Leader, Continuous Improvement (Edge)

Company Overview

Success Academy’s mission is to reimagine public education. From the classroom to the halls of government, this means finding profoundly different approaches to delivering a high-quality education at scale. We re-conceive every aspect of school design, from writing rigorous new curricula to drawing regularly on the advances in technology and business that are transforming every sector except education.

This school year marks the 20th anniversary of Success Academies and the launch of our mission to drive public education as an excellent, efficient, and equitable pillar of American society. During this time, Success Academies has grown faster than any charter network in the nation, building a vibrant network of 59 elementary, middle, and high schools. Our 20,000 children – from underrepresented communities – are outperforming students at top city and suburban schools across New York State. Looking forward, our goals are even more ambitious: to grow to 100 schools and to educate 50,000 children across New York City in a uniquely holistic pre-K-12 system, bringing transformational change here and across the country through extraordinary school quality.

About the Role

The role is designed to help senior leaders solve the organization's hardest, most ambiguous operating problems — and to build the organization's own muscle for doing this work. At its core, this is a role about sharp thinking and sharper facilitation: the ability to walk into a room of busy, skeptical school and network leaders, drive them to the real root cause of a hard problem, and leave them aligned on what to do next. You'll lead a team of Lean/PE and Project Management practitioners and own the PE strategy and pipeline — but your primary instruments are diagnosis, facilitation, and the ability to communicate root causes and solutions in a way that moves executive leadership to act.

Classic Lean/Six Sigma tools (Kaizen, DMAIC, Standard Work, Visual Daily Management, etc) are part of the toolkit, not the point of the job. We're looking for someone who can flex and adapt those tools to fit a fast-moving, people-intensive, mission-driven school system — not someone applying an industrial playbook.

Who thrives in this role: People who've spent their career getting a room full of skeptical, busy leaders to diagnose what's actually broken and what to do about it — whether that muscle was built in Lean/Six Sigma, management consulting, strategy, internal operations, or leading transformation inside a school system, hospital, or other complex, mission-driven organization. You're energized by ambiguous, human problems more than by cleanly executing a known methodology.

Key Responsibilities

• Facilitate to Root Cause: Lead diagnosis of workflow impediments and organizational friction across the business — especially where the problem itself isn't yet well-defined — and facilitate senior stakeholders toward clear, actionable root causes.
• Influence Executive Leadership: Distill complex, ambiguous problems into a clear narrative and communicate root causes and solution options in a way that builds conviction and drives decisions at the executive level.
• Drive Change Through Structured Problem-Solving: Lead focused problem-solving sessions (Problem Solving Process, Kaizen-style events) that drive process improvement and cross-functional alignment.
• Own the PE Roadmap: Develop the PE roadmap in partnership with senior leadership, aligned to business priorities, annual targets, and strategic plan objectives.
• Build the Organization's PE Muscle: Promote and evolve a practical set of PE tools (Standard Work, Transactional Process Improvement, Problem-Solving Process, Daily Management, Kaizen) — with the judgment to know which tool fits which situation and when to set the playbook aside.
• Partner on Strategy Execution: Be an active partner in Policy Deployment (Strategic Transformation) and Daily Management initiatives alongside business leadership.
• Develop Talent: Own and continuously improve the PE training program; coach and evaluate practitioners toward Certified Practitioner status.

Minimum Qualifications

• Executive facilitation and influence: Demonstrated ability to facilitate senior stakeholders — including C-suite/Board-level audiences — through ambiguous, high-stakes problem-solving to a clear root cause and a compelling, actionable path forward. This is the single most important skill for this role.
• Comfort with ambiguity: Track record of shaping and scoping problems that don't arrive pre-defined, rather than only executing a known methodology against a known workflow.
• 8+ years leading structured problem-solving, organizational transformation, or operational improvement in complex, fast-moving, or mission-driven organizations. This might come from Lean/Six Sigma in an operations- or human-services-heavy context (healthcare, education, government) — or equally from management consulting, corporate strategy, organizational design, or internal ops/strategy roles at complex service organizations. Your problem-solving and facilitation ability matter more than your specific tool pedigree.
• Coaching and talent development: Demonstrated ability to build and develop high-performing, cross-functional problem-solving teams.
• Experimentation mindset: Able to help teams take and manage risk, and drive experimentation to facilitate learning.
• Change leadership: Demonstrated ability to lead an organization through significant change without losing momentum, and to inspire continuous focus on key drivers — ideally within a decentralized, people-first, or mission-driven organization.
• Working fluency in structured problem-solving frameworks (Lean, DMAIC/PSP, Daily Management, Kaizen, Standard Work, Policy Deployment/Strategic Business Transformation), with the judgment to apply the right tool to the right situation rather than a single methodology by default.
• Bachelor's degree in Business, Education, Public Policy, Engineering, or another relevant field — or equivalent demonstrated experience.