Executive Director, EaR Strategy & Alignment, Public Affairs

College Board – Engagement and Reach (EaR)

Location: This is a fully remote role. Candidates who live near CB offices have the option of being fully remote or hybrid. All CB employees are required to occasionally travel to meet in person for business purposes.

Role Type: This is a full-time position

About the Team

The Engagement and Reach (EaR) division advances College Board’s mission by shaping how our work is understood, experienced, and acted on—helping protect the organization’s reputation while accelerating engagement and growth. We are a high-performing, collaborative team of communicators, marketers, creatives, and strategists who work together to deliver clear, compelling stories and turn them into creative, data-informed work that drives engagement, adoption, and real results. We partner closely with leaders across the organization to shape strategy, influence decisions, and amplify the impact of College Board’s highest-priority enterprises in service of our mission.

About the Opportunity

As the Executive Director, EaR Strategy and Alignment, Public Affairs, you are a policy communications strategist who knows how to build a campaign around an idea, not just a product. You bring deep experience marshaling media, evidence, and stakeholders to advance a specific policy or legislative agenda, and you're comfortable doing that work in complex, high-visibility, and often politically charged environments. You serve as the primary EaR integrator for policy, research, and stakeholder initiatives, embedded across Global Policy and External Relations (GPER), Learning and Assessment (L&A), Higher Education, Membership, and Access (HMA), and other College Board teams with policy or external affairs priorities. You bring the range to move between these groups and spot connections they may not see in each other's work.

In this role, you lead EaR’s involvement across Public Affairs end to end, owning strategy development, intelligence-informed counsel, and measurable results without direct financial ownership. You work closely with divisional leadership to translate legislative agendas, research roadmaps, regulatory developments, and stakeholder priorities into integrated communications campaigns, align messaging, media strategy, sequencing, and risk management, and drive EaR-led execution through disciplined cross-functional coordination. You also coordinate closely with other Strategy and Alignment Partners supporting AP, the SAT Suite, and BigFuture to ensure seamless EaR support for their policy priorities.

In this role, you will:

Serve as the Single-Threaded EaR Leader for Public Affairs

Own coordinated strategy and measurable outcomes across Public Affairs disciplines, while discipline leaders retain execution ownership within their respective domains

Act as the primary day-to-day EaR contact for GPER, L&A, HMA, and other policy-adjacent teams

Operate as a senior embedded partner within divisional leadership teams

Provide strategic counsel on communications approach, sequencing, and risk

Escalate conflicts or alignment gaps as needed and ensure timely resolution

Lead Integrated Policy and Research Communications Strategy

Translate legislative agendas, regulatory developments, research roadmaps, and stakeholder priorities into coordinated communications campaigns

Develop structured campaign plans that align messaging, media strategy, executive positioning, stakeholder sequencing, and risk mitigation

Identify opportunities to proactively shape policy and research narratives in priority markets and moments

Align communications strategy in support of priority partnerships, endorsements, and sponsorships that advance policy, research, or stakeholder objectives

Ensure communications strategies evolve as policy, regulatory, research, or partnership dynamics shift

Lead special initiatives ranging from program launches to enterprise pilots

Orchestrate the EaR Studio Model

Define business needs and align them to a flexible bench of EaR domain experts functioning as a Studio, including media relations, messaging and editorial, insights and intelligence, digital amplification, creative, and copyediting resources

Ensure the right expertise is engaged at the right time based on program priorities

Ensure efficient internal communications and knowledge sharing within and across Studios

Maintain momentum as policy, research, or stakeholder priorities evolve and ensure changes are reflected across EaR workstreams

Leverage Intelligence and Foresight to Strengthen Impact

Integrate policy landscape analysis, media intelligence, stakeholder insights, and narrative tracking into campaign planning

Anticipate emerging risks or moments of heightened scrutiny and coordinate proactive or rapid-response strategies

Provide divisional leaders with clear insight into external dynamics and communications implications

Drive Execution, Measurement, and Reporting

Provide high-level project management across initiatives to keep work on pace

Establish clear goals, metrics, and reporting tied to business and EaR outcomes

Own impact reporting; Monitor performance and recommend adjustments to improve results

Develop and implement effective processes, tools, and systems to support efficient, consistent, and high-impact execution for all priority initiatives and projects.

Communicate progress, risks, and outcomes to divisional and EaR leadership

What Success Looks Like

By the end of the first 12 months, a successful Executive Director, EaR Strategy and Alignment Partner will have:

Established themselves as a trusted, credible embedded partner to GPER, L&A, HMA, and other policy-adjacent teams, with a consistent presence at leadership tables and strong executive-level relationships.

Led the development and execution of an integrated annual EaR plan aligned to policy agendas, research release calendars, stakeholder priorities, and defined business outcomes.

Implemented a clear Public Affairs operating rhythm within EaR, including structured campaign planning, intelligence sharing, and sequencing discipline, ensuring the right expertise is engaged at the right time despite evolving policy or research dynamics.

Demonstrated fluency in the full capabilities of the EaR division, enabling them to efficiently assemble and organize Studio teams to support priority policy, research, and stakeholder initiatives.

Reduced time-to-impact for priority initiatives by clarifying ownership, sequencing work, and proactively surfacing risks and dependencies.

Delivered measurable progress toward priority policy, research, or stakeholder milestones supported by coordinated communications strategy, while meeting agreed EaR performance standards for narrative alignment and execution quality.

Established clear goals, baselines, and reporting frameworks for Public Affairs communications performance, with regular communication of results, insights, and recommended optimizations to divisional and EaR leadership.

About You

To qualify for this role, you must have:

10+ years of experience in public affairs, policy communications, or strategic communications, including significant experience within complex, high-visibility, politically sensitive environments

Experience supporting state or federal legislative or regulatory initiatives through communications strategy

Strong communications strategy background, including experience designing and executing integrated campaigns that marshal media, messaging, and stakeholder sequencing across policy and research initiatives

Proven ability to lead cross-program or cross-organizational strategy in complex, matrixed settings, building trust and influence without direct authority and working through ambiguity Exceptional writing skills, with demonstrated ability to translate complex policy or research content into clear, compelling narratives

Experience coll