SPEND - Director of State Partnerships & External Affairs

Remote

Full Time

Manager/Supervisor

Strategic Public Education National Data (SPEND) Initiative

Modernizing America’s Education Finance Data Infrastructure

Role Title: Director of State Partnerships & External Affairs

Location: Remote (U.S.-based) with frequent national travel

About the SPEND Initiative

Accurate and comparable education finance data is the essential foundation for effective governance and robust research. The Strategic Public Education National Data (SPEND) Initiative is a new, non-partisan collaborative project fiscally sponsored by Education Resource Strategies (ERS). Our mission is to build and sustain a public-interest data infrastructure that guarantees the accuracy, comparability, and timeliness of education finance data. We aim to provide a stable, objective data foundation—a modern "ground truth" that serves the needs of state leaders and the broader education field.

SPEND is a newly launched initiative with secured three-year general operating funding. This stable financial foundation allows our leadership team to focus on the long-term technical modernization of the nation’s education finance data infrastructure.

Why Work at SPEND?

Preserve and Upgrade National Data Infrastructure: Your work directly contributes to sustaining the longitudinal school finance datasets that underpin billions of dollars in funding and decades of research on resource allocation and system effectiveness.
Execute Technical Modernization: Transition the national data infrastructure from fragmented legacy reporting to automated, high-quality systems, establishing an objective foundation for fiscal data collection and transparency.
Join a Mission-Focused Team with Institutional Stability: Contribute as a foundational member of a new initiative supported by a multi-year general operating grant and the established operational infrastructure of ERS.

Role Overview

SPEND is seeking a Director of State Partnerships & External Affairs to join our three-person leadership team alongside the Executive Director and the Managing Director of Systems and Analytics. In this senior individual contributor role, you will be the primary architect of SPEND’s external presence and the leader of our State Partnership Network.

You will serve as the lead envoy to State Education Agencies (SEAs), developing the deep, independent relationships with state leaders necessary to secure "Pilot State" status and unlock access to raw financial data. While your core focus is the human infrastructure of state partnerships, you will also serve as our primary communications and storytelling lead. You will craft the public narrative that builds trust in SPEND’s data products, ensuring that state leaders and the broader field view SPEND as the definitive national source for education finance.

Key Responsibilities

System Stability & Continuity (Strengthening the Current System)

Focus: Translation & Improvement Processes

State Relationship Management: Build and maintain deep, direct working relationships with SEA data officials and state leadership to ensure continuity during the transition from legacy federal reporting to the SPEND platform.
Consensus Building: Facilitate the human infrastructure—gathering practitioner requirements and building consensus—needed to modernize national accounting standards and technical handbooks.
Field Trust: Develop strategies and narratives that build confidence in the continuity of SPEND data products, ensuring historical datasets remain consistent and reliable for longitudinal research.

Innovation & Automation (Building the New System)

Focus: State Recruitment and Pilot Validation

Pilot Recruitment: Lead the strategic outreach and relationship-building process to secure 3–5 "Pilot States" to test and validate the next-generation AI-driven collection engine.
Value Proposition Advocacy: Demonstrate to state leaders how SPEND’s automated extraction reduces their manual reporting burden while providing superior, real-time fiscal insights for state-level decision-making.
Feedback Integration: Create a direct feedback loop between state data providers and SPEND’s technical team to ensure the "Rosetta Stone" pilot reflects the practical accounting realities of state agencies.

Cross-Cutting Contributions

Communications & Storytelling: Define and execute the organizational messaging strategy, using storytelling to articulate the value of a modernized data infrastructure to the public, policymakers, and the research community.
Strategic Coordination: Act as the day-to-day liaison with subcontractors (EdFund and Equable), ensuring their working groups and deliverables align with SPEND’s technical requirements and the needs of state partners.
Core Leadership: Serve as one of three core leaders responsible for organizational governance, strategic planning, and the transition toward a permanent organizational structure.

Why This Role Matters

The Director of State Partnerships & External Affairs is the bridge between technical innovation and national adoption. By building a resilient network of state partners and a trusted brand, you ensure that SPEND assumes the definitive national role previously held by federal agencies. Your leadership ensures that the "modern era" of education finance is not just a technical success, but a systemic upgrade adopted by state leaders to serve the public interest.

Qualifications

Meeting every preferred qualification is not required to advance in our search. Alignment with our mission, objective values, and technical impact is critical.

Required

Professional Network: A pre-existing and robust professional network specifically among state-level education agency leaders (SEA) and state data officials.
Experience: 10+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, government relations, or communications leadership within the education or public sector.
Communication Skills: Exceptional ability to translate complex technical, fiscal, or statistical concepts into clear, objective insights for high-level decision-makers.
Availability: Must be available for core working hours of 10 AM – 6 PM ET to support national team collaboration.
Travel: Ability to travel frequently (averaging 2 trips per month) for state leader engagement, external partner meetings, and in-person team collaboration.
Remote Work: Access to a quiet, professional remote work environment with a reliable, high-speed internet connection.
Work Authorization: Must be authorized to work for an employer in the United States. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for new team members at this time.

Preferred

Domain Knowledge: Familiarity with state education finance reporting structures, state data systems, or federal education finance data.

Compensation and Transparency

The salary range for this role is $150,000 to $180,000 annually. Salaries will be adjusted for geography based on the candidate's primary work location.

In modeling our commitment to openness and transparency, it’s important to note that starting salaries aren’t typically at or near the top of this range. This is to create opportunities for team members to earn raises throughout their tenure in the role.

ERS equivalent job tier for benefits purposes: Level IV.

About Our Fiscal Sponsor: Education Resource Strategies (ERS)

ERS is a national non-profit consulting firm that partners with school system leaders to transform how they use resources so that every student can learn and thrive.

ERS is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, ancestry, pregnancy, or military service.

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