Business Operations & Strategy Lead

Collegewise; United States; Remote; USD 75,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a mission-driven team as the Business Operations & Strategy Lead at a leading college counseling company. You will oversee operational processes that enhance efficiency while collaborating across teams to ensure a seamless experience for students navigating their college journey. With your analytical skills and project management experience, you will play a crucial role in shaping the company’s operations.

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision benefits

Paid parental leave

401(k) retirement plans

Generous paid time off policies

Qualifications

• Experience in operational excellence and project management.
• Strong analytical skills for financial modeling and data analysis.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and communicate effectively across functions.

Responsibilities

• Lead cross-functional projects to improve operational efficiency.
• Design and implement strategic processes across service teams.
• Analyze financial and operational data to identify improvement opportunities.

Skills

Project Leadership

Data Analysis

Organizational Skills

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Proactive Learning

Education

Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Finance, or related field

Job description

• Do you believe that great operations can transform how organizations serve their mission?
• Are you looking for the opportunity to shape the backbone of a growing company while helping thousands of students succeed?
• Do you want to be the connective tissue that ensures all the moving pieces work together beautifully?

As the Business Operations & Strategy Lead at Collegewise, you'll work closely with our CEO to shape the operational backbone of our company. Your mission is to ensure that our services and systems run smoothly, efficiently, and at scale so our teams can focus on what matters most: helping students succeed.

You’ll lead and execute on cross-functional projects, design and improve core operational processes, and serve as a connective tissue across teams, ensuring that sales, services, marketing, people, and finance work in sync. This is a hands-on, high-impact role where no two weeks will look quite the same,

Who We Are

Collegewise is a college counseling company that helps high school students confidently navigate their journey to college. We believe the college admissions process has spun out of control, with too much confusion, too much anxiety, and too many students losing agency for what should be their path to higher education. We're out to change all that.

Since 1999, we've helped more than 30,000 "A" students, "C" students, and everyone in between apply and get accepted to schools—sometimes famous, often not—that they're excited to attend. We do it all with just the right mix of advice, encouragement, and occasional cheerleading to ensure that each student's college admissions process goes smoothly and thoughtfully. We also speak in public, write, and constantly look for ways to spread relevant college planning information to anyone who needs it, whether or not they join our program.

To learn more about our inspiring work, check out this short video .

What's the Job?

Your work spans four main areas:

• Cross-Functional Project Leadership : Lead high-impact projects that improve business efficiency, client experience, and internal workflows across Collegewise. You'll roll up your sleeves to scope, plan, and execute process improvements from ideation through measurement. This includes bringing teams together to discuss current processes (like sales-to-service handoffs), identifying the best ideas to test and implement, drafting plans and procedures, managing deadlines, measuring success over time, and keeping legacy documents relevant.
• Strategic Process Design & Implementation : Design and implement operational processes within our service teams to support evolving business needs. Whether launching new services, refining handoffs, or aligning incentives with desired behaviors, you'll ensure systems surface the right information at the right time and workflows adapt as our offerings grow.
• Programmatic Documentation & Sales Enablement : Act as the operational source of truth for how our services work across teams. You'll maintain foundational documentation like counseling playbooks, product descriptions in HubSpot, and sales resources. Your work directly reduces errors, prevents recurring issues, and enables consistent family experiences.
• Operational Analysis & Optimization : Analyze financial and operational data to ensure accuracy and identify improvement opportunities. You'll perform critical tasks like data reconciliation, pulling performance metrics, financial modeling, and providing data-driven recommendations for capacity planning and product margins.

You'll work with smart, passionate colleagues who care deeply about families, knowing that smoother operations means better experiences for thousands of students.

Doing the Right Thing, Making a Difference, Treating People Right

You wouldn't be crossing over to the for-profit "dark side" of counseling here. We've earned an excellent reputation with both high school counselors and admissions officers. We present at NACAC, local ACACs, and at high schools and community events. We're partnered with Michelle Obama's Reach Higher organization, and we offer a scholarship program for under-resourced students. We share our free resources liberally, including Runway , our course we built for students applying to college. We're biased, but really, this is a pretty great place to work.

Who We're Looking For (You)

• You make work a way of life without making it your actual life—someone who'd rather be challenged by something important than phone it in for something mundane. You want to commit to a calling that matters to you, and you have high expectations of yourself, your job, and your employer.
• You believe in Collegewise's vision and want to help transform the college admissions journey for families. You've seen how operational excellence can make the difference between an organization that just gets by and one that truly serves its mission.
• You work well across teams and personality types. You're the person who rolls up sleeves to make sure project pieces come together well. You're comfortable leading projects and keeping teams on track with strong organizational skills.
• You're naturally proactive and like learning new systems. You enjoy digging into data, have experience building financial models, and are energized by growing a company alongside smart, mission-driven colleagues.
• You navigate ambiguity well and make progress even when inputs aren't perfectly defined. You know when to zoom into details and when to see the big picture. You care about outcomes, not just outputs, and communicate clearly across functions.
• Bonus points: You have majored in business, finance, systems, or technology and you have experience in strategy consulting, business ops, or starting your own company.
• Most importantly, you want to be part of a mission-driven culture focused on helping students, ensuring our operational backbone supports thousands of families on one of their most important journeys.

Compensation and Benefits

• Annual Salary: $75,000 - $90,000, based on your experience and what you bring to the role.
• Location: Remote (Bonus points if you’re near NJ/NYC for the occasional lunch or coffee IRL!)
• Start Date: We'd like our new Wiser to start as soon as possible, but we can adjust the start date to accommodate the right person.
• Benefits: We offer a full suite of medical, dental, and vision benefits in addition to paid parental leave, 401(k) retirement plans, and generous paid time off policies.

We Want to Hear from You

If you're excited about this opportunity but unsure if you're the right fit, we hope you'll take a shot. There is no such thing as a perfect applicant (or a perfect job, for that matter). And we promise to give a fair and thorough read to every applicant who takes the time to submit a thoughtful application to us.

We also understand that the more we embrace diversity of age, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability, ethnicity, and perspective, the stronger the company we'll be able to build together. Creating an environment where everyone, from any background, can do their best work is the right thing to do. And we hope you're excited to embrace and contribute to our efforts.

How to Apply

If your interest is piqued, please start by writing us a cover letter that tells your story. What role has admissions or counseling played in your professional life? What brought you to this place seeking this role? What excites you about this opportunity?

We really enjoy working with people who are clear thinkers and equally clear communicators. And you're more interesting than a generic "insert-name-of-company-here" letter. So please be yourself and use your letter to help us get to know the real you. You might also consider checking out our five tips for job-seekers.

Then submit your application on our site. When you paste your cover letter into the text box, your formatting will hold up when we see it (but if it doesn't, we'll blame the text box, not you).

Questions?

Feel free to email us at [e-mail] (please no phone calls). We promise to respond to you quickly.

Thanks for reading our post. We'd love to hear from you, but if we don't, we hope you find the perfect professional fit someplace else.

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