Business Transformation Manager

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (www.dell.org) builds pathways that change lives for families around the world. With offices in Austin, New Delhi, Cape Town, Nairobi, and Tel Aviv, the foundation supports programs that advance quality public education, promote children’s health, and strengthen family economic stability. Since its inception, the foundation has committed over $2.8 billion to initiatives that expand opportunities and improve outcomes for families globally.​

Current Opportunity: Business Transformation Manager – Austin, TX

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation is hiring a Business Transformation Manager in Austin, Texas, for their Operational Excellence Team. This role involves managing multiple strategic projects, coordinating cross-functional teams, and promoting collaboration. Key responsibilities include strategic planning and stakeholder management, driving and implementing all aspects of transformative business initiatives from ideation to execution, providing updates and gathering feedback, risk identification and mitigation, ensuring deliverables meet quality standards, and developing comprehensive project plans. The role requires strong problem-solving skills, creative thinking and alignment with the foundation's strategies and goals. This role is an individual contributor role with the internal title of ‘Manager, Business Transformation’ role and requires that the person is based in Austin, Texas.

The major responsibilities of the Business Transformation Manager role include:

Project Management (80%)

• Provide comprehensive project management and support services for cross-team special projects or transformational initiatives as assigned (often also cross-geography) to deliver tangible results. Includes project plan/timeline/budget ownership, internal stakeholder engagement (and external when applicable), requirements definition, project plan, resource management and decision documentation
• Foster strong relationships and collaborate effectively with diverse team members and stakeholders to ensure projects are well-defined and on schedule. Act as the main point of contact for project stakeholders, offering regular updates and addressing any issues. Ensure project deadlines are met with a high level of accountability to stakeholders.
• Create strategic communication products for senior leadership for project updates at relevant intervals.
• Employ strong problem-solving skills and monitor project progress to manage shifting demands and make necessary adjustments to meet deadlines and objectives.
• Identify potential risks and develop mitigation strategies to ensure project success.
• Provides an external market perspective by keeping current on best practices, inclusive of a vision of how technology and AI automation can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our processes.
• Work with people managers and HR to ensure all personnel involved have necessary training to perform their tasks effectively.
• Conduct post-project debriefs to identify areas for improvement and share best practices
• Organize regular project team and steering committee meetings to address concerns, provide valuable feedback, and ensure alignment; foster attendee participation and collaboration in small and large groups.

Organizational Effectiveness: Operations & Process Management (20%)

Contribute to departmental, group and global cross-Foundation initiatives to bolster the Foundation’s organizational excellence. Includes the following responsibilities:

• Serve as a member of the Operational Excellence Team which benchmarks best practices, and continuously refines operations to maximize efficiencies and track effectiveness across global offices and teams
• Work with Operational Excellence Organizational Development lead to ensure onboarding, training modules and learning pathways incorporate any relevant project output
• Work with Operational Excellence Business Planning lead to integrate any relevant operational changes into annual planning cycle.
• Build, test and maintain various project management tools and templates on a routine basis, and support the decommissioning or updating of outdated tools or templates.
• Support board meeting related preparation, as assigned, including clear articulation of our work to the board in collaboration with Programs and Communications teams.

Other key responsibilities include:

• Networking with peer foundations to identify best practices to be considered for continuous improvement.
• Maintain working knowledge of key grant making systems used at the foundation
• Attend grantee site visits as relevant to special project program-related, external inputs

Education / Experience you will need to be successful in this role:

• Bachelor’s Degree (ideally in project management or related fields) and at least 5-7 years of relevant experience
• PMP or PMI certification required
• Lean Six Sigma Certification a plus
• Self-directed, comfortable with ambiguity
• Strong judgment, analytic reasoning, critical thinking and demonstrable problem-solving skills
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, strong customer-service orientation, outstanding negotiation skills, professional composure under pressure
• Superior attention to detail and excellent organizational, time-management and project management skills with the ability to prioritize, multi-task and work independently as well as collaboratively as a member of a team and to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Experience in leading high impact projects across global, cross-functional teams and departments, including partnering with Technology teams on system automation and implementations of AI solutions.
• Proficiency in project management software such as Trello, Asana, Pivotal Tracker, or Basecamp
• Project management collaboration / documentation tool proficiency (e.g. Smartsheet, Confluence)
• Microsoft Office Suite proficiency (e.g. Microsoft Excel, Power Point)
• 5 years in role supporting matrixed teams