Western Governors University
Director, Strategic Portfolio Management
🇺🇸 Hybrid - Salt Lake City, UT
🕑 Full-Time
💰 $137K - $246K
💻 Project Management
🗓️ February 28th, 2025
Edtech.com's Summary
WGU is hiring a Director of Strategic Portfolio Management. This role involves working with WGU executive leadership to ensure alignment of strategic initiatives with long-term goals and coordinating with various teams to standardize practices. The Director will lead sub-teams of Portfolio Managers and Business Transformation Managers, oversee transformation initiatives, and provide regular updates to leadership on portfolio performance and strategic alignment.
Highlights
- Executive reporting on portfolio and transformation status.
- Coordination, execution, and reporting of portfolio status during the planning process.
- Track Objective & Key Result (OKR) performance across the WGU system.
- Engage in weekly alignment with project management teams to ensure governance compliance.
- Lead Service Now SPM Steering Committee for operational improvement.
- Requires a Bachelor's degree in engineering, finance, or business administration.
- 10 years of relevant experience, including 5-7 years leading a team.
- Salary range: $136,700.00 - $246,000.00.
- Eligible for comprehensive benefits including bonuses and flexible paid time off.
Director, Strategic Portfolio Management Full Description
Director, Strategic Portfolio Management
Salt Lake City Office
Full time
If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.
Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.
The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.
At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:
Pay Range: $136,700.00 - $246,000.00
Pay Range: $136,700.00 - $246,000.00
Job Description
Job Profile Summary
At WGU, Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) is a team responsible for the processes, business capabilities, and outcomes that aid in selecting and executing the best set of investments (large-scale business initiatives, major transformation programs/projects, or significant strategy execution events) required to meet the strategic goals of WGU. The Director of SPM, and the SPM team, work directly with WGU executive leadership to ensure that funded and prioritized initiatives, programs, or projects are aligned to our long-term strategic goals and capability roadmaps. The Director of SPM uses a strategy driven approach to ensure strategy-to-execution alignment of annual operating plans and multi-year roadmaps across the entire WGU system. The SPM team provides frameworks for standardizing, measuring, and reporting on initiatives, programs, and projects ensuring they tie to the universities’ broader strategic goals. SPM coordinates with the other business level and product level Portfolio/Program/Project Management teams in WGU to help standardize practices, methods, and processes ensuring efficient portfolio operations and overall aligned governance to best practices. The Director of SPM ensures a ‘single source of truth’ for updates to WGU Executive Leadership and the WGU Board, as requested.
The team reporting to the Director of SPM is divided into two sub-teams each lead by a manager or senior manager, both directly reporting into the Director of SPM. The first sub-team is a group of Portfolio Managers which own and execute the strategic portfolio management functions. The second sub-team is a group of Business Transformation Managers (BTM) which are responsible for leading and managing the transformation initiatives, programs, or projects to deliver organizational change, improvement, and innovation at WGU. The BTM team works closely with senior executive leadership to identify and document transformation opportunities, to develop detailed execution plans, and to own the successful implementation of the change and transformation plans. The BTP team oversee some of the highest level, most impactful, transformation work across the WGU system in director support of senior executive leadership.
The Director of Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) reports to the Vice President of Institutional Portfolio Management (IPM). The VP of IPM reports into the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and leads the functions of Business Process Management, Facilities Management, Enterprise Risk Management, Enterprise Change Management, as well as Strategic Portfolio Management.
Primary Responsibilities
This job description includes a general representation of job requirements rather than a comprehensive inventory of all required responsibilities or work activities. The contents of this document or related job requirements may change at any time with or without notice.
- Executive reporting on portfolio and transformation status (weekly, monthly, and quarterly). Development of on-line executive dashboards and reports to enable executive level self-service status checking.
- Leads the coordination, execution, and reporting of portfolio status during the annual operations planning process for the operational, strategic, and innovation portfolios.
- Coordinates and leads the annual Objective & Key Result (OKR) planning and alignment process with all system entities, schools, and shared service teams. Tracks OKR performance in aggregate across the WGU system for quarterly status reporting.
- Weekly coordination and alignment with the other portfolio and project management teams in the WGU system (academic offering product team, education technology product team, business program & project teams) to ensure governance through agreement on standards and practices.
- Leadership member of the Service Now SPM Steering Committee and a driver of the Service Now feature and capability implementation roadmap with a focus on operational improvement and effectiveness.
- Partners with leaders on the development of system-level initiatives with measurable outcomes aligned to the 5-Year strategic plans and strategic capability roadmaps.
- Implements standards and structures to support portfolio development and execution, including cross-functional reviews to give line of sight and support coordination across the portfolio of initiatives.
- Establishes processes to support and communicate initiative status and progress towards established goals.
- Establishes system initiative, program, and project standards and track compliance.
- Continuously improves portfolio processes to support nimbleness (more timely adjustments, improved pace from opportunity identification to action). Establish a rolling model of Demand intake and approval.
- Develops and implements enterprise-wide strategic communication plans.
- Designs implementation and management of processes, tools (software systems) and policies related to the strategic portfolio management.
- Thought leader and change agent in the establishment of enterprise-wide strategy for unified portfolio, initiative, program, and project management across all university entities.
- Provides regular updates on portfolio performance, status, and value delivery.
- Manages large, complex initiatives or programs in a results driven environment. Ensures alignment and understanding of decision- impact across teams. Leverages relationships and insights to reduce ambiguity to drive for results. Clearly articulates goals, communicates and defends (or redefines) the value proposition.
- Applies best practices for portfolio execution and management and actively demonstrates expertise in enterprise level strategic portfolio and program/project management systems, software, and aligned tools.
- Collaborates with university leadership, business owners, and other stakeholders, to refine goals, and then to define approaches to achieve them. Defines the business case and ensures alignment with the business vision and strategy.
- Oversees the execution of transformation initiatives, programs, and projects ensuring they are delivered on time, within budget, and to quality standards.
- Executes change management requires as needed on transformation work executed by the team.
- Hires, leads, manages, coaches, develops and evaluates direct and indirect reports.
- Performs other job-related duties as assigned.
Qualifications
Education
- Bachelor’s degree in engineering, finance, or business administration, or related field.
Experience
- 10 years specific experience including:
- 5-7 years leading a team (with direct reports)
- 4 to 5 years of strategic portfolio management experience
- 2 to 3 years of direct management of transformation program/project management teams or a project management office.
Experience in lieu of education
Equivalent relevant experience performing the essential functions of this job may substitute for education degree requirements. Generally, equivalent relevant experience is defined as 1 year of experience for 1 year of education and is the discretion of the hiring manager.
Preferred Qualifications
- Master’s degree in engineering, finance, or business administration, or related field.
- Experience in a “digital business” model where value is delivered to customers through technology driven on-line systems in part or in full.
- Experience with Strategic Portfolio Management tools, techniques, systems, and operational execution.
- Experience in Higher Education, Business Transformation, or other on-line service industries.
Work Location
- This position is in-office in Salt Lake City, UT.
- Schedule: 4 days onsite, 1 day work from home
Position & Application Details
Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.
How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.
Additional Information
Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It’s not all-inclusive.
Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at recruiting@wgu.edu.
Equal Opportunity Employer: We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.
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