Edtech CMO / Chief Marketing Officer / VP Marketing (LA)

Avela is a Nobel Prize winning platform for families to navigate their child’s educational journey. Parents can find, apply, register, and pay for school and programs for their children, all from a common application system with saved profiles. Avela also powers backend admissions and operational workflows, making it easy for schools, districts, and educational providers to equitably serve students. We’re like “OpenTable for Education” or “Mindbody for Schools.”

We're looking for an entrepreneurial business development and marketing leader who can help build our brand, drive leads, support sales, and grow our business!

Reporting directly to the CEO, you’ll help crystalize our product-market fit and design and execute our sales and marketing process. You’ll be responsible for all stages of the customer acquisition lifecycle (see responsibilities, below), but your primary focus will be (1) outbound prospecting and lead generation (2) inbound marketing and content generation, (3) product marketing and messaging, and (4) field marketing and event sponsorships.

You will be involved in many areas of the business, including product management, operations, sales, marketing, customer service - you name it, you’ll help with it. This role is a good fit for a customer centric entrepreneur and business development guru who loves ambiguity and wants to solve problems in equity and education.

Note on Titles

At Avela, we eschew corporate hierarchy and the traditional titles that go with them. We do not have any Chief XYZ Officers, VPs, Directors, Group Managers, etc. The formal title of the role will be Marketing Lead, but it can be anywhere from VP to CMO level.

Locations

Although we primarily work remotely, we want to facilitate in person collaboration when needed and foster closer relationships among colleagues, so we are moving to a regional "hub model." This means we are only hiring people who live within commuting distance from downtown San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston/Cambridge, and New York City. We plan to meet in person 3-5 days per month, most likely consecutively for a monthly onsite, where we'll focus on strategic planning, problem solving, and relationship building. Read more at https://avela.org/hubs

Role Description

• Build Avela’s brand, through our website, thought leadership, press/media, and other brand awareness campaigns.
• Generate demand and drive qualified leads to the sales team through a full suite of techniques, including content/inbound marketing (newsletters, webinars, SEO), field marketing (local events, conferences), and outbound marketing (emails, etc). 
• Engage in customer conversations to fine tune our product-market fit, refine pricing, and improve product marketing.
• Ideally also lead some sales conversations and close business when another rep is not available. 
• Build and manage the go to market team

Example Tasks

• Build Lead Lists - Identify customers matching Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and create lists with contact info for outbound targetings.
• Webinars - Organize webinar series with speakers, ensure 100+ signups at each, and run/execute smooth webinar, share recording with mailing lists.
• Content - Manage our blog, write original thought leadership content, and curate content written by other thought leaders (e.g. Sonali, Parag). Newsletter - Design and publish monthly newsletter for customers and prospects using our content.
• Events -Manage our event calendar, event sponsorships, both setup, and coordinate attendance and post-event follow-ups.
• Partner with customer success, sales, and product to create delightful experiences for customers and prospects.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of full time professional experience
• Experience managing a marketing team for at least 2 years, preferably 4+ years
• K12 sales/marketing experience strongly preferred (alternatively, B2B, govtech, or education experience required)
• Startup experience strongly preferred
• Excellent communicator, including written and oral
• Capable of producing compelling sales presentations, collateral, and materials
• Passion for education, equity, or social impact
• Entrepreneurial spirit and drive, extraordinary comfort with ambiguity, enjoyment wearing many hats
• Among the best at what you do with a growth mindset and desire to constantly improve
• Living in the US with at least four years of full time professional experience in the USA.

Classification and Compensation

• Reports to CEO
• Exempt Full Time Employee
• Pay range: $160,000 - $225,000 a year plus bonus, benefits, and equity

Company

Avela is a Nobel Prize-winning edtech startup building the first platform for families to navigate their child's educational journey and a universal application for PK-12 education, daycare, and enrichment programs, promoting equity and access to education. We’re like “OpenTable for Education” or “Mindbody for Schools.”

For students and families, this simplifies the process of finding and applying to educational programming. For schools and districts, this streamlines operations and helps increase enrollment (and hence, revenue).

We sell our application and enrollment platform directly to school districts, charter networks, other educational providers, cities, and states. We work with school districts and charter networks across the country, including in Oakland, Seattle, Hartford, Tulsa, New Orleans, Newark, and Jersey City. We also work with a range of nonprofits and NGOs, including Teach for America and the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as the US Military.

Our platform has four parts to cover each stage of the application journey, from exploring options to applying and final selection and admission:

Avela Explore - Mobile-optimized school finder and opportunity navigator

Avela Apply - Streamlined application management system and tracking

Avela Match - Research-based admission and student assignment lottery system.

Avela Enroll - Online registration, transfers, and enrollment platform with document collection.

We also offer a range of consulting services to help districts implement enrollment reforms and advance equity in educational programs.

Learn more at avela.org.

Team 

Avela was founded by a renowned team of visionaries, including Nobel Laureate Joshua Angrist, Clark Medalist Parag Pathak, and social entrepreneur Greg Bybee. We have a passionate team of entrepreneurs, engineers, economists, and data scientists - get to know us at https://avela.org/team. 

Benefits

We love our team and care about their wellness. We strive to offer the best benefits of our peers, including:

-- Significant equity

-- Flexible work policies

-- Unlimited vacation

-- Home office stipend or WeWork membership

-- 401(k) program

-- Flexible Savings Account (FSA)

-- Dependent Care Saving Plan (DCFSA)

-- Commuter Benefits

-- Life Insurance by Guardian (covered 100%)

-- Platinum Medical Plan by UnitedHealthcare (Employees 100%, Dependents 40%)

-- Platinum Dental Plan by Guardian Health (Employees 100%, Dependents 40%)

-- Platinum Vision Plan by Guardian Health (Employees 100%, Dependents 40%)

Learn more at avela.org/careers.