Client Services Director, Alpha - $200,000/year USD

Alpha School; Santa Barbara (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Benefits

Job summary

Alpha School is seeking a Client Services Director to own the campus admissions journey end-to-end. You will be the main point of contact from inquiry through day one, managing 20+ active families across stages and delivering thoughtful, evidence-based decisions in person.

You will lead tours, info sessions, and shadow days, maintain CRM/SIS accuracy, and leverage AI tools for prep and summaries while reporting pipeline health to leadership weekly.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in a client-facing role where a family was the buyer at $25,000+ per client or $2,000+/month.
• You have owned a client, admissions, or enrollment journey from first inquiry through the commitment decision.
• You have managed 7+ client relationships at once in a CRM or tracking system.
• You have told a prospective client not to buy/enroll/join because it wasn’t the right fit.
• You have used AI tools in a client-facing workflow.
• You communicate concisely and professionally with executives and demanding clients.
• You have led polished in-person tours, presentations, or hosted experiences for affluent families or high-profile visitors.
• You can build a multi-touch relationship over 30+ days and stay engaged with families not ready to enroll.
• You have owned an enrollment or revenue target for at least 12 months with demonstrable results.
• You built a demand channel that brought in paying clients and owned a referral relationship.

Responsibilities

• Own the enrollment journey for every prospective family, from inquiry to onboarding.
• Carry 20+ active families at once, respond to inquiries promptly and review applications daily.
• Lead campus tours, open houses, info sessions, and shadow days for families.
• Form the admit or decline recommendation and deliver the decision personally.
• Keep HubSpot and SIS current after every interaction; use AI tools for prep and summaries; report pipeline health weekly.

Skills

Client-facing leadership

CRM management

Enrollment journey ownership

High-net-worth communication

AI tools usage

Tools

HubSpot CRM

SIS system

ChatGPT/Claude

Job description

"Alpha School students, on average, experience 2.4 to 2.6 times the academic growth of traditional school students"

- Forbes

Alpha is hiring.

You have sat across from a family and known the honest answer was no. Saying it cost you something: a number, a manager's approval, a commission. Here, that answer is the job - and as Client Services Director, it's the standard you hold your whole admissions function to.

Alpha is a private K-12 school network. Students do academics in about two hours a day and spend the rest building real skills, and the test scores prove it works. This is an on-site role at one campus, in person, every day, in one of 10 markets: Los Angeles, La Jolla, or Malibu, CA; Austin, TX; Boca Raton, FL; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Greenwich, CT; Nashville, TN; or Park City, UT. Pick your market when you apply.

Parents pay a premium for it, research everything, and ask hard questions about rigor and expectations in the first ten minutes. The model only works when the families inside it actually want it. In a small cohort, one family who signed up for something else changes the room for everyone.

You will own one campus's admissions process end-to-end. First inquiry, fit conversation, campus tour, shadow day, decision conversation. You are the person families talk to from inquiry to first day of school, and the person whose judgment the admissions team's fit calls ultimately answer to. A normal week might look like: making sure every inquiry is answered within four hours, walking a skeptical father through the afternoon block yourself, reviewing a shadow day, checking HubSpot is current across the pipeline, and calling a family to say their child would be better served somewhere else. You will be accountable for 20 or more active families at different stages simultaneously, whether you are carrying them directly or overseeing who does. You form the fit judgment, and you deliver the news, in person, in your own words.

The network is growing, and the playbook is evolving with it. The people who prove out a market write the FAQs, the fit criteria, and the standards the next campus inherits, and they become the name affluent families in their city trade with each other.

This is an on-site role at one campus, in person, every day. The kinds of people who do it well: admissions and enrollment leaders from selective schools; high-ticket consumer closers whose buyer was a family, like luxury real estate agents, private client advisors, or premium practice owners; and hospitality and private service operators who have run white-glove experiences for demanding clients.

