The Organization
XQ Institute is the nation's leading organization dedicated to rethinking the high school experience so that every student graduates ready to succeed in life. We work in communities throughout the country, with individual schools and entire school systems, to help them dream big about what high school could be, turn their innovative ideas into action, and create more rigorous and equitable schools.
The Opportunity
Reporting to XQ's CMO, we are seeking a Senior Project Manager who is high-skilled and experienced in managing multiple complex, multimedia projects from idea inception to execution with excellence. The ideal candidate is meticulously-organized and detail-oriented, with proven experience both building and maintaining day-to-day flexible workflows as well as long-term project planning and execution in a fast-paced collaborative work environment. The position requires a minimum of four days a week in the XQ office in Oakland, California.
Key Responsibilities

• Skillfully constructs and manages detailed work plans with proficient use of XQ's systems, including Notion, Airtable, Miro, Google Suite, etc with clearly defined project scope, goals, deliverables, timelines, and milestones
• Leads the daily, real-time management and upkeep of the content calendar, including creating, managing, and populating calendar fields for the successful planning, executing, and tracking of content across projects and teams
• Continuously monitor and improve project management processes and practices, using industry best practices to optimize project delivery and improve overall organizational efficiency
• Lead the proactive identification and elimination of obstacles to effectively facilitate cross-functional collaboration, teamwork, and open communication
• Facilitates smooth and timely development, production, and dissemination of written, digital, print, video/multimedia, and other editorial products in fast-paced environment that requires flexibility and adaptability, ensuring timely delivery of outcomes with a balance and room for creative and innovative approaches to delivery
• Manages and tracks roles, responsibilities, and assignments of internal staff and external contributors to content production, review, and publication to ensure role clarity

• Manage communication of project status, risks, and issues to key stakeholders, including the Senior Leaders, ensuring that they are informed and engaged throughout the project lifecycle, including overall timelines and key milestones with clear articulation of dependencies and tradeoffs
• Lead development of project documentation in line with project playbook, ensuring that project is rigorously planned and excellently executed
• Develops and tracks project budgets, and provides input to quarterly and annual budgeting process to ensure optimal resource allocation towards org goals
• Coordinates content team schedules and calendars, including managing the weekly team meetings and agendas and cross-team meetings and agendas
• Organizes and manages content in shared systems and establishes and maintains effective systems for organizing, storing, and retrieving content for XQ-wide use
• Creates and manages project communication channels in Slack

• Plans, organizes, and assumes responsibility for project-related meetings and presentations including the creation of project-related memos, decks and presentation collateral
• Identifies gaps in XQ workstreams, actively proposes solutions, and moves between teams to fill ad-hoc needs and capacity issues
• Manage and lead project teams, fostering creativity and promoting collaboration, including regularly meeting with teams and individuals across XQ to ensure collaboration and ongoing line of sight across all content needs
• Contribute as member of the content team to draft, proof, review, revise at various stages of the creation process as needed
• Develops and coordinates new Scopes of Work and contracts in partnership with Legal and Operations, including sourcing and managing vendors to ensure quality and cost-effective production
• Serves as in-office liaison to other teams for off-site content team members
• Collaborate with the Head of Content and cross-functional teams to plan, execute, and deliver content projects and campaigns, ensuring they meet XQ's goals and objective
• Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, including content creators, designers, developers, and vendors, to ensure that all project tasks are completed on time and to a high standard of quality
• Collaborate with School and Products teams to identify content and insights to be highlighted through XQ's visual language and storytelling voice, tailoring content to target audiences to take action

Requirements
Qualifications

• Employment: 5 years of work experience in project management or a similar role
• Education: Bachelor's degree required; candidates without a Bachelor's degree will not be considered
• Workplace Requirements:
• Report to the Oakland XQ office 4 days a week minimum
• Ability to travel up to 20% time

Additional Skills & Characteristics

• A confident contributor and upbeat, positive collaborator with a consistent spirit of partnership and productive problem-solving
• "Self-starter" willingness to take initiative and works well both independently and collaboratively
• Ability to adapt to challenges and opportunities with a solutions-oriented, positive perspective
• Compulsion to identify and resolve inefficiencies, and a passion for building cohesive processes
• Proactive sense of urgency in creating solutions; does not wait for others to take action
• Exceptional interpersonal skills; ability to develop relationships with a wide range of individuals and proven ability to collaborate with a diverse, multi-functional team
• Meticulously organized and detailed, with a keen eye and careful attention to detail
• Proven experience with executing against goals on time and to high standards of excellence
• Masterful management and follow-through of short-term and long-term tasks simultaneously
• Strong work ethic and independence, with a high degree of motivation to collaborate, learn, and iterate
• Ability to communicate effectively, grammatically, and accurately, both verbally and in writing, with colleagues, vendors, consultants, partners, and XQ audiences
• Flexibility and willingness to perform other tasks as assigned and to learn, grow, and stretch
• Mission-oriented commitment to understanding and articulating the mission, programs, and activities of XQ

• Big-picture understanding of the work that needs to be done and the detail-oriented steps involved in doing it right
• Responds rapidly and thoroughly to inquiries and requests
• Desire to work in a lively, rapidly-changing, high-intensity environment with a diverse team that often collaborates fluidly across projects
• Submits deliverables on time with the level of accuracy, fidelity, and excellence required for XQ standards
• Provides flexibility to adapt effectively to changing circumstances and shifting priorities
• Consistently provides thoughts for next steps to manager and has a deep understanding of mission to be able to actions next steps independently, engaging managers productively to drive work forward with manager feedback

XQ Mindsets
Ours is a world defined by uncertainty, a society in flux, a state of unprecedented upheavals. While we don't anticipate any quick fixes, we can anchor ourselves to what we see emerging. That's why we have established a set of collective XQ Mindsets to ground us.

• 100% accountability: This doesn't mean you have 100% ownership. It doesn't mean you are responsible for every last thing that needs to be done. It means choosing to take responsibility for our collective success and impact.
• Maker mindset: We build stuff. We won't always get it right the first time-in fact, we rarely will. But by quickly making and testing our work, we can learn what works and what doesn't.
• We are the ones we've been waiting for: Critique is not enough. It is on us to create the solutions-no matter where we sit in the organization. We are a well-resourced organization filled with brilliant people. No one else is coming to our rescue.
• Opportunity knocks: We are ready, willing, and able to take on anything that is thrown our way. Pivots are a natural part of our approach, so let's embrace them so that we can experience them joyfully.
• Stand on the shoulders of giants: We honor those who came before us, who aren't seated at our tables, and build on others' and our own earlier work with respect and reverence.

Benefits
Discover XQ's exceptional benefits package, designed with you in mind:

• Immediate eligibility for medical, dental, and vision coverage from day one.
• Generous 401k matching and vesting to secure your financial future.
• Enjoy the flexibility of paid time off (PTO) and a convenient lunch stipend.
• Elevate your work experience with Apple products.
• Embrace the joys of parenthood with paid parental leave.
• Compensation Range: $150,000 - $175,000

Join us and experience the difference with XQ's competitive benefits package. Your well-being is our priority.
To Apply
Please apply online. In your cover letter, please address why your skills, interests, and experience align with the requirements for this role.
XQ is proud to be an equal-opportunity workplace. At XQ, promoting, celebrating, and supporting diversity is a core value. Individuals are considered without regard to race, gender, age, sexual orientation, sexual expression, religion, color, veteran status, disability, marital status, or ancestry.