Vice President, Marketing and Communications

Company Description

About the Organization

KIPP Public Schools is a national network of tuition-free public charter schools that prepares students with the skills and confidence to create the future they want for themselves, their communities, and us all. We are a network of 278 schools, nearly 16,500 educators, and nearly 190,000 students and alumni.

Our mission: Together with families and communities, we create joyful, academically excellent schools that prepare students with the skills and confidence to pursue the paths they choose—college, career, and beyond—so they can lead fulfilling lives and build a more just world.

Our vision: Every child grows up free to create the future they want for themselves and their communities.

The KIPP Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports KIPP public charter schools across the country. The KIPP Foundation helps to develop outstanding educators to lead KIPP schools; provides tools and resources for excellent teaching and learning; promotes innovation; and facilitates the exchange of insights and ideas across KIPP and other public schools and organizations.

About Our Values:

Excellent Results for Students: We value results over effort and know that our work is not finished until all students thrive. We maintain high expectations for self, team, and students. We drive outcomes by operating with agility, removing barriers, differentiating support, and prioritizing student-centered solutions—especially for those at the margins.

Collective Impact: We are one team. We win together. We embody a one-team mindset by working collaboratively across teams, aligning goals, and leveraging the strengths of all teammates. We build trust-based relationships and ensure inclusive decision-making by engaging those closest to the work. We provide clarity through simple, repeatable systems and goals that enable transformational outcomes.

Courageous Action: Our belief in what we can achieve is unwavering, fueling our optimism and commitment to overcome any challenge. We demonstrate an unwavering belief in students' potential and a commitment to addressing systemic inequities. We approach challenges with resilience, a solutions-focused mindset, and adaptability. We foster a psychologically safe environment centered on trust and accountability where feedback is encouraged. We leverage data to reflect on progress, own setbacks, celebrate successes, and continuously improve to maximize impact.

Job Description

About The Position

As the Vice President, Marketing and Communications you will be the steward of KIPP's national voice and brand. You'll lead a team that tells the story of who we are, what we stand for, and why it matters, reaching audiences from families searching for the right school to national leaders shaping the future of education. This role requires an exceptional communicator, a data-driven marketer, and a collaborative leader with a deep commitment to educational equity.

In this role, you will set and execute a bold, unified vision for marketing and communications aligned with KIPP's mission and long-term goals. This involves engaging directly and frequently with the CEO and other members of the senior leadership team to define and execute external and internal messaging in a coordinated drumbeat. You will lead a team of communications, digital marketing, and creative marketing professionals to create and deploy marketing campaigns for external (families, prospective teachers, media) and internal (current network leadership and staff) audiences. As a key leader within KIPP Foundation, the VP will contribute significantly to organization-wide initiatives to drive student achievement gains and "One KIPP" priorities.

Reporting to the Chief Development Officer, the ideal candidate runs toward bold vision, executes with precision, leans into creative ideas, and confidently leads laterally through impact and influence.

Responsibilities

Marketing and Communications Strategy: Set and Lead Multi-year Strategic Vision

• Develop and execute a forward-looking, multiyear marketing and communications strategy aligned with KIPP Foundation's 2030 Plan and One KIPP priorities
• Partner in the design and implementation of network-wide efforts to define and express "what it means to be KIPP," ensuring messaging reflects joy, rigor, and belonging across lines of difference
  
  

Brand Leadership: Elevate and Steward the KIPP Brand

• Serve as chief architect and guardian of the KIPP brand, ensuring national messaging reflects a clear, resonant, and differentiated national brand, rooted in KIPP's values and identity
• In the near term, clarify and elevate KIPP's value proposition to families, students, alumni, educators, and partners by re-energizing the brand and our key messages
• Refresh and develop brand guidelines, storytelling toolkits, and shared messaging that elevate the voices of students, families, and educators
• Partner with regional teams to develop creative and messaging, aligned with brand strategy, and to bring consistency and creativity to KIPP's visual and narrative identity across the country, focused on both current and prospective staff and family engagement
  
  

External Communications: Elevate KIPP's Voice

• Build an integrated communications strategy for the KIPP Foundation, aligned with leadership priorities, and in collaboration with Development, Advocacy, Talent, and other teams, that aims to strengthen network-wide alignment, build relationships, and expand KIPP's influence
• Drive national visibility through high-impact media placements, events, campaigns, podcasts, and thought leadership opportunities that contribute significantly to KIPP's brand as a national leader in education
• Support regional leaders to more effectively communicate with families, staff, and media through crisis and complexity, through communications planning, content review, and brand-aligned templates
• Serve as a strategic advisor to senior leadership on communications opportunities and risks, such as internal communications, or guiding executives and regional leaders during moments of risk with clarity, transparency, and credibility
  
  

Internal Communications: Ensure Alignment with Overall Strategy

• Ensure tight coordination between internal and external messaging, aligning media relations, executive visibility, and public storytelling with internal priorities and values
• Develop strategy to increase awareness, understanding, and support for One KIPP priorities
• Lead the charge with cross-team colleagues to develop messaging and coordinate dissemination across teams' channels
  
  

Creative Services: Translate Strategy into Powerful Visuals and Storytelling

• Partner with Data and Schools teams to identify and prioritize storytelling opportunities that help reinforce network-wide strategy, advance advocacy, drive enrollment, and increase fundraising
• Create content that changes how people feel and think, across a variety of mediums, e.g., short video from a classroom, a national op-ed shaping the education conversation
• Oversee the production and promotion of compelling stories that foster engagement on KIPP.org and social media platforms
• Oversee the production of collateral in service of programmatic objectives, partnering with the Office of the President, Schools, and Talent teams to prioritize and produce well-designed materials that ensure visual and narrative consistency.
  
