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BSG From the Boardroom

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    [Closed Search] College Measures, Managing Director

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    POSITION OVERVIEW

    Reporting directly to the Board of Directors, this Managing Director will run day to day operations of the College Measures JV. He or she will work closely with founder Mark Schneider to provide overall strategic direction for the company, including creating and implementing a business plan for exploiting various markets for the company’s premier research, data management, and consulting services, including government, institutional, and consumer markets.

    Important considerations—

    •  This Managing Director will report to the board comprising AIR and Matrix representatives. He or she will be working closely with Mark Schneider, the founder and President of the joint venture. Mark splits his time between his position at College Measures and his retained position as Senior Vice President at AIR. In addition to his vision and ideas for the future direction of the College Measures product suite, Mark has extensive connections to states and other public markets. The working relationship between Mark and the MD will be a critical factor in this appointment, and the board of College Measures is looking for the MD to complement and enhance the strengths of Mark by assuming day to day leadership of the business.
    •  The position requires an entrepreneur—someone who is not looking to others for guidance but can build a business plan that takes College Measures from $1M to $20M and more. This is a prototypic builder/leader role.
    Growth of the company will depend on leveraging the data that College Measures has generated or collated about public colleges. This is a Bloomberg/Zillow model—they are not in the business of generating data but in curating and displaying it for a variety of audiences, including states and agencies, vendors to colleges and universities, the colleges and universities themselves, and consumers (parents and students). The investor also sees a substantial revenue stream in providing wider advisory services to the higher education market, based on the company’s data and software platform.
    •  Most likely, the individual hired will know the higher education market well. This might or might not come from having worked for a research and/or consulting firm. Brilliant thinking outweighs specific industry knowledge.
    AIR brings research expertise; Matrix Knowledge brings its software platform and consulting expertise to the JV.
    •  THERE ARE NO STAFF AT PRESENT – all support is provided by either Matrix or AIR. How quickly the company grows depends on how successful Mark and the MD are at (1) adding additional states to their list of customers and (2) leveraging these relationships and research data to sell to new markets.
    •  The position can be based anywhere on the East Cast or in Chicago. The MD will need to be in DC for a few days weekly, however, for some period of time.
    Compensation will be heavily weighted equity and bonus. This is not a salary-heavy role. Candidates who for very real reasons are not in a position to trade salary for equity and (attractive) bonus will probably not be satisfied.

    ABOUT COLLEGE MEASURES

    College Measures is a for-profit joint venture between the American Institutes for Research, one of the pre-eminent educational research organizations in the U.S., and TMKG Ltd (“Matrix”) a private equity-backed, U.K. based global software and advisory business focused on the health, education and justice sectors. This joint venture was created out of a pressing need to informing basis of the enormous human and financial capital investments made in higher education in the United States. At the core of the founding vision is the belief that important underlying data is underexposed and underutilized by students, parents, policymakers, and even by institutions themselves.

    The founder and visionary behind the business is Mark Schneider, former U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics in the US Department of Education.

    JV Rationale

    TROUBLING OUTCOMES

    Far too many students enroll in college but never complete their education. On average, less than 60% of students seeking four-year bachelor degrees graduate within six years. Graduation rates for black and Hispanic students are far lower. Among students seeking associate degrees at community colleges, less than one-fourth earn these degrees within three years – with only about 14% of black students and 18% of Hispanic students doing so.

    The human side of this failure is significant. The student who drops out after a year or two of college will benefit only slightly – at least economically – from having attended college but not having earned a degree. They will earn, on average, only 5% to 10% more than peers who never attended college. Many of these students will take on thousands of dollars of student loan debt which will be a significant financial burden for years to come. In addition to these personal costs, taxpayers spend billions of dollars each year subsidizing the education of students who fail to graduate and who, too often, don’t even make it through their first year of college.

    PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT & MANAGEMENT 

    Stakeholders in the US higher education system – from students to administrators to legislators to employers - need to be able to accurately measure performance, understand what that performance means to them, and act upon the information presented. However, measuring and managing performance for colleges is not straight-forward. Important questions have to be addressed. What are the appropriate measures of performance? What data exist to support those measures? For any particular college, what are appropriate performance targets? Who should be held accountable for achieving those targets, by whom, and how?

    OUT OF THE WAREHOUSE, INTO THE STOREFRONT

    Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent creating data warehouses that contain the information needed to assess the performance of our higher education system. These warehouses exist at the school, state and national levels, and hold a powerful amount of information that needs to be presented in ways that are compelling to users. The goal of College Measures is to move the information out of these data warehouses and into "data storefronts" in which performance metrics will be placed into the public square, allowing students, their families, and policy makers to get much better measures of the rate of return on their investment in higher education programs and institutions.

