"Associate Director, Founder Resources, Venture Lab, Wharton School"

Job Description Summary

Founded in 1881 as the world's first collegiate business school, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is shaping the future of business by incubating ideas, driving insights, and creating leaders who change the world. With campuses in Philadelphia and San Francisco, Wharton has over 850 staff, a faculty population of more than 235 renowned professors, and 5,000 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students. Each year, 13,000 professionals worldwide advance their careers through Wharton Executive Education's individual, company-customized, and online programs. More than 104,000 Wharton alumni form a powerful global network of leaders who transform business every day. Wharton is home to a dynamic staff population representing a rich array of backgrounds, expertise, and cultures. To learn more, visit www.wharton.upenn.edu.

The Associate Director provides leadership and management for Venture Lab's resources for student founders at the University of Pennsylvania, including the mentoring initiative, the Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIR) program, Venture Initiation Program (VIP) instructors, and VIP's communities of practice. This work will connect Penn student founders to our alumni leaders and experts to receive practical instruction, advice, mentoring, and networking support.

Job Description

Reporting to the Senior Director of Venture Lab, the Associate Director will:

• Lead the mentoring initiative, providing select VIP student founders with additional support from alumni mentors based on industry and/or functional expertise. This includes developing the initiative strategy, developing the scale-up plan, and managing all aspects of implementation including selecting student mentees, cultivating a pool of alumni mentors, making mentor-mentee matches, ensuring that mentor-mentees develop and complete an effective mentoring plan.
• Lead Venture Lab's EIR program, which engages experienced alumni entrepreneurs to mentor and assist VIP students. This involves building out the program strategy, gathering lessons learned from pilot year, incorporating student and alumni feedback, and scaling up. Manage all aspects of implementation including alumni engagement letters, travel and honorarium budget, EIR workshop schedule and office hours, and collaboration with the Venture Lab marketing team to promote these opportunities.
• Lead the VIP communities of practice, including but not limited to those for undergraduates, social entrepreneurship, med-health, and analytics. Partner with the Venture Lab student board and other Penn groups to plan and run thematic, networking, and community building activities. Manage founder group coaching and other instructor-led workshops, including planning with the Senior Director, scheduling, student enrollment and tracking, and coordination with other VL teams. Plan and manage budget.
• Prepare management reports and presentations for Venture Lab leadership to deliver. Develop performance measurement plan. Collect and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs). Support Salesforce data entry and management. Collaborate with Wharton External Affairs to create donor stewardship reports. Create impact reports and use feedback from Venture Lab and Wharton senior leadership to identify and execute approved improvements. Support other time-sensitive reporting as needed.

The position requires frequent interaction with seasoned, accomplished alumni entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and other professionals engaged in entrepreneurship and innovation careers, including significant donors. The position is also responsible for cultivating an open rapport and a professional, supportive educational approach with undergraduate and graduate student entrepreneurs and innovators from all disciplines across the University of Pennsylvania. The position requires excellent interpersonal, written, and oral communication skills; strong collaboration and team building skills; a forward-thinking mindset; and demonstrated creativity, problem solving, critical analysis, initiative, judgment, and decision-making skills.

This position is based in Philadelphia. After successful completion of the introductory period, this position is hybrid eligible with some weeks requiring more in-person work as needed. While the schedule is generally business hours, the Associate Director must be able to work early mornings/evenings/weekends and to travel as needed. Position is contingent on funding.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree and minimum 3-5 years of professional experience related to entrepreneurship and innovation. Masters Degree a plus.
• Demonstrated experience with program management, developing dashboards and frameworks for business and programs.
• Demonstrated ability to establish priorities, manage shifting priorities, and handle numerous time-sensitive projects with multiple deadlines.
• Demonstrated forward-thinking mindset and creativity, problem solving, critical analysis, initiative, judgment, and decision-making skills.
• Excellent interpersonal, written, and oral communication skills.
• Demonstrated experience managing budgets, creating detailed project work plans, and managing complex projects with cross-functional and cross-organizational teams.
• Demonstrated ability to function both independently and as part of a team. Excellent collaboration and team building skills.
• Ability to interact effectively and comfortably with diverse group of students, senior executives/professionals, and staff with demonstrated ability to cultivate and manage relationships professionally and with good judgment with a variety of stakeholders. Must have a high degree of professionalism.
• The successful candidate will be adept with technology: Must possess skill in Google software applications (Docs, Sheets, Slides) as well as the Microsoft Office suite (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook); Experience with cloud-based tools such as Beautiful.ai, Monday.com, and Typeform; email marketing tools such as ActiveCampaign; and additional tools such as Qualtrics, SurveyMonkeyApply; Experience with Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Acrobat a plus.

Job Location - City, State
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Department / School
Wharton School

Pay Range
$66,000.00 - $75,000.00 Annual Rate