  

Enrollment Marketing: Help Families Choose KIPP

• Lead network-wide student recruitment strategy in alignment with KIPP 2030 enrollment goals and sustainability priorities 
• Oversee a centralized national advertising hub that strategically deploys a multi-million-dollar budget to drive enrollment in 20+ regions
• Support regional recruitment and marketing capacity through data-informed guidance, creative campaigns, and aligned messaging toolkits 
  
  

Team Leadership: Build and Lead a Best-in-Class Team

• Lead, manage, and coach a high-performing and collaborative team of nine full-time staff
• Foster a high-performance team culture grounded in collaboration, inclusion, innovation, and continuous learning
• Lead through influence in a decentralized organization by building strong, trust-based relationships with regional Marketing and Communications leaders
• Manage budgets, agencies, and vendor relationships to deliver excellent, cost-effective outcomes
• Ensure clear priorities, operational excellence, and strong outcomes
  
  

Qualifications

Skills and Mindsets

• Communications: Demonstrate excellent capacity to write, prioritizing concision, clarity, data synthesis, and storytelling. Able to review complex data sets (quantitative and qualitative) and create a compelling narrative that synthesizes that data and highlights illustrative anecdotes to drive organization-wide priorities.
• Achievement & Outcomes Orientation: Demonstrated record of setting and achieving ambitious goals for their departments in complex or ambiguous environments; uses data, research, and analysis to set a high bar of excellence for goal setting; effectively distributes and redistributes work among direct reports, teammates, and teams to optimize goal attainment; effectively sets and fosters a culture that enables and celebrates teammates' achievements and goal attainment.
• Brand Stewardship and Messaging: Effective leadership and stewardship of a national brand strategy that ensures clarity, consistency, and resonance across regions. Ensures messaging frameworks articulate KIPP's impact, values, and commitment to students in the most compelling way.
• Partnership, Alliance-Building and Stakeholder Management: Can generate excitement, enthusiasm, and commitment across internal and external stakeholders to advance KIPP's mission; has political acumen and the interpersonal, diplomatic, and communications skills necessary to develop successful working relationships with diverse constituents.
• Change Management: Able to set a compelling organizational directive for change efforts, catalyzing teams to achieve change at scale. Effectively navigates internal and external political dynamics and stakeholders to drive change efforts at the systems level; champions KIPP Foundation and network-wide change and recruits internal and external sponsors.
• People Management & Development: Effectively builds systems to enable learning and continuous improvement across functions; highly skilled at coaching and supporting mid- and high-level leaders in excellent team management practices, including identifying and developing future organizational leaders; strategically designs and staffs teams with the skill and capacity to sustainably drive multi-year plans and goals; ensures an inclusive productive team that supports teammate effectiveness, engagement, and retention.
• Effective Work Management & Strategic Clarity: Able to engage in long-term planning and vision setting for the organization; effective at building systems and culture that facilitate continuous improvement, ensure organizational health and viability, and enable cross-functional collaboration to drive results.
  
  

Experience And Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience and record of results in marketing and/or communications, ideally in a national network
• 10+ years of progressive people management and leadership experience supporting a large team across multiple geographic and programmatic regions
• Experience with change management and budget management
• Commitment to education equity, social justice, and a passion for KIPP's mission and values, including a demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion
  
  

Additional Information

Work Conditions

• Full-time, Exempt position
• Travel requirements: 25-30%
  
  

Location

It is preferred, but not mandatory for this role to be based out of a KIPP Foundation office. This role has the option of working from a remote office full-time. KIPP Foundation offices are in NYC and Chicago.

Compensation And Benefits

In compliance with local law, we are disclosing the compensation, or a range thereof, for roles in locations where legally required. Actual salaries will vary based on several factors, including but not limited to external market data, internal equity, and relevant experience. The salary range for this position is $190,000-$227,000. In addition, KIPP Foundation provides a variety of benefits to employees, including: 

• 25 holidays for + 18 days additional flexible PTO days (flexible PTO increases to 23 days for years 3 and 4 and to 28 days for years 5+).
• 100% paid parental leave
• 100% coverage of the premium for employee and 75% for employee + family’s medical/dental/vision plans.
• Wellness benefits such as fitness reimbursements, discounted tickets to theme parks/attractions, backup care support for children and adults/elders, and our employee assistance program
• Finance Security benefits include such as a 401K retirement plan with 4% match, employer-sponsored legal plans, life/disability insurance, and flexible spending accounts
  
  

KIPP Foundation embraces the opportunity to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of the students and communities with whom we work and the world that’s around them. Being an equal opportunity employer means that we take seriously our responsibility to consider qualified candidates on the basis of merit, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, mental or physical disability, and genetic information, marital status, citizenship status, military status, protected veteran status or any other category protected by law.