What You Will Be Doing

• Owning the enrollment journey for every prospective family, from first inquiry through onboarding, and running a real needs assessment before you present anything.
• Carrying 20 or more active families at once, answering every inquiry promptly and reviewing applications daily.
• Leading campus tours, open houses, info sessions, and shadow days that show families exactly who this is and is not for.
• Forming the admit or decline recommendation and delivering the decision to the family yourself.
• Keeping HubSpot and the student information system (SIS) current after every interaction, using AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude for prep and summaries, and reporting pipeline health to leadership weekly.

What You Won’t Be Doing

• Chasing a seat-fill number. A family who enrolls and leaves is a worse outcome here than a family you turned away.
• Getting overruled on fit to protect a relationship or hit a yield target.
• Running scripts, call blitzes, or discount closes.
• Handing families down a chain of coordinators, or waiting on a committee for routine calls.
• Giving amenity tours that dodge the hard questions.

Client Services Director Key Responsibilities

Enroll the right families at one campus and make even the declines feel like good service.

Basic Requirements

• 3 or more years in a client-facing role where an individual or family was the buyer at $25,000 or more per client, or $2,000 or more per month. (Direct B2C/D2C only; B2B and enterprise sales are not applicable.)
• You have personally owned a client, admissions, or enrollment journey from first inquiry through the commitment decision.
• You have managed 7 or more client relationships at once in a CRM, database, or tracking system.
• You have told a prospective client not to buy, enroll, or join because it was not the right fit.
• You have used AI tools in a client-facing workflow.
• You communicate concisely and professionally in live conversations and writing with executives, high-net-worth individuals, or other demanding clients.
• You have personally led polished in-person tours, presentations, meetings, or hosted experiences for affluent families, senior executives, or other high-profile visitors.
• You can build a multi-touch relationship over 30 or more days and stay engaged with families who are not ready to enroll immediately.
• You have personally owned an enrollment, membership, client-count or revenue target for at least 12 months, with results you can explain.
• You have built a demand channel that brought in paying clients or enrolled families, and owned a referral relationship with an external organization that sent them to you.
• You live in, or will move within 60 days to, an open campus market: Los Angeles, La Jolla, or Malibu, CA; Austin, TX; Boca Raton, FL; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Greenwich, CT; Nashville, TN; or Park City, UT.
• Willing to work on-site at your campus daily.
• Authorized to work in the United States without visa sponsorship.

This role is for someone who has run a client-facing organization, not just a single relationship — someone who has owned the standards, the team, and the targets behind the enrollment or client experience, not just delivered it personally.

This posting is written for the practitioners closest to the family relationship. As Client Services Director, you would be accountable for building and running this function across the team: setting the fit standards, coaching the admissions conversations, and owning the aggregate enrollment outcomes for the campus, not just carrying your own pipeline of 20 families. Read the day-in-the-life and requirements below as the standard you would be setting and managing for others, as well as a baseline of the client-facing work you'd need to have mastered yourself to lead it credibly.

Nice-to-have Requirements

• Admissions or enrollment management experience at a selective private, independent, or boarding school.
• Luxury residential real estate, private banking, family office, concierge medicine, or high-end event planning, where the family was your buyer.
• You built the enrollment process or service standards yourself instead of inheriting them.
• You already know affluent families, preschools, or family advisors in one of the 10 markets.
• Owner-operator experience where you sold, delivered, and kept high-value clients yourself.

About Alpha

Join the team building school around student growth

Alpha reimagines the school day around faster learning, stronger mentorship, and more time for students to build real-world skills.

Roles with real student impact:

Alpha hires teachers (guides), operators, admissions experts, school & curriculum leaders, and remote team members.

Education work that pays like it matters:

Alpha offers six-figure roles for people ready to help build a radically better school experience.

A culture built for builders:

Alpha is fast-moving, ambitious, and student focused. It’s for people who want to improve the system, not maintain it.

Alpha is where you can do the most meaningful work of your career.

There is so much to cover for this exciting role, and space here is limited.

Working with us

This is a full-time, W2 employee position with immediate access to benefits (https://support.crossover.com/article/7581-w2-benefits-u-s-paychex-paid-only). All roles are year-long positions. The compensation level for this role is $200,000 USD/year. The payment period is weekly. Consult www.crossover.com/help-and-faqs for more details on this topic.