Senior Director, Editorial Strategy and Operations

College Board – Engagement and Reach – Editorial Strategy & Operations

Location: This is a remote role. Candidates who live near CB offices have the option of being fully remote or hybrid (Tuesday and Wednesday in office). 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 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.

Within EaR, our Editorial Strategy and Operations team safeguards the organization’s voice, accuracy, and credibility across everything we publish, from website copy and AP course materials to research reports and press releases. We set and enforce enterprise-wide editorial standards, keep content consistent across channels and programs, and partner with teams across the organization to make sure what we publish is clear, accessible, on-brand, and error-free. This work reduces risk for College Board and builds trust with students and educators.

About the Opportunity  

As the Senior Director, Editorial Strategy & Operations, you are an editorial leader who holds a high bar for quality and gets energized by finding better ways to meet it. You have built the systems behind strong editorial work, from intake and triage to risk-based tiering and impact measurement, and you are excited by what AI and automation can do to extend the reach of a skilled editor. You respect the craft and the people who practice it, and you know how to bring an experienced team along through change without lowering the standard. You are equally at ease coaching an editor through a new way of working as you are pushing back, with a clear rationale, on a senior stakeholder’s format or timeline.

You will lead a team that is entering a period of active change: new AI tools, a redesigned intake process and workflow, and a shift from a transactional, ticket-taking function to one that’s proactive, data-driven, and focused on impact. The work is already reliable and high-quality. You will help the team deliver the same quality faster and at greater scale, as content volume across the organization keeps growing. You will build a modern editorial function with flexible systems, structure, and culture, and bring the team into the process earlier, so less rework happens downstream. Beyond the team, you will own editorial standards and strategy for College Board as a whole, defining the risk tiers, technology, and quality measures the rest of the organization will use. You will set the bar not just for this team, but for what “good” means everywhere editorial work happens. You will partner with leaders in every division, join the Communications Leadership Team as the voice of editorial, and help ensure students and educators can trust what we publish.

In this role, you will:

Design and Scale Editorial Operations (40%)

• Own the workflow end to end (intake, triage, tiering, assignment, approval gate) so that quality holds and throughput scales as volume grows
• Lead the organization’s AI integration strategy for editorial work, choosing, configuring, and continually improving tools that support better editing and streamline the process and administrative work around it without compromising the editorial bar
• Build and maintain intake and reporting processes across ticketing/queue tools (Jira, Smartsheet, or equivalent) that make bottlenecks visible before they become backlogs
• Establish service tiers and coverage frameworks that match editorial rigor to what each piece actually needs, rather than treating every request the same
• Own capacity planning, including the balance of human and AI-assisted effort: know when the team needs more people, more tooling, or a process fix to get more out of what it has

Lead and Manage the Editorial Strategy & Operations Team (25%)

• Lead a team of 8 to 10 experienced editors, supported by contract and freelance colleagues, who safeguard the voice, accuracy, and credibility of everything College Board publishes
• Guide the team through a significant shift in how it works by building trust, earning buy-in, and staying visibly committed to the new direction, while honoring the craft and experience the team brings
• Cultivate an inclusive and high-achieving culture rooted in craftsmanship, curiosity, and a shared connection to our mission, one that enables all team members to live out College Board’s Operating Principles
• Bring proven leadership experience and consistently embody College Board’s Manager Expectations in your work
• Hire, coach, and develop editorial staff, and run calibration sessions that keep standards aligned across full-time and freelance editors, so quality doesn’t vary by who happens to pick up the ticket
• Manage the backup/coverage plan for approvals so no single person’s absence slows the queue
• Build the team’s fluency with AI-assisted editing deliberately, so adoption drives real efficiency gains rather than becoming another manual step
• Manage a blended model of full-time, contract, and freelance editors, deploying each where it adds the most value as work comes in waves

Set and Uphold Editorial Standards (10%)

• Own enterprise editorial standards and style guidelines, setting the bar not just for the team but for how editorial quality is defined and measured across College Board
• Establish KPIs for editorial quality and process management, and extend them as the enterprise standard for any team performing editorial work
• Decide how AI tools get configured against the style guide and evaluate whether that configuration is actually holding up, partnering with the style guide owner rather than owning it directly
• Ensure consistent voice, tone, accessibility, and clarity across programs and platforms