    COMPANY MISSION

    The mission of College Measures is to inform and improve the decision making process for students, parents, and policy makers. This is being achieved through the sale of software products and consultancy services that link together the economic benefits (including actual and projected earnings) and costs of higher education down to the major field and college level. College Measures provides stakeholders with tools they can use to analyze the performance of their college or system, and serves as the basis for productive discussions about outcomes relative to the dollars being spent to achieve those outcomes.

    The business has achieved significant early traction and has rolled out its Economic Success Metrics Tool in a number of states, including Tennessee, Virginia and Arkansas. This tool will be rolled out in Texas, Colorado and Nevada in the new year. This tool, which for the first time makes available, in a usable form, detailed earnings data at the major field of study and campus level has created significant interest across the US and a number of significant sell-on and partnership opportunities. There is also a pipeline of future products include a Return on Investment calculator.

    The business model of the company is evolving but at its heart is built around leveraging software and substantive expertise within the field of educational earnings and performance data. To date the business has been managed by staff on secondment from its two shareholders, both of which also provide significant logistical support. With the fundamentals of the business model now largely proven the board has decided to appoint a managing director to take ownership of day-to-day management of the business. This is a very hands-on business development led role. A significant proportion of the ultimate remuneration, which will include equity participation, will be results driven. It must be stressed that College Measures is an early stage business and the successful candidate must be comfortable with, and motivated by, such an environment.

    Click the more button below to see rest of blog post, including the position description.

    ABOUT AIR

    Founded in 1946 as a not-for-profit organization, AIR is one of the world's largest behavioral and social science research organizations. Its overriding goal is to use the best science available to bring the most effective ideas and approaches to enhancing everyday life. For AIR, making the world a better place is not wishful thinking--it is the goal that drives them.

    The intellectual diversity of its 1,600 employees enables AIR to bring together experts from many fields in the search for innovative answers to any challenge.

    ABOUT TMKG ("MATRIX")

    Matrix is a group of software and consultancy companies supporting the health, justice and education sectors. The group operates out of offices in London, Brussels, and Washington DC.

    Its advisory business provides strategic and operational advice to governments, public sector bodies, and private sector organizations in the UK, North America, and for the European Commission. These companies have particular expertise in health, education, general economics, informatics, and policy impact assessment. Matrix Decisions, its software subsidiary, owns the Aspira platform upon which College Measures products are built. This platform enables messy and unstructured data held in disparate sources to be structured and presented in a meaningful manner. It is designed to be easily used by non-IT professionals while still providing the rigor required of a business critical software solution. Aspira is currently in use in a range of public and private sector organizations, including the management of highly sensitive data for governmental departments.

    The Matrix team includes world renowned expert advisers, economists and researchers, experienced practitioners, and creative software developers. Together they create the organizational, knowledge and information infrastructures and evidence to deliver improvements in performance and value. The team is supported by a worldwide network of highly regarded partner organizations and academic institutions.

    ABOUT MARK SCHNEIDER

    Mark is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Vice President at AIR. Prior to joining AIR, he served as the U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics from 2005-2008. He is also a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is the author and editor of numerous article and books on education policy, including Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), Higher Education Accountability (Palgrave, 2010), Charter Schools: Hope or Hype? (Princeton University Press, 2007), and Choosing Schools (Princeton University Press, 2000), which won the Policy Study Organization’s Aaron Wildavsky Best Book Award. Mark has been working to increase accountability by making data on college productivity more publicly available.

    THE POSITION

    Reporting to a Board of Directors, including representatives from the America Institutes of Research (AIR) and Matrix, this Managing Director will work hand in glove with the founder to establish and implement a strategic plan for the overall business.

