Chief of Staff

Role: Chief of Staff

Reports to: CEO

Salary: $120-140K

Status: Full-time

Location: Remote, US-based (20-30% travel)

Who We Are: 

National Math Stars ensures mathematically extraordinary students from all communities have the resources they need to reach the frontiers of math and science.

Through our Awards Program, we collaborate with schools and districts to identify and recognize their highest-achieving 2% of 2nd- or 3rd-grade math students. Those students are invited to a competitive admissions process, which aims to select the top talent from all communities. (You could roughly think of this as “the best young mathematician in every ZIP code,” if the US didn’t have quite so many ZIP codes!) 

We admit those top students to our Stars Programs and work with them (and their families) over the course of a decade to support their journeys to the frontiers of STEM. All Stars receive access to advanced math opportunities, family guidance, and community gatherings. Within the Stars Program, we have two tracks: (1) our fully-funded Voyager Stars program, targeted at families with significant unmet need for guidance and financial support, and (2) our Pathfinder Stars program, which provides lighter-touch advising and access to partial funding for STEM opportunities. We currently serve over 400 Stars across seven states and are rapidly expanding our reach.

Role Overview: 

The Chief of Staff will work closely with the CEO to deliver strategic projects that play a key role in National Math Stars’ success but sit outside of existing departments.

This is a generalist role that will encompass a wide range of responsibilities. This will include a mix of fundraising (e.g., researching new opportunities, writing funder reports), major strategic projects (e.g., establishing new tax-advantaged donation and scholarship distributions processes), and day-to-day high-leverage support for the CEO (e.g., impact analysis, preparing Board materials, setting agendas for leadership- or team-wide meetings). You will also draft presentations and articles to help tell the NMS story, track policy changes that influence the funding environment, build operational and compliance infrastructure, and coordinate with major partners on data access and analysis.

NMS is remote-first company, and candidates for this role may be based anywhere within the US. Some travel is required for conferences, team retreats, and other events.

Key Responsibilities:

The Chief of Staff’s initial responsibilities may include:

1. Support CEO in fundraising initiatives
2. • Draft grant applications and reports
   • Track progress towards grant goals and compliance with all grant conditions, including supporting programmatic reporting on government grants
   • Research and prioritize conferences for the CEO to attend (and/or present at)
   • Prepare background research (CEO prep notes) on prospects in advance of conferences and meetings
   • Draft presentations and talking points for conferences
   • Develop and manage donor CRM, ensuring accurate data, timely acknowledgements of gifts, filing of reports within deadline, and periodic engagement of donors/prospects. Prompt CEO/Board to engage with donors
   • Research and prioritize potential funders across geographies and cause areas
   • Develop and implement menu of funding levels and recognition
   • Draft quarterly donor and partner update newsletters
   • Draft op-eds and blog posts about NMS and the math talent space
   • Prioritize and prepare applications for major awards
3. Manage the implementation of Math Stars Scholarship Fund (MSSF), National Math Stars’ new scholarship granting organization established to take advantage of federal tax credits
4. • Track policy changes that impact implementation
   • Set up donation platform to receive qualified contributions in compliant manner
   • Develop marketing and informational materials to solicit tax-advantaged donations; coordinate solicitations with partner organizations
   • Maintain compliance infrastructure (state registrations, accounting systems, etc.) to enable MSSF to operate as a Scholarship Granting Organization
   • Build infrastructure to administer scholarships to qualified Stars in states where MSSF is active
   • If MSSF shows early success and growth, hire a separate manager and hand over responsibilities
5. Help National Math Stars demonstrate our impact
6. • Work with national testing organizations (and any other relevant partners) to ensure access to data needed to analyze our impact
   • In collaboration with Partnerships and Programs teams, analyze impact data and craft materials to tell our impact story
   • Support external researchers conducting academic research projects on NMS
   • Help Operations team build NMS’ annual report and 990
7. Support overall National Math Stars strategy
8. • Join regular leadership team meetings and retreats
   • Plan and/or facilitate some leadership and all-team meetings
   • Help CEO prepare materials for regular Board meetings
   • Proactively propose improvements to NMS’ strategy and operations
   • Take on additional strategic projects as required

This role does not include executive assistant responsibilities. While you will handle logistics for projects in your scope, you will not be expected to manage calendars, travel, etc. for the CEO.

Skills and Experience:

The right candidate for this role is highly analytical and an exceptional communicator. You should “speak the language” of our (very math-y) donor base and be able to tell stories that are not only emotionally compelling, but also backed by sound, data-driven analysis. A former management consultant or data scientist might be a good fit, but we are open to a range of professional backgrounds.

This role could suit you well if you are:

• Excited about our mission of identifying and supporting extraordinary young mathematicians from all communities
• Highly analytical and data-driven – you can identify which pieces of data you’ll need to answer a question, gather and clean that data, and analyze the results
• An exceptional communicator who can tell stories that resonate with both hearts and minds, across formats (formal reports, personal op-eds, slide decks, conversations)
• Someone who loves building new systems from scratch and is happy to get deep into the details to ensure they are right
• A very organized project manager – no task or detail ever falls through the cracks
• Capable of forging strong internal and external partnerships by exploring mutual benefits, following up persistently, and driving results
• A high-capacity team member who consistently gets a large volume of work done quickly and to a high quality standard

We value and encourage diversity and solicit applications from all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, gender, sex, age, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, medical condition, veteran status, gender identity, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.

All full-time roles at National Math Stars include a competitive benefits package:

• Fully paid health, vision, and dental coverage for employees, plus partially paid coverage for dependents
• 401K plan with automatic company contributions
• Work-from-home stipend for purchase of a laptop and/or home office supplies
• Generous paid time off, including parental leave after 12 months of service to NMS
• Free pie every Pi Day

Applications are accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis, so we encourage early applications.