Program Operations Lead

Young Founders School; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation support

On-site weekends

Job summary

Founders School is seeking a senior Program Operations leader to own the delivery of weekend and immersion programs across campuses. You will design, staff, budget, and run events end-to-end, ensuring quality and scalability.

You will partner with school heads, enrollment, and marketing, obsess over families' experience, and implement repeatable playbooks. You must be on-site in NYC and willing to travel. Relocation support is available for non-local candidates.

Qualifications

• Owner of end-to-end program delivery with accountability for outcome.
• Strong operator with ability to manage multiple programs in parallel.
• Extremely organized with contingency planning.
• Capable of building from ambiguity into reliable, scalable programs.
• Excellent judgment on quality and experience; uphold premium brand.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end program delivery for Founders Weekend, Young Founders, and spin-offs.
• Manage event operations: schedule, venue, catering, AV, transportation, security, signage, and check-in.
• Turn early offerings into repeatable, well-run programs with playbooks and quality bars.
• Build the event playbook with checklists, timelines, budgets, and vendor lists.
• Manage budgets and vendors to high standards.
• Lead the people delivering programs: guides, mentors, facilitators, vendors, local teams.

Skills

Program delivery

People management

Vendor management

Operations planning

Ambiguity management

On-site weekend work

Communication

AI tools

Tools

HubSpot

Event management software

Job description

Founders School is the high school where every student aims to build a million-dollar company before graduation. We pair Alpha's elite academics with real companies, world-class mentors, and a culture built for ambitious teenagers. Our north star is bigger than one campus: develop 1 million+ youth entrepreneurs across all Founders School initiatives.

Around that core, we run a growing set of special programs and events: Founders Weekends, Build Weekends, Young Founders (our middle-school offering), info sessions, parent events, and future spin-offs, each of which has to be delivered with the same excellence as the flagship school.

Someone has to make all of it run at a level that matches the brand. That's you.

You will own the delivery of those programs and events end to end. Not the marketing, not the sales — the actual operation: the plan, the people, the budget, the venue, the vendors, the logistics, the run-of-show, and the outcomes. You'll take offerings that are early or undefined and turn them into programs that run reliably, delight the families in them, and can scale, and you'll build the event system that lets us run the same weekend well in every city we go to. This is a senior operator role with real ownership from day one.

What you will be doing

• Owning end-to-end program delivery for our special offerings — Founders Weekend, Young Founders, and future spin-offs — from planning and staffing through logistics, execution, and post-program follow-through.

• Owning event operations for every Founders School weekend and event — Founders Weekends, Build Weekends, immersions, info sessions, and parent events — including the schedule, venue, catering, AV, transportation, security, signage, and check-in.

• Turning early or loosely-defined offerings into repeatable, well-run programs with clear operating models, playbooks, and quality bars.

• Building the event playbook — checklists, timelines, budgets, and vendor lists — so every weekend gets sharper and a new city can run it without starting from scratch.

• Managing budgets and vendors — venues, catering, AV, transportation, hospitality — negotiating well and holding them to a high standard.

• Managing the people who deliver these programs — coordinating guides, mentors, facilitators, vendors, and the local team and event staff in each city — so each program runs smoothly and hits its goals.

• Owning the participant and family experience for special programs and events — the welcome, the flow of the day, and the thoughtful touches that make families, students, and mentors feel taken care of — so every offering feels as excellent as the core school.

• Being on-site for Founders Weekends, Build Weekends, and immersions, solving problems in real time before anyone notices there was one.

• Partnering with the school heads, the programs team, enrollment, and marketing so special programs and events reinforce the broader Founders School pipeline and brand rather than pulling against it.

• Measuring what matters — participation, satisfaction, outcomes — and improving each program every time it runs.

• Using AI every day to plan, track, and run more programs and events with fewer misses.

What you will NOT be doing

• Just coordinating logistics. You own the whole program: its design of delivery, its people, its quality, and its results.

• Owning the core 4-year curriculum. That belongs to the school heads. Your domain is everything outside the core curriculum.

• Designing or teaching what happens in the room. Our programs team owns the program content, and you own everything around it so the program can do its job.

• Selling or marketing these programs, or owning family relationships. Enrollment and marketing drive demand and own the families; you make sure what gets delivered is worth the demand.

• Running generic corporate events off a template. Every Founders School event is designed to move a family, a student, or a relationship forward.

• Handing off the hard parts. You own the vendor who flaked, the headcount that changed at the last minute, and the timing that slipped, and you fix them.

• Running a program once and moving on. You build offerings that run repeatedly and improve every cycle.

What this becomes

At 6 months, you've taken ownership of the existing special programs and events and delivered monthly Founders Weekends on our campuses around the country without a logistical failure, plus one Young Founders cohort that runs smoothly and gets strong feedback from families. You've established the operating model for each program — the playbook, staffing model, vendor relationships, and quality bar — so they no longer depend on heroics to pull off, and the school heads trust you to own special programs and events outright, freeing them to focus on the core school.

At 12 months, special programs and events run as a coherent, well-managed portfolio you own across our national campuses, with a predictable calendar, clear metrics, and a repeatable playbook every city uses — and you've stood up at least one new spin-off offering from scratch.

As Founders School scales toward 1,000 students and multiple cities, you build and lead the program operations function — hiring a team, replicating each offering across campuses, setting the bar for what a Founders School event feels like everywhere, and launching new programs that extend the Founders School model well beyond the core curriculum.

Who we’re looking for

• You have owned the delivery of programs, events, or operations end to end — in education, accelerators, experiential programs, hospitality, luxury or private events, or a startup — where you were accountable for the outcome, not just a slice of the logistics.

• You are a strong operator and a capable manager of people and vendors. You can run several complex programs in parallel and keep all of them at a high standard.

• You are relentlessly organized. You keep dozens of moving parts straight, have a plan B before you need it, and when something breaks 20 minutes before doors open, you solve it calmly and without drama.

• You are comfortable building from ambiguity. You can take an early or undefined offering and turn it into something that runs reliably and scales.

• You have great judgment about quality and experience — you know the difference between “it happened” and “it was excellent,” and you hold the line on the latter. You're comfortable representing a premium brand to extraordinary families.

• You leave behind playbooks that others can run without you.

• You use AI tools daily to plan, coordinate, and operate more efficiently.

• You can work weekends on-site and travel to event cities.

• You are able to work on-site in NYC. Relocation support is available for non-local candidates.

• You are legally authorized to work in the United States.

Nice to have

• Experience delivering programs for teens or younger students.

• Experience launching new offerings or programs from zero.

• Background in education, edtech, accelerators, or cohort-based programs.

• Experience managing multi-site or multi-cohort program operations, or running a multi-city event series.

• Experience with events for high-net-worth or VIP audiences.

• Familiarity with event, check-in, CRM, and project-management tools such as HubSpot.

Do not apply if

• You want to design or teach the program rather than run everything around it.

• You want a remote role, or you can't work weekends on-site.

• You're fine with "good enough" on the details families notice.

If you can take an early offering and turn it into a program that runs reliably, delights families, and scales, and you obsess over the details nobody notices, this is the founding seat to own it from.