Senior Director of Education

Job Description

The Senior Director of Education provides strategic and operational leadership for the International Myeloma Foundation's national education portfolio, overseeing the development, implementation, evaluation, and continuous improvement of culturally and linguistically competent community, patient, care partner, and healthcare professional outreach and education programs that advance the IMF's mission of accelerating prevention and cure of myeloma and improving the quality of life for patients and families. Reporting to the Chief Program Officer, the Senior Director will develop and execute a national outreach and education strategy, establish clear goals and measures of success, build and lead a high-performing team, and translate strategy into measurable community and patient impact.

The Senior Director will be a community-centered health educational leader with a demonstrated track record of building community trust, developing authentic relationships, and creating meaningful partnerships with culturally and linguistically diverse communities. The Senior Director will work closely with local healthcare systems, community centers, faith-based organizations, advocacy groups, and other trusted community stakeholders to expand myeloma awareness, education, access, and engagement. The Senior Director will bring a strong understanding of community health education and engagement—not primarily academic, CME, or traditional professional education—and will ensure that IMF programs are responsive to the needs, experiences, and priorities of the communities they serve.

Working collaboratively across Research, Support, Advocacy, Marketing & Communications, and Development, the Senior Director ensures educational initiatives align with the IMF's strategic priorities and support organizational growth, community engagement, health equity, and research participation.

Multiple myeloma remains incurable, and far too many patients — particularly those in underserved communities — are diagnosed late, lack access to cutting-edge therapies, and are underrepresented in the clinical trials that will shape the future of treatment. The Senior Director of Education has a unique opportunity to change that. This is a mission-critical role at a pivotal moment in the IMF's history.

Core Responsibilities

• National Outreach and Education Strategy & Leadership: Develop and execute a comprehensive national outreach and education strategy aligned with the IMF’s mission and strategic priorities. Establish clear goals, priorities, operating plans, and measures for success for the education portfolio. Translate strategy into scalable programs and partnerships that demonstrate measurable community impact. Serve as a strategic leader and thought partner to the Chief Program Officer and other senior leaders.
• Program Development: Lead the development, implementation, quality assurance, and evaluation of the IMF's culturally and linguistically diverse outreach and education portfolio. Assess needs, develop, and scale outreach and educational initiatives focused on myeloma early detection, treatment, clinical trials, and other priority topics. Oversee development of curricula and materials utilizing adult learning principles, plain language, health literacy, and cultural and linguistic competency.
• Community & Professional Outreach: Cultivate and maintain sustainable partnerships with local stakeholders, including, but not limited to cancer centers, physicians, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, and local businesses so that myeloma education can be brought to community members. Build trust in historically marginalized communities to expand reach, impact, and access. Create community advisory structures that ensure community voice informs program development. Develop local outreach and education models that can be replicated nationally while remaining responsive to local needs.
• Community, Patient, and Care Partner Education: Build and implement strategies to effectively educate the public, patients, and care partners on myeloma signs, symptoms, and clinical trial awareness, utilizing culturally and linguistically appropriate resources and materials. Ensure education is accessible to individuals with varying levels of health literacy and is culturally and linguistically appropriate. Leverage trusted community messengers and partnerships to extend IMF's reach into communities that may not be reached through traditional patient education channels.
• Clinical Trial Education & Research Engagement: Develop educational strategies that improve awareness, understanding, and participation in clinical trials through culturally and linguistically appropriate education, trusted community partnerships, and collaboration with the IMF's research initiatives.
• Team Leadership: Recruit, mentor, coach, and supervise staff. Foster a collaborative, inclusive, innovative, and results-oriented culture. Set performance expectations and support professional development. Build a high-performing outreach and education team.
• Grant, Sponsorship, & Budget Management: Oversee budgets, develop and track deliverables, ensure successful completion of deliverables, and prepare reports including data on metrics. Develop annual operating budgets and forecast resource needs. Ensure contractual compliance. Work with cross-functional team on funding proposals.
• Dissemination & Thought Leadership: Represent the IMF at conferences, community events, webinars, professional meetings, and other external forums. Participate in dissemination of promising practices, program outcomes, and lessons learned through webinars, presentations, publications, toolkits, and other appropriate channels. Stay informed about emerging practices in community outreach and education, health equity, and patient engagement and translate developments into IMF strategy.
• Digital & Multimedia Education: Develop and oversee digital education strategies, including webinars and e-learning modules, to extend the reach of myeloma education beyond in-person programming and engage patients and care partners where they are.
• Data & Evaluation: Work collaboratively to establish clear metrics and evaluation frameworks to assess program reach, participant knowledge gain, and community impact, equity, behavior change intention, provider engagement, clinical trial referrals, participant satisfaction, community trust, and longitudinal outcomes, where feasible. Use findings to continuously refine programming and inform strategic decisions.
• Health Equity Leadership: Integrate health equity principles throughout program planning, service delivery, evaluation, and continuous improvement. Champion culturally and linguistically appropriate care practices across all program areas, ensuring services are accessible and responsive to historically underserved myeloma patient populations.

