Sr. Director, Education-Technology & Media

Job Description

The Senior Director, Education for Technology and Media will report to the Vice President of International Education in the International Social Impact (ISI) Department at Sesame Workshop in New York, NY.

They will provide guidance, direction, and technical assistance to ISI strategies and programs around evidence-based theory and best practice in educational media, digital learning, and communication technology for education. The Senior Director will design programs and platforms that demand for innovative approaches to applying technology to resolving early childhood development/education development challenges.  They will be responsible to lead on technical excellence, thought leadership, and visioning around delivering high-quality educational media to children and families in the development and crisis contexts where Sesame Workshop works.

The Senior Director will collaborate with colleagues throughout the company to drive educational strategy, mass media/digital curricula, and monitoring and learning for diverse Sesame Workshop initiatives around the world. They will collaborate with country teams to ensure that new content and platforms for delivery are evidence-driven and theoretically sound, and with multidisciplinary teams to ensure content is both educational and highly engaging. In addition, they are expected to represent Sesame Workshop in relevant senior forums, bringing their expertise to diverse audiences.

Primary Responsibilities

Technical leadership:
• Lead the development and review of mass media curricula and content, ensuring alignment with intended project outcomes, in collaboration with country office-based educators, team members, the Production and Content Research teams, partners, and advisors; this will frequently include playing a leadership role in curriculum/content seminar planning and execution.
• Hire and onboard new educational advisors (and collaborate with existing ones) to ensure that representation is positive and defies stereotyping and negative modeling.
• Provide educational leadership during media development, including review of and troubleshooting around character and set development, story ideas, scripts, storyboards, animatics, and rough cuts in collaboration with country office-based educators and working closely with producers and writers.
• Provide educational leadership for content review across media formats and for diverse media platforms, including but not limited to television and YouTube; advise the Production team on how to positively reflect the local culture(s) represented in the project – and identify potential negative portrayals, actions, and characteristics.
• Provide educational leadership for RFP review and vendor selection related to new format/content development, in collaboration with country office-based educators and working closely with producers.
• Collaborate with the Content Research Department on the development of formative and summative research protocols, which may include interfacing with third-party research vendors.
• Facilitate learning related to educational media practices across ISI projects and initiatives.
• Represent Sesame Workshop as a subject matter expert, and ensure that the Sesame Workshop is engaging with stakeholders in the public sector, private sector, and academia, ensuring that cutting edge technologies and practices influence the ways in which Sesame Workshop designs and executes early childhood development/education programming.

Project direction:
• Design programs and platforms that directly support the demand for innovative approaches to applying technology to resolving early childhood development/education challenges.
• Develop monitoring materials, develop and implement monitoring plans, and interpret stakeholder feedback in a way that informs project improvements, in partnership with Sesame teams and partners.
• Lead response and course-correction for project challenges, applying collaborative, flexible, and practical thinking as need and in coordination with project teams.
• Ensure the execution of administrative processes related to the above, including managing timelines and work plans, managing budgets, submitting and tracking project contracts and payments, reporting, and coordinating communication with multidisciplinary teams.

Management:
• Support, mentor, and manage junior staff to effectively deliver on content leadership, project planning, and project direction responsibilities.
• Recruit and manage project consultants, defining their scope of work, managing quality of deliverables, and serving as their liaison with Sesame teams and partners.
• Support country office-based educators in leading in the educational review for PR, marketing, social media, etc., liaising with the New York office as appropriate.

Qualifications
• Designing and/or implementing education and technology-related programming, including media, audio, digital programming, 5G-related work, and/or distance learning.
• Engaging the private sector and think-tanks/academia and presenting around issues of media and digital education.
• Monitoring, evaluating, and learning from media and digital education programming.
• Providing technical advice to work units around media and digital education.
• Master's degree in Early Childhood Development, Developmental Psychology, or a related field.
• Minimum of 10 years of relevant work experience in development and/or crisis-affected contexts.
• Professional experience in developing educational media for young learners, their families, and their educators, ideally in development and/or crisis-affected contexts.
• Willingness to travel to and work in low-resource settings, in line with evolving national and global COVID safety travel guidelines (up to 15%).
• Demonstrated ability to manage large scale projects and budgets.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with excellent attention to detail.
• Flexible, creative, solution-oriented thinking.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Office, file transfer and sharing technology, and web-based communication and call tools required.
• Commitment to Sesame Workshop's mission and core values.

ISI Department Overview

Sesame Workshop's International Social Impact Department (ISI) develops and implements Sesame's powerful initiatives to serve children and families around the world, in both development and crisis contexts, and builds strong partnerships and coalitions to maximize reach and impact. Building upon the familiarity and appeal of the trusted, beloved Sesame Street characters – and their global counterparts – we create and disseminate unique educational resources and tools for families most in need. Sesame's research-driven initiatives reach many children who would otherwise have little or no access to early childhood education and support all aspects of children's development – including foundational skills, healthy habits, safety and protection, and positive relationships with caregivers. We reach and engage children and the important adults in their families and communities using multiple media platforms and partner strategically to provide direct services in both development and crisis contexts using innovative strategies – from television and radio to digital media, mobile technologies, books, E-books, magazines, classroom materials, teacher/provider training, social media, and more.

About Sesame Workshop

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Jobcode: Reference SBJ-r7j7w8-3-22-240-205-42 in your application.