance signals. Identify opportunities and threats, assess future scenarios, and recommend strategic responses or organizational adjustments.
• Resource Allocation, Capacity Planning & Strategic Measurement: Help determine how budgets, staffing, technology, and operational capacity should be deployed to support strategic priorities. Evaluate ROI and resource implications, define success metrics and strategic KPIs, and recommend corrective actions when performance diverges from expectations.
• Additional Responsibilities: Develop reusable prioritization tools, scoring models, portfolio views, templates, and decision frameworks. Conduct ad hoc strategic analyses in response to emerging organizational questions, opportunities, or challenges. Partner with functional leaders to clarify decision needs, define analytical questions, and synthesize findings. Support a stronger culture of evidence-based, enterprise-level, decision-oriented planning. Other duties and projects, as assigned.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree preferred in business administration, strategy, economics, public policy, data analytics, or a related field; bachelor’s degree with substantial relevant experience may be considered.
• Minimum of 3–5 years of progressive experience in enterprise planning, strategic planning, portfolio management, business analysis, consulting, institutional planning, market analysis, or a related analytical strategy role.
• Professional proficiency in written and spoken English, at CEFR B2 or higher, including the ability to present complex analysis clearly to senior leaders.
• Strong ability to synthesize complex information and translate it into implications, options, and recommendations for senior leaders.
• Experience developing decision frameworks, business cases, prioritization models, portfolio assessments, dashboards, scenario analyses, or executive briefing materials.
• Ability to evaluate tradeoffs across strategic value, financial impact, feasibility, risk, timing, resources, and capacity.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to present complex analysis clearly to executive audiences.
• Advanced Excel skills and comfort working with quantitative data, qualitative findings, mixed-method evidence, and incomplete information.
• Strong intercultural communication skills and demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with diverse communities and stakeholders.
• Legal authorization to work in Mexico, physically reside in Mexico City.

Requirements

• Experience in higher education, nonprofit strategy, enrollment management, project management and prioritization, program development, or mission-driven organizations.
• Experience supporting executive leadership, Board preparation, strategic planning cycles, enterprise initiatives, or investment prioritization decisions.
• Familiarity with technology prioritization, operational improvement, digital transformation, or AI-related investment evaluation.
• Experience with data visualization or business intelligence tools such as Power BI, Tableau, or similar platforms.

Benefits

• Enjoy flexible work arrangements and an appreciation for work/life balance.
• Support for professional development.

To Apply

Please submit your resume and cover letter via the IFSA Career’s page at https://ifsa-butler.org/careers/ . In your cover letter, please submit a brief statement outlining your experience supporting strategic planning, enterprise-wide decision-making, and cross-functional collaboration. Include examples of how you assessed priorities, developed recommendations, and drove measurable organizational impact.

IFSA is an equal opportunity employer, and our hiring process is inclusive of all genders and gender expressions, races and ethnicities, ages, religions and sexualities as well as veterans and people with disabilities.