Associate Director OF Admissions

In the Bay Area, established admissions professionals rarely sell. They oversee waitlists, convene committees, and steward reputations inherited from decades past. This position operates differently. Your market has little awareness of us. Your task is to create it. Alpha is a K–12 independent school anchored by a verifiable proposition: students finish core academics in two hours daily, outpace national learning benchmarks, and dedicate afternoons to substantive skill development instead of filler. Bay Area families represent both the most demanding audience for this model and the most valuable. Founders, technologists, doctors, and investors will not settle for a polished walkthrough and aspirational messaging. They will request evidence, scrutinize compromises, and evaluate you against Nueva, Castilleja, Harker, Marin Country Day, and Branson simultaneously. Engage that scrutiny. Understand the nature of this work. It is client acquisition with a selectivity requirement. You build your own pipeline: preschool and feeder relationships, community ties, local activations, and referrals from families you\'ve already earned trust with. You own a growth target. You also decline families when the fit is poor, in a market where declining a well-networked parent carries real risk. Both responsibilities are non-negotiable. A single misaligned enrollment in a compact cohort damages more than an unfilled seat. In year one, you serve as the founding local representative of a campus still building its local reputation, and the majority of your time will be spent outside the facility. As enrollment scales, your role evolves. You transition from initiating outreach to becoming the admissions leader families request by name, supported by staff below you and a process other campuses replicate. You work on-site at a single campus (Palo Alto or San Rafael) five days weekly, present at morning arrival, afternoon dismissal, and evening programming. If you maintain Bay Area connections and value the full family lifecycle, What You Will Be Doing Building qualified family pipeline independently through preschool and feeder-school partnerships, community alliances, referrals, and local activations. Managing the entire journey personally: initial inquiry, fit conversation, campus visit, student shadow experience, enrollment verdict, and family onboarding. Conducting tours, open houses, and informational sessions where you justify an AI-enhanced learning approach to rigorous, questioning parents. Maintaining 7 or more simultaneous family engagements at varying stages, each with documented status and next step in HubSpot and our student information system. Delivering weekly reports on pipeline strength and conversion integrity, and refining local admissions documentation, FAQs, and standard procedures as market learning accumulates. What You Won’t Be Doing Managing a waitlist. No legacy demand exists here. Escalating decisions to an admissions committee or navigating approval chains. Following a script or dialing through a quota-driven call list. Transferring families across four coordinators, an events function, and a reception desk. Leading a sizable team or filling your calendar with internal coordination meetings. Associate Director Of Admissions Key Responsibilities Drive enrollment growth at a single Bay Area campus with families well-suited to the Alpha educational model. Basic Requirements 3+ years in client-facing positions serving affluent clients: households earning above $500K annually, or individual engagements exceeding $10K. You can specify the employer and transaction level. Direct ownership of a complete client, admissions, or enrollment cycle: application, fit evaluation, offer, decision, onboarding. Your actions, not team outcomes. A quantifiable growth or acquisition metric you owned, including your approach to lead generation and local partnership development to achieve it. 7 or more simultaneous client or family relationships at different stages, managed in a specific CRM or database platform. A specific instance where you advised against your own offering because alignment was insufficient. Professional written correspondence with C-suite executives or high-net-worth clients. You reside in or will relocate within 60 days to Palo Alto, CA, or San Rafael, CA (Marin County). This position is entirely on-site, not hybrid. Authorized to work in the United States without requiring visa sponsorship. Nice-to-have Requirements An established network within Peninsula or Marin family communities, including connections at local independent preschools or feeder institutions. Admissions or enrollment tenure at a selective independent K–12 institution, or a program where applications exceeded capacity. Experience in luxury hospitality, private client services, concierge medicine, private wealth management, membership organizations, or premium residential real estate. Proficiency with AI tools such as ChatGPT to prepare family interactions, customize follow-up communication, and identify pipeline vulnerabilities. About Alpha Join the team building school around student growth. Alpha reimagines the school day around faster learning, stronger mentorship, and more time for students to build real-world skills. Roles with real student impact: Alpha hires teachers (guides), operators, admissions experts, school & curriculum leaders, and remote team members. Education work that pays like it matters: Alpha offers six-figure roles for people ready to help build a radically better school experience. A culture built for builders: Alpha is fast-moving, ambitious, and student focused. It’s for people who want to improve the system, not maintain it. Alpha is where you can do the most meaningful work of your career. There is so much to cover for this exciting role, and space here is limited. The remainder of the posting has been adjusted to remove the application CTA and extraneous prompts. Working with us This is a full-time (40 hours per week), long-term position. The position is immediately available and requires entering into an independent contractor agreement with Crossover as a Contractor of Record. The compensation level for this role is $125 USD/hour, which equates to $250,000 USD/year assuming 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year. The payment period is weekly. Consult for more details on this topic. Crossover Job Code: LJ-5811-US-SanRafae-AssociateDirec.002 #J-18808-Ljbffr