Position Title: Director, Digital Program Management
Location: Washington, DC
Department: IT
Reports to: Senior Director, Digital Program Management & Strategy
Salary Range for US Based Staff: $86,660 - $101,953
Organization Overview:
Founded in 1968, Special Olympics is a global movement to end discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities. We foster acceptance of all people through the power of sport and programming in education, health, and leadership. With nearly four million athletes and Unified Sports® partners and one million coaches and volunteers in more than 170 countries, Special Olympics delivers more than 30 Olympic-type sports and nearly 50,000 games and competitions every year. Learn more at SpecialOlympics.org.
Position Overview:
The global Special Olympics Digital team is focused on improving outcomes for the athletes we serve, enabling rapid and efficient sports, education, and health research and operational support, leveraging data for decision-making, managing risk, and responding to and developing technology-driven solutions to address the needs of Special Olympics staff and programs at the state, country, and regional levels. As a member of our team, you will have the opportunity to make a major positive impact on the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We are seeking an experienced digital strategist and program manager to oversee our growing digital initiatives and services portfolio.
This role will report to the Sr. Director, Major Games Systems & Strategy and work closely with technical project managers, senior leadership, as well as business stakeholders and management teams to advise on technology project management best practices and provide project team support. The successful candidate will have the ability to effectively monitor a broad digital services portfolio and communicate with executive management on status, risks, and mitigations throughout the program. The candidate will have a technical background, experience with corporate and public sector technology partnership management, strong analytical and problem-solving skills, and will lean into organization and communications skills to support the transformation of enabling technologies and execution strategies. SOI is committed to fostering a culture of continuous learning and is pleased to offer additional training opportunities to help employees enhance skills that are pertinent to their current roles.
Objectives of this Role:
- Develop assessment protocols for project and program evaluation and improvement
- Maintain and improve organizational project management standards and reporting, including routines to optimize information flow, improve stakeholder alignment, and develop performance scorecards and dashboards to monitor KPIs
- Develop templates, gather best practices, and optimize our way of managing projects within the department, in coordination with the PMO
- Improve user experiences with our systems both from a design and management perspective
- Support the technology teams with project management best practices within SOI as well as for larger scale, program-driven solutions
Responsibilities:
- Act as a central point of coordination for digital team processes and activities, ensuring that the senior leadership team always has a current view of progress across the IT organization
- Collaborate with the senior leadership team across enterprise solutions, data and analytics, digital health, IT operations, enterprise architecture, governance, and business sponsor/stakeholder groups to define strategy, design, and requirements for the new Special Olympics Digital Program Management and Governance function
- Review business context for solutions that incorporate regional needs and define requirements utilizing product and program roadmaps
- Work closely with Digital and business team project managers and team leads to plan quarterly project reviews with executives and program stakeholders.
- Collaborate with various lines of business to identify risks, dependencies, and opportunities related to business process and technology change management, and solution adoption
- Analyze, evaluate program resources, work plan, budget, timing, progress, and ways to overcome program risks, and produce program reports for management and stakeholders
- Lead the creation of the annual operational plan with the help of technical program managers and senior leadership, as well as maintain the plan and corresponding scorecards per PMO requirements
- Communicate and distribute information to management and key stakeholders at a program level
- Support and assist technical project managers as needed in managing projects
Skills and Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Administration, or equivalent education or work experience.
- Combined 6+ years of project/product/program management experience including at least 3 years of technical project management/scrum experience
- Experience working with major business systems and integrations such as ERP, CRM, Fundraising, and/or ecommerce platforms within medium enterprise organizations
- An ability to identify better ways of working at scale through building new mechanisms and processes, and ability to deliver against goals on time
- A high degree of competency with project management including identifying and managing risks, tracking dependencies and milestones, and communicating overall project status via project plans, schedules and status reports and program metrics
- Excellent collaboration, with crisp and compelling verbal and written communication skills including presentation skills and listening skills with the ability to present complex technical information clearly and concisely to varying audiences
- Ability to handle multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment with the ability to learn quickly and adapt to a changing environment; proactive in seeking out information when necessary
- Passion for supporting Special Olympics Athletes with IDD is required though previous experience is not
Desired qualifications:
- Experience with Microsoft Azure DevOps, Jira, ServiceNow, or similar ALM tools to manage and track progress, including the development of progress metrics and KPIs
- Experience working with major business systems and integrations such as ERP, CRM, Fundraising, and/or ecommerce platforms within medium enterprise organizations
- Experience with IT outsourcing activities in a managed services environment
- Experience working in a multicultural setting
- PMI and/or PMP certifications
For USA based staff: Special Olympics offers full-time employees a generous and comprehensive benefits package, which includes: medical, dental, vision, HSA, FSA, life insurance, disability, retirement, legal resources, and PTO.
Special Olympics provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.
This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.
**Special Olympics is an E-Verify Employer**