Turn Data into Editorial Strategy (10%)

• Turn workflow and quality data into insight leadership can act on, surfacing where the team is excelling and where attention might be needed
• Identify systemic risk, patterns, and improvement opportunities before they show up as escalations
• Inform resourcing and scope decisions with data instead of instinct

Partner Upstream to Reduce Rework (15%)

• Build relationships with high-volume stakeholder teams to raise the quality of what arrives in the queue, so less editorial effort gets spent fixing avoidable problems
• Optimize the end-to-end copyediting cycle across divisions, identifying how editing projects should be handled based on risk and complexity
• Use workflow and volume data to spot upstream opportunities for change, the kind of thing that turns a recurring fire drill (like a high-stakes RFP with a two-day turnaround) into a standard, repeatable process instead of a scramble every time
• Run training and consultation engagements that help partner teams submit work that’s faster to turn around
• Advocate for sustainable workload and realistic timelines that protect both quality and speed

What Success Looks Like

By the end of the first 12 months, a successful Senior Director, Editorial Strategy and Operations will have:

• Executed against the workflow and metrics roadmap, turning the plan into a workflow the team uses day to day and reporting that gives real visibility into volume, turnaround, and quality
• Continued pushing where AI and automation can improve the team’s own work, while also expanding the tool upstream so other teams get self-service, democratized access to editing support before content reaches the queue
• Built a team culture rooted in experimentation and data, where trying something new and measuring the result is the norm, not the exception
• Defined roles, tiers, and a coverage plan so the team knows what it owns and quality doesn’t hinge on any one person being in the room
• Built at least one meaningful upstream relationship with a high-volume stakeholder team, turning a recurring scramble into a repeatable process
• Aligned other teams with editorial responsibilities across College Board on a common set of KPIs, outcome metrics, and a shared risk-tiering framework
• Made the editorial function visible and legible across the organization, clarifying what it offers, how to partner with it effectively, and where its judgment matters most

About You

To qualify for this role, you must have:

• 10+ years of experience in copy editing, editorial standards, or content governance, applying rigorous quality standards to high-volume, high-visibility content in complex organizations

• Proven experience managing a team of editors or content quality professionals

• Comfort leading a tenured team through a significant change in how it works: leading by example, bringing people along rather than mandating change, and holding the line on standards when it’s tempting not to

• A track record of building systems, not just running them: intake design, SLAs, reporting frameworks, and workflow redesign

• Experience integrating AI, automation, or another form of process innovation into editorial or content workflows, and genuine enthusiasm for using technology to improve how the work gets done

• Strong data fluency and the ability to translate workflow and quality metrics into strategy

• Experience managing a blended team of FTEs and contractors, with real judgment about when to flex capacity versus make a permanent hire

• Executive presence and the ability to influence stakeholders without formal authority, including the confidence to push back on senior leaders about timelines, formats, and scope

• A strategic and inclusive leadership style: you set clear priorities, build effective team structures, plan for future needs, and foster a culture of belonging
• 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

All roles at College Board require:

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

• Authorization to work in the United States for any employer

• Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and comfort 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

About Our Process 

• Application review will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.

• While the hiring process may vary, it generally includes: resumé and application submission, recruiter phone/video screen, hiring manager interview, performance exercise such as live coding, a panel interview, a conversation with leadership and reference checks.  

What We Offer

At College Board, we offer more than just a paycheck—we provide a meaningful career, a supportive team, and a comprehensive package designed to help you thrive. We’re a self-sustaining nonprofit that believes in fair and competitive compensation, grounded in your qualifications, experience, impact, and the market.

A Thoughtful Approach to Compensation

• The hiring range for this role is $104,000 - $155,000.

• Your exact salary will depend on your location, experience, and how your background compares to others in similar roles at College Board.

• We aim to make our best offer upfront—rooted in fairness, transparency, and market data.

• We adjust salaries by location to ensure fairness, no matter where you live.

You’ll have open, transparent conversations about compensation, benefits, and what it’s like to work at College Board throughout your hiring process. Check out our careers page for more.

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