Director, Superintendent Pipeline 

Location: Texas, with travel to Austin

The Holdsworth Center seeks a Director, Superintendent Pipeline who believes in the promise of public schools to deliver excellent and equitable results for students, and who believes their unique skills and inner purpose would be a great match for Holdsworth’s mission, culture and values.

Our organization & mission
The Holdsworth Center is an Austin, Texas-based nonprofit founded in 2017 by Charles Butt, an education philanthropist and Chairman of H-E-B, a regional retail company. Our mission is to impact, over time, the quality of K-12 public education for all Texas students by supporting and developing leaders.

The Holdsworth Center partners with Texas public school districts to help educators become experts at leadership and to grow stronger leaders within their own systems. Holdsworth makes investments within districts and brings education leaders from across Texas to learn at its Campus on Lake Austin, a one-of-a-kind place dedicated to the idea that public education matters. Holdsworth hosts educators for learning sessions on the 44-acre campus, which has 186 sleeping rooms and state-of-the-art classroom space.

Our culture & values
We have three core values at Holdsworth: Drive for Excellence & Equity, Be of Service and Believe in People. Our values flow from the vision and beliefs of our founder, Charles Butt, and guide our daily words and actions, bringing meaning to the work we do.

About the Position
Our public education system has been battered by strong headwinds over the past three years: the disruptions of COVID-19 and its impact on student health, well-being, and learning and increased polarization and partisan rancor that has politicized public education. These forces have not created new realities; rather, they have exacerbated inequities in the system that have existed for generations.

One of those challenges is effective and sustained leadership in public education. In the past two years, there has been renewed anxiety about the superintendent role. While news of departing superintendents and the extraordinary pressures of the position have dominated headlines, the weakness of the superintendent bench has only grown. The reality is that, though the headlines are attracting more attention, the underlying weaknesses of the superintendent pipeline are not new.

It is crucial to have capable and resilient superintendents leading all districts in Texas to confront the challenges ahead. To achieve this objective, we need to take a comprehensive approach, which includes investing in identifying promising candidates for future superintendent positions, enhancing their leadership skills, matching them to districts where they can make an impact, and providing them support during their initial years as a superintendent.

To meet this challenge, The Holdsworth Center created a Superintendent Pipeline team in 2023, building from the success of its inaugural program to support superintendents, the Superintendent Leadership Program, which began in 2021 and will welcome its third cohort in 2023. The Director, Superintendent Pipeline will serve as a key leader on this team.

Responsibilities:

• Identify high-potential superintendent candidates in Texas
  • Develop methods to identify and encourage high-potential candidates to pursue the superintendency
  • Research, create, and update competency models to identify the most important skills for success in the superintendent role
  • Create models and methods for assessing candidates against superintendent competencies to provide feedback and encourage them in their growth journey
  • Design and implement a candidate assessment/diagnostic center to help aspiring superintendents in Texas understand their leadership strengths and areas for growth
  • Evaluate, recommend, and implement other methods for identifying high potential superintendent candidates in Texas
• Develop methods to match district leaders to vacancies where they can most make a difference
  • Develop effective models and tools that expertly match the strengths of district leaders with the precise requirements of job vacancies
  • Identify and recommend the best strategy to operationalize these tools, in support of the placement of high-potential district leaders in Texas
  • Build and implement a plan to operationalize tools and models to match district leaders to job vacancies
• Work collaboratively with the Superintendent Pipeline team to cohesively implement all of the team’s pipeline initiatives
  • Work closely with the Managing Director, Executive Superintendent-in-Residence, and Director, Superintendent Pipeline Programs to ensure seamless execution of team’s priorities across the superintendent pipeline
  • Support the broader work of The Holdsworth Center and its objectives to develop leadership in K-12 public education in Texas

Prior experience & capabilities:
Desirable candidates will have a range of prior experience and capabilities. We expect that strong candidates may have a range of experiences, including K-12 leadership, non-profit leadership, consulting experience (private sector or non-profit), and more. If you believe you have the skills and creative insight required to excel in this role, we encourage you to apply.

You’re a strong candidate if the following attributes describe you:
• You have strong alignment with our organizational values—Drive for Excellence & Equity, Be of Service, Believe in People.
• You’re a creative, flexible thinker with an entrepreneurial spirit.
• You have a strong ability to imagine and design new systems; You can both ideate and implement at high levels. You want to both create the strategy and take action to implement the strategy.
• You can synthesize lots of complex information in a way that is easy for others to understand. You’re known for your beautifully designed PowerPoint slide decks (or Canva, or other design tool) and written materials that communicate complex information.
• You’re not only comfortable navigating ambiguity, but you find enjoyment and excitement in the ambiguity of bringing shape to new initiatives and finding answers to new questions. You don’t mind pivoting your strategy (or abandoning something that’s not working) when you discover something new.
• You’re comfortable working both independently and working in close collaboration with other team members.
• You’re able to establish relationships and credibility with external audiences quickly.
• You’re an excellent project manager; you can organize all the pieces of a large effort from beginning to end while attending to the big picture and all of the details, with a focus on both relationships and results.
• You’re a ‘talent spotter;’ you get excited about developing others’ potential and strengths.
• You have strong planning skills with an ability to think and strategize for the long-term.
• You may have previous experience working with school boards or strong ability to understand the perspectives of school board members – this would be a plus.
• You have a strong track record of, or have the potential to, manage a small team of 1-3 direct reports in the future (initially, this role will not have any direct reports).
• You have a strong desire to learn, grow, and get better through feedback.

Geography:
Candidates must live in Texas. If the candidate does not live in the Austin area, regular travel (up to several times per month) to the Campus on Lake Austin will be required to work with the team in person and/or to support the implementation of the team’s work on-site.

Compensation & Benefits
• Salary Range: $112,000 to $132,000.
• Compensation for the role will depend on several factors, including but not limited, to your qualifications, skills, competencies, and experience. The Holdsworth Center also factors internal pay equity in evaluating compensation.
• This position is eligible to participate in company benefits including but not limited to medical, dental and vision coverage, life and AD&D, short-term and long-term disability coverage, four-weeks of paid time off annually, employee assistance program, participation in a 401k program that includes a company match, and many other additional benefits.

How to Apply
Interested candidates should submit:
• A current resume and cover letter, detailing their interest in this position and how their experience will contribute to the work of The Holdsworth Center by clicking here.
• Along with the resume/cover letter, candidates should submit a work sample demonstrating their ability to create/design a new system or a solution to a problem. (You do not need to create something new; this should be a work sample from your previous work.) This can be in any format you choose as long as it shows your effort to design or create a new system or solution to solve a problem.

Applications will be screened regularly until a sufficient pool of candidates is identified.

Interview process and timeline:

• Initial Zoom interviews are scheduled to take place the week of August 14
• Finalist interviews are scheduled to take place in-person in Austin on September 7th and 8th. Candidates may want to note these dates in their calendar now.

The Holdsworth Center is committed to creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment. All employment decisions are based on job requirements and individual qualifications without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.