    The MD will be responsible for the following—

    •  Develop and implement the annual operating plan for the business consistent with the strategic plan of the              overall business.
    •  Review market conditions, establishing and prioritizing key market development activities, reviewing the                  effectiveness of sales efforts and channels to market, providing sales forecasts and pricing policies consistent        with profitability performance, and establishing sales and marketing plans to achieve annual sales goals.
    •  Ensure product plans are executed to meet growth targets as well as ensure the ongoing competitive positioning    of the business.
    •  Improve operational efficiency and effectiveness by assessing, upgrading or installing new operational systems,    processes and methodologies.
    •  Review activity reports and financial data to determine progress and status in attaining objectives and revise          tactics in accordance with current conditions.
    •  Execute and achieve annual growth targets while gaining increased leverage on costs and operating expenses.
    •  Demonstrate leadership skills in rapidly growing both product and service sales essential to high fidelity                  implementations and continuing support of existing customers.
    •  Champion succession planning and employee development, ensuring bench strength for future growth while          maintaining a focus on furthering the existing organizational culture.
    •  Demonstrate skills in recruiting and holding top talent.
    •  Assert her/himself into the existing leadership group and earn the respect of Mark and the Board.
    •  Demonstrate the capacity to serve customers while building a great place for College Measures employees to        work.
    •  Close liaison with both shareholding parties and their representatives to ensure adherence to corporate                  governance and ethical requirements.

    THE CAREER OPPORTUNITY

    For an experienced entrepreneur with the requisite background, this position offers the following career benefits--

    • Opportunity to drive growth in a financially solid but still startup organization—to take revenues from <$1M to $20M and more...and to be compensated accordingly
    • Opportunity to develop best in class product offerings
    • Opportunity to work with a strong, committed Board and founder willing to invest in future growth
    • Opportunity to do well by doing good—to lay an important role in improving higher education and the challenge of “gainful employment”
    • Opportunity to live and work anywhere on the East Coast, or possibly in Chicago, with regular commuting to DC

    The position is a prototypic builder/leader role. There is no fixed template for growth at this early stage—it will be up to the MD, Mark Schneider, and the board to plot the direction of the company, and to the MD to implement this plan. For someone who has always wanted to be in such a role, one could scarcely do better.

    THE IDEAL CANDIDATE

    The ideal candidate currently is working as a CEO, President, COO, or GM for a rapidly growing for-profit organization that provides information or online support services to the higher education market. Specific experience with B2C marketing is a plus. Alternatively, this individual might be working for a for-profit education consultancy, research organization, or college or university in an operational, strategic, and revenue-generating role.

    The successful candidate will have a proven track record within an early stage consultancy and software environment. Empathy with the mission of the business allied with commercial drive to optimize shareholder returns are pre-requisites. An in-depth understanding of the US Higher Education system would be a definite benefit, although not at the expense of business development experience. Personality and experience are critical to this role. Robust, pragmatic and a problem solver, the successful candidate will have a “can do” attitude and strong business development and communication skills.

    Specifically, the candidate will possess—

    • Experience in a P&L role for a leader that provides some kind of service or product—information , financial aid, lead generation, college application tools, software, or other—sold to either consumers (parents, students), other vendors in the higher ed market, government agencies, or colleges and universities, or all of these
    • Specific knowledge and understanding of current trends in the higher education market
    • Very strong business development and product management skills—a “P&G mindset” that studies markets, talks to customers, and designs high-quality products and services around customers’ needs
    • Strong record of performance taking a company or division from <$10M to $50M or more as operating manager with full P&L responsibility
    • Experience developing and implementing a strategic commercial business plan
      • Outstanding general management and leadership skills developed in a fast-paced, dynamic, multi-tasking environment; an entrepreneurial spirit--whether within a small or large company; not a "big company mentality"
      • Breadth if not depth in all functional areas of a company--operations, finance, product development (IT), product management, and business development
      • A self-starter mentality with sound judgment, discernment, and the ability to problem solve
      • The ability to work in a highly interactive team environment; excellent interpersonal and communication skills; flexibility a must
        • MBA or equivalent experience
        • Willingness to live in or commute weekly to Washington DC.

    Culturally and temperamentally, the ideal candidate is a team player who believes that individual success flows from the overall success of the organization. This involves a range of personal attributes-- flexibility and adaptability; a strong work ethic; leadership with minimal Board supervision; an ability to analyze and evaluate one’s own (and other’s) performance and to develop plans to improve performance; excellent presentation skills; willingness to take responsibility for both success and failure—a thick skin; self-confidence and a positive attitude about self, company, and marketplace; effective listening and questioning; sincerity, trust, believability and warmth; strong closing skills; and a strong desire for success

    COMPENSATION

    Compensation will include salary, very attractive bonus (pegged to EBITDA growth), and a significant ownership stake in line with the individual’s experience.

    CONTACT

    Resume and cover letter should be sent as Word documents to Ralph Protsik (ralph@bsgtv.com) and also posted on the BSG website, www.bsgtv.com.  No phone calls please.

    Request Information

    -by Ralph Protisk on Mar 13, 2013 12:16:59 PM
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