Qualifications & Requirements

• Education: Master’s degree in Public Health (MPH), particularly with a concentration in community health, community health education, health promotion, or a related field; Health Education; Nursing Education, or a related field may also be considered. Certifications such as a Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) are highly preferred.
• Leadership Experience: 7-10+ years of progressively responsible experience in health education, community outreach and health education, public health or a related field, including significant experience in a director-level or comparable leadership role.
• Strategic Leadership: Experience developing and implementing national and multi-site education and community engagement strategies, translating strategy into measurable outcomes and community impact.
• Community Outreach, Engagement & Education: Strong demonstrated experience in community health education and community engagement. Direct experience working with communities and community partners rather than primarily serving in academic, CME, faculty, or traditional professional education roles.
• Cultural & Linguistic Competence: Demonstrated ability to design and implement culturally and linguistically responsive education and engagement strategies. Bilingual and bicultural experience, particularly Spanish/English, is highly desirable.
• Health Equity: Demonstrated understanding of health equity and experience developing programs that effectively engage Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, and other communities disproportionately affected by health disparities or historically underserved by healthcare and research systems.
• Program Strategy & Evaluation: Experience conducting or applying community needs assessments and using qualitative and quantitative data, community input, and evaluation finds to inform program strategy, measure impact, and drive continuous improvement.
• Cancer/Oncology Experience: Experience in cancer, oncology, or myeloma is a strong plus, but disease-specific experience is not required in lieu of demonstrated community health education and engagement expertise.
• Organizational Experience: Prior experience working within or alongside a national patient advocacy organization, healthcare system, academic medical center, federally qualified health center (FQHC), public health organization, or community-based organization is preferred.
• Grant, Budget & Operational Management: Demonstrated experience managing budgets, grants, contracts, sponsorships, deliverables, and external partnerships.
• Travel: National and possibly international travel for conferences, site visits, community events, and partner engagements.

Skills:

• Bilingual/bilingual proficiency, particularly Spanish/English, highly desirable.
• Strong public speaking, facilitation, presentation, and partnership-development skills.
• Strong written communication skills, including experience developing plain-language patient materials at appropriate health literacy levels that utilize adult learning principles.
• Demonstrated ability to build trust and credibility with diverse communities, professionals, and other stakeholders.
• Proficiency with learning management systems, virtual meeting platforms, digital content tools, and other technologies to support education and community engagement.
• Strong data literacy and demonstrated ability to establish and use metrics to measure program reach, quality, equity, engagement, and impact.
• Familiarity adult learning, health literacy, plain language standards, community-based participatory approaches, culturally and linguistically appropriate services, and program evaluation methodologies.
• Strong grant management, budget management, project management, and organizational planning skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently in a remote or hybrid environment while managing multiple priorities, deadlines, stakeholders, and geographically distributed teams.