RDI Strategic Investment Lead

Charter Schools USA; Fort Lauderdale (FL); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

On-site in Fort Lauderdale

Job summary

Charter Schools USA Inc. seeks an RDI Strategic Investment Lead to drive financial evaluation, structuring, and execution across RDI and LaunchEd. You will build robust models, analyze opportunities, and design practical investment frameworks to move opportunities from concept to close.

You will lead valuation work, participate in negotiations, and coordinate diligence for investments, acquisitions, and partnerships, working with leadership and external partners to optimize strategic outcomes.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree preferred.
• 5–10 years of experience in investment banking, private equity, venture capital, corporate development, principal investing, or similarly transaction-focused roles.
• Experience supporting or leading acquisitions, investments, recapitalizations, joint ventures, or strategic partnerships.
• Willingness to work on-site in Fort Lauderdale 5–10 days per month, aligned with team schedule.

Responsibilities

• Lead financial evaluation of opportunities across RDI and LaunchEd.
• Build and maintain financial models to evaluate investments, acquisitions, partnerships, and other transactions.
• Develop valuation frameworks and scenario analyses to assess viability and capital needs.
• Help define equity, fees, and participation structures across companies of varying sizes.
• Coordinate due diligence, documentation, and closing processes.
• Represent terms to founders, investors, and counterparties in negotiations.

Skills

Financial modeling

Valuation

Transaction analysis

Deal structuring

Negotiation

Diligence coordination

Strategic finance

Cross‑functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree

Advanced degree preferred

Job description

The RDI Strategic Investment Lead serves as the primary financial, deal-structuring, and transaction execution lead across RDI and LaunchEd. This role evaluates opportunities, builds financial models, structures transactions, supports investments and acquisitions, helps design practical investment frameworks, and moves complex opportunities from concept to execution. LaunchEd represents the dominant near‑term workflow for this role, including company evaluation, equity and fee structuring, SPV‑based investment activity, strategic partnerships, and selected acquisition opportunities. This position also supports broader RDI strategic transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, venture‑studio company financing, and other investment‑related opportunities involving affiliated initiatives and companies.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead financial evaluation of opportunities across the RDI ecosystem, with a primary focus on LaunchEd companies and related transactions.
• Build and maintain financial models to evaluate investments, acquisitions, strategic partnerships, commercialization arrangements, recapitalizations, joint ventures, and other customized transactions.
• Develop valuation frameworks and scenario analyses to help determine company viability, pricing, dilution implications, capital needs, and RDI's appropriate strategic and economic position.
• Help define and refine how LaunchEd and RDI approach equity, fees, structured participation, and other economic arrangements across companies of different sizes and stages.
• Analyze opportunities emerging from LaunchEd, the RDI venture studio, RDAI initiatives, and related affiliated companies, including companies such as Ethos and OrbitSPS.
• Translate complex financial and strategic considerations into clear recommendations for leadership, including risks, upside cases, tradeoffs, and execution implications.
• Support the creation of investment memoranda, decision materials, and internal recommendations that help RDI determine which opportunities to pursue and on what terms.
• Manage the end-to-end execution of transactions from initial evaluation through diligence, negotiation, documentation support, and closing.
• Coordinate financial, operational, market, commercial, and strategic diligence for prospective investments, acquisitions, partnerships, and internal venture financing transactions.
• Work closely with legal counsel to help convert business terms into term sheets, SPV structures, investment documents, JV frameworks, acquisition documents, and definitive agreements.
• Participate directly in negotiations with founders, investors, counterparties, strategic partners, and other stakeholders.
• Support special situations such as investor buyouts, founder transitions, recapitalizations, strategic mergers, structured secondary purchases, and nontraditional partnership arrangements.
• Help manage merger and acquisition opportunities across the RDI / LaunchEd / RDAI ecosystem, including situations where RDI may acquire, invest in, partner with, or help restructure a company.
• Assist leadership in determining whether specific opportunities are best pursued through direct investment, co-investment, acquisition, structured partnership, internal incubation, or another alternative approach.
• Help shape the practical investment and participation model around LaunchEd and related RDI initiatives, including how the organization secures economic participation in the companies it helps validate, strengthen, commercialize, finance, or build.
• Support the design of repeatable approaches for screening, evaluating, and structuring opportunities across LaunchEd participants, venture-studio companies, and other affiliated opportunities.
• Help define how validation data, product usage, school feedback, growth readiness, commercialization support, and capital needs should influence transaction structure and investment decision‑making.
• Assist in refining near‑term capital strategies, including SPV‑based participation, co‑investment structures, and strategic alignment with external capital partners.
• Contribute to the development of longer‑term capital pathways that may eventually include more durable investment vehicles or scaled participation models as track record and investor confidence grow.
• Work with leadership to help define how outside investors, strategic backers, advisory partners, and co‑investors engage with RDI and LaunchEd in ways that preserve flexibility, reduce conflicts, and support long‑term platform growth.
• Evaluate strategic opportunities that emerge through LaunchEd, the RDI venture studio, RDAI initiatives, and related ecosystem activity, including platform‑enhancing acquisitions, proprietary partnership opportunities, and companies that may strengthen distribution, validation, commercialization, or technical capability.
• Assist RDI leadership and the founder/CEO in analyzing proprietary opportunities that arise through internal product work, market relationships, validation environments, or strategic partner networks.
• Support financing and strategic structuring for venture‑studio companies that emerge from RDI, including companies such as Ethos and OrbitSPS.
• Help assess when RDI should pursue minority participation versus deeper strategic ownership positions.
• Support thinking around how RDI can use capital, deal structure, and strategic ownership not only to invest in promising companies, but also to strengthen the broader ecosystem in which those companies operate.
• Help identify, assess, and manage relationships with key external counterparties, including founders, capital partners, co‑investors, advisory partners, and strategic operators.
• Support the development of frameworks for how outside capital and strategic partners engage with RDI and LaunchEd across specific opportunities.
• Represent RDI professionally and thoughtfully in discussions involving strategic finance, transaction structure, and economic participation.
• Work with leadership to evaluate which relationships are best suited for advisory involvement, co‑investment participation, deal‑specific collaboration, or longer‑term strategic alignment.

