Chief of Staff

ABOUT BASTA

Since 2016, BASTA has worked with thousands of first-generation college students of color to launch their careers and change the face of leadership in the workforce, resulting in the country's best job placement outcomes. Through personalized AI-powered career planning, best-in-class coaching, and networking with top 100 employers, New York-based job seekers in BASTA’s Fellowship program find great jobs at nearly twice the rate of their peers. Our Powered By BASTA program is scaling this impact through game-changing analytics and online support that supercharges colleges’ career success programs so students nationwide can accelerate their professional journey.

SCOPE AND PROBLEM

American undergrads are facing a job market beset by systemic underemployment. The problem is especially severe for the nearly 5 million first-generation college students: only 44% of first-gen students of color land a job that requires their degree,and only 20% earn a living wage within a year of graduation. 

These trailblazers have the smarts, skills, and experience to land a job that leverages their degree, pays well, and forges a path to a thriving career. BASTA partners with colleges, nonprofits, and employers to build that bridge of opportunity.

The Person

As Chief of Staff, you will join the Office of the CEO where you will partner with the CEO on org-wide initiatives, providing oversight and project managing a broad spectrum of key projects and initiatives. You will support the CEO and executive team by providing thought partnership and strategic guidance and will serve as a trusted advisor to all staff members. With your birds-eye view of the organization, you will be uniquely positioned to identify opportunities for collaboration, efficiency, and improvement up, down, and across the teams. This may look like: 

• Playing a key role in accelerating the shared priorities of the Senior Leadership team (comprised of functional leaders from across Basta)
• Supporting - at times spearheading, leading and/or lending your skills to org-wide internal initiatives (eg; from hiring to meeting management)
• Joining CEO check-ins with direct reports and identifying opportunities to drive initiatives forward
• Managing strategic initiatives coordinator to optimize CEO’s time, from calendaring to owning right-sized projects and tasks
• Opportunistically serving as a project manager for new initiatives the organization is piloting

The Chief of Staff is likely to see himself/herself/themselves in the following examples as they are designed to help you determine if this opportunity aligns with your own passion, purpose, skills, and experiences.   

• Represent CEO  in a high-stakes internal leadership meeting, as a way to bring her POV into important decisions and to ensure you’re rolling up the right insights for her input
• Review and provide feedback on complex work products from marketing briefs to budgets to sales funnels & dashboards
• Collaborate with CEO direct report to prepare for a goal setting meeting or Q1 goal review conversation 
• Support executive coordinator to plan an upcoming offsite retreat

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience ideally across multiple sectors 
• 5+ years in a senior leadership or managerial role where you’ve overseen teams, managed projects, and made strategic decisions.
• Served on a team engaged in strategic planning and execution, direct experience managing operations and/or budgets and/or organizational performance.
• Demonstrated communication skills across several dimensions; speaking, writing, and media relations. 
• Direct experience building with stake-holders, such as board members, donors, high-stakes partners 
• Lived experience of the Fellows we serve (Preferred)
• Cross-sector experience (Preferred)

The Tangible Good 

We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package* which includes medical, dental, vision, short-term disability, long-term disability, life insurance, retirement matching, paid parental leave, and more. We also offer a generous paid time off policy, including 15 paid vacation days (20 paid vacation days after your first year), all federal holidays, summer Friday half-days and an end of year shutdown annually.  

*Basta reserves the right to change benefits at any time according to business need.  

**Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. Basta is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time. 

**Basta does not currently cover the cost of relocation