Job Description
The Deputy Chief of Finance plays a critical role in supporting the CFO and financial leadership team in developing and executing on KIPP New Jersey & Miami’s financial priorities. The Deputy Chief of Finance drives the financial teams’ planning and performance management systems, works relentlessly in service of the teams’ operational efficiency, and drives special projects on behalf of the CFO. They facilitate the annual resource allocation and budgeting processes for the organization, which has a ~$250 million annual operating budget, ensuring effective linkage to strategic priorities, adherence to fiscal requirements, strong collaboration across key stakeholders, and clear decision-making and communication processes. The Deputy Chief of Finance also ensures healthy and efficient financial operations within our schools and central teams, as well as streamlined and effective communication with our boards of directors and board finance committee.
This role is flexible within NJ.
Here’s what you’ll be doing:
Team Planning, Goal-Setting, and Performance Management
- Support CFO and other financial leaders with the development of annual priorities that are responsive to organization-wide priorities and external requirements.
- Create and turnkey processes and systems to enable all of the CFO’s teams to set annual and quarterly goals, and track progress to goals.
- Support CFO’s teams in executing individual performance management in an aligned manner, including for leaders in accordance with the Talent team’s vision and milestones, as well as for individual contributors (may include creating aligned tools, calendar of deadlines, etc.).
- Design and execute cascading meeting structures and reporting mechanisms designed to support the effectiveness of our financial functions and to keep the CFO and other leaders apprised of our financial performance.
- Proactively identify opportunities for strategic collaboration across the various financial functions.
- Proactively ensure financial teams are planning and operating with “frontline” input.
Annual Organization-Wide Financial Planning
- Facilitate the organization-wide annual resource allocation process, ensuring coherence with the organization- and region-level annual strategies, responsiveness to the organization’s financial context, and effective systems and structures for input-gathering and decision-making.
- Work collaboratively with network- and region-based leadership team members to cascade key updates and decisions from resource allocation process to relevant stakeholder groups within the organization.
- Ensure all relevant leaders and others with budgetary responsibilities are trained to effectively participate in the annual budgeting process.
- Facilitate the organization-wide budgeting process, including ensuring that the outcomes of the resource allocation process are reflected in the upcoming year’s budget and that the budgets overall accurately reflect our priorities and expectations for the upcoming year.
Fiscal Health in Schools and Central Support Teams
- Drive the development and, as needed, periodic revisiting of a vision for excellent fiscal health at the school and central support team level, which emanates from our metrics for fiscal health at the network/organizational level.
- Provide training, expectations, and tools to budget managers across our schools and central support teams on how to effectively manage a budget.
- Provide training, expectations, and resources to budget managers and other relevant leaders across our schools and central support teams on all topics related to financial operations in our organization, including, e.g., critical financial policies, purchasing, vendor payments, in-school cash management, etc.
- Partner with network- and region-based leaders to develop and support accountability measures and tracking for performance relative to fiscal health goals, as well as interventions where performance is not meeting the necessary standard.
Board and Finance Committee Engagement
- Support CFO and other financial leaders with the development of annual scope and sequence for engagement with the various Boards of Directors and Board Finance Committee.
- Facilitate, as project manager, the agenda-setting, scheduling, and materials creation for discussions with the Boards and Board Finance Committee; on selected topics as requested by the CFO, create and/or present materials.
- Capture meeting decisions, action items, and commitments, and ensure follow-through by members of the management team.
Special Projects
- Oversee the objective-setting, scoping, execution, and communications for special projects that require senior-level leadership and are not definitively best driven by a specific one of the financial functions.
- Ensure “special projects” work ultimately gets effectively embedded into financial functions’ steady state work