**MAY PERFORM OTHER DUTIES AS ASSIGNED**

DISCLAIMER

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties and skills required of personnel so classified.

SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE

• Strong financial modeling, valuation, and transaction analysis skills, with the ability to evaluate both conventional and nonstandard deal structures.
• Knowledge of investments, acquisitions, recapitalizations, joint ventures, strategic partnerships, and other complex transaction types.
• Ability to think creatively about transaction design and structure, not just analyze deals using standard templates.
• Ability to translate complex financial issues into clear, practical recommendations for senior leaders balancing strategic, operational, and commercial considerations.
• Knowledge of private market structures such as SPVs, secondary purchases, minority growth investments, co‑investments, recapitalizations, and platform‑oriented acquisitions.
• Skill in coordinating with legal counsel, financial advisors, investors, and counterparties through diligence, documentation, and closing processes.
• Ability to evaluate strategic opportunities involving technology, services, education, artificial intelligence, or adjacent sectors.
• Ability to operate effectively in a high‑autonomy, entrepreneurial environment where not all processes are established and the right answer may need to be built rather than inherited.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills with the ability to work effectively across finance, legal, operators, founders, and executives.
• Sound deal judgment, commercial awareness, and comfort working through ambiguity and sensitive strategic decisions.

JOB REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree preferred.
• 5--10 years of experience in investment banking, private equity, venture capital, corporate development, principal investing, entrepreneurship through acquisition, strategic finance, or a similarly transaction‑focused role.
• Experience supporting or leading acquisitions, investments, recapitalizations, joint ventures, strategic partnerships, or similarly complex transactions.
• Experience working with legal counsel, financial advisors, investors, and counterparties through diligence, documentation, and closing processes.
• Experience in founder‑led, entrepreneurial, or fast‑moving environments where transaction structures are often customized preferred.
• Exposure to technology, services, education, artificial intelligence, or adjacent sectors preferred.
• Candidate must be willing to work on‑site in Fort Lauderdale 5--10 days per month, aligned with the wider team's in‑person collaboration schedule.

WORK ENVIRONMENT

While performing the responsibilities of this position, the work environment characteristics listed below are representative of the environment the employee will encounter:

• Usual office working conditions.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

• No physical exertion required.
• Travel within or outside of state.
• Light work: Exerting up to 20 pounds of force occasionally, and/or up to 10 pounds of force as frequently as needed to move objects.

TERMS OF EMPLOYMENT

Salary and benefits shall be paid consistent with RDI Education salary and benefit policy. Length of the work year and hours of employment shall be those established by RDI Education.

FLSA OVERTIME CATEGORY

Job is exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

EVALUATION

Performance will be evaluated in accordance with RDI Education policy.

DECLARATION

The Human Resources Department retains the sole right and discretion to make changes to this job description. Any employee making changes unauthorized by Human Resources Department will be subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination.

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