Director, Workplace Experience

Director, Workplace Experience - New York City

College Board – Global Strategy & Talent

Location: This is an in-person role and requires the candidate to be on-site at in our New York City office 5 days a week. All CB employees are required to occasionally travel for business purposes.

Role Type: This is a full-time position

About the Team

The Workplace Experience (WX) team creates environments where employees connect and collaborate to do their best work. We operate three offices (New York City, Reston, Virginia and San Juan, Puerto Rico) and ensure each is safe, welcoming and designed to support College Board’s work and mission. WX is a culture-shaping function that supports how we attract, retain, and connect talent. The work includes facilities, but it is centered on service, hospitality, and operational excellence.

About the Opportunity

As Director, you lead WX across all three offices and set the standard for what a colleague or visitor experiences. New York is our hub: five days a week it hosts local employees, team retreats, board meetings and visitors from every location, with peaks on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. You are a visible, hands-on leader. You lead the Assistant Directors and their teams, hold vendors and building partners to clear standards, and make decisions with data. You are warm, dependable, and credible with senior leaders, and you are comfortable rolling up your sleeves to do what needs to get done. You are the person colleagues in New York know to find, and the leader senior stakeholders across all three offices trust.

In this role, you will:

Effectively manage the WX Team (50%)

Lead and manage the five WX team across New York, Reston and San Juan

• •Within the broader College Board five year plan, define aligned priorities and goals with input from senior leaders
• •Set SMART goals across the entire team that reflect our priorities
• •Track and manage progress to goals, course-correcting as needed in the face of feedback and inputs from colleagues
• •Coach constantly to ensure that the experience for colleagues in every office reflects our standards
• •Maintain clear role charters, with primary, backup and support lines, so every work stream has an owner and no one is a single point of failure

Build staffing and vendor models that flex with the Tuesday and Wednesday peaks

• •Collaborate as a member of the Talent Leadership team, protecting confidential information and ensuring we work as One College Board to advance our mission
• •Travel to Reston and San Juan when a situation requires an on-site presence

New York Flagship Operations (25%)

Own the outcome and set the standard of the New York in-person experience from arrival to departure for staff and visitors

• •Be on the floor on Tuesdays and Wednesdays: greeting, solving problems, anticipating needs, and pitching in which includes moving furniture and setting up rooms to model the ethos you expect
• •Ensure retreats, board meetings and VIP visits are seamless, working with the team and event planners
• •Serve as the senior escalation point for building management, security and executive stakeholders
• •Shape programming direction with purpose: the basics (lunch, snacks, rooms, the greeting) come first, and events come second

• •Ensure health, safety and emergency protocols are in place in all three offices
• •Establish policies for physical security and access control, space management, meeting support, and building and equipment standards
• •Work with tech colleagues to ensure that roles and responsibilities are clear and tech equipment in every cubicle and office works

Oversee special office programs and projects that run through the New York office, such as archive and records initiatives

Vendor Management & Budget Stewardship (10%)

Steward the WX budget across all three offices, reviewing variances and deciding where to invest using attendance, usage and satisfaction data

Manage vendors, building management and maintenance teams, holding them to clear service standards

Work with Procurement on vendor contracts, and put documented SLAs and quarterly performance reviews in place for key vendors

Partner with the Office of the CEO, Finance and IT on priorities that depend on the onsite experience

Data, Reporting & Decision-Making (10%)

Lead with data

• •Build and maintain the unified cross-location dashboard (attendance by day, spend per attendee, room usage, request volume and resolution time, satisfaction at minimum, etc.)
• •Ensure regular, baseline-setting pulse surveys and check-ins drive reporting and insight-generation
• •Benchmark best-in-class workplace and hospitality operations
• •Report monthly to the SVP and Talent on, at minimum, attendance, spending, survey results, service levels, and vendor performance
• •Generate usable insights and recommendations for action with every report '
• •Own all workplace platforms (Robin, Jira, Datawatch, etc.) and leverage them to deliver executive-ready utilization reports that guide future decisions and ensure the safety of our colleagues

About You

8–10 years managing teams in a high-volume, service-driven environment (hospitality, workplace experience, corporate services, events or similar), including experience leading supervisors or managers

A hospitality-forward, service-first mindset and a “nothing is beneath the role” attitude

A proven ability to drive performance and growth: you set high expectations, deliver real-time, evidence-based feedback, and coach team members to take smart risks, stretch their skills, and achieve meaningful impact

Track record of delivering a consistent, high-quality in-office experience in a hybrid setting where attendance swings sharply by day

Experience managing vendors, contracts, property management and building teams, including holding partners to documented service standards and resolving escalations independently.

Confidence engaging senior leaders and executives, advocating for operational needs and using good judgment under competing priorities.

Budgeting skills and a data-driven orientation: you can pull, analyze and present attendance, spend and survey data and turn it into recommendations

Comfort with workplace tools such as Robin or similar booking platforms, Slack and AV systems.

Strong, proven expertise in facilities operations: such as contracts, insurance requirements, building security and emergency protocols. You can confidently advise senior leaders and guide your team on all of them.

Sound judgment with confidential information

The ability to travel 3-5 times a year to College Board offices or on behalf of College Board business

This role requires the ability to lift up to 50 lbs, stand for extended periods (up to 4 hours at a time), and occasionally bend, reach, or kneel to complete job duties

All roles at College Board require:

A passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work

Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and comfort with learning and applying new digital tools independently and proactively

Clear and concise communication skills, written and verbal

• •A learner's mindset and a commitment to growth: welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously improving through iterative learning and user input
• •A drive for impact and excellence: solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing what matters most, and continuously improving through learning, user input, and external benchmarking

A collaborative and empathetic approach: working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success

Authorization to work in the United States

About Our Process

Application review will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. This role is expected to acc