Managing Director, Learning and Impact

Managing Director, Learning & Impact

The Holdsworth Center is a non-profit organization founded and largely funded by Charles Butt, Chairman of H-E-B, a regional retail company. Our mission is to impact, over time, the quality of K-12 public education for all Texas students by supporting and developing leaders. Based in Austin, Texas, we were founded in 2017 in honor of Charles’ mother, Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth Butt, who was an educator, a philanthropist, and a lifelong pioneering advocate.

We partner with public school districts to help them grow outstanding leaders at all levels so that staff thrive, and students excel in every classroom. At Holdsworth, we believe leadership isn’t just about titles. We make a deep investment in leaders at both the district and campus levels, including teachers who lead students in the classroom and influence and lead their colleagues.

Purpose & Responsibilities

Holdsworth builds stronger leaders for Texas public schools so that teachers and students thrive. We work directly with superintendents, principals, and school leadership teams across Texas, and we hold ourselves to the same standard of continuous improvement we ask of the leaders we serve. That means our program evaluation work isn't a side function — it's core to how we know whether we're delivering on our mission. This work is fundamentally about being a learning organization that carefully examines its impact so we know what is working, can learn from success, and keep improving.

The Managing Director of Learning & Impact leads Holdsworth's program evaluation function, ensuring we learn from rigorous examination of the effectiveness of our work across our three program areas — Stronger Superintendents, Stronger Principals, and Redesigning School Leadership Teams. This role leads a team of senior analysts and is personally responsible for connecting that work to the broader field: building and stewarding an evaluation advisory committee of outside experts, leading partnerships with external evaluators, and ensuring our evaluation practice earns credibility both inside and outside the organization.

This is a senior leadership role reporting to the Chief Program Officer and with regular exposure to Holdsworth's President and, at times, its governing board. The person in this role needs to be as comfortable interpreting a regression output as they are explaining what it means and why it matters to various internal and external audiences.

Responsibilities:

Develop and lead the overall strategy and operating plan for the Learning & Impact team

• Ensure Holdsworth has a strong approach to studying our impact, learning from successes and growth areas, and making adjustments to improve our programs’ impact
• Implement and evolve Holdsworth's evaluation and measurement framework, overseeing annual cycles of evaluation in each of our three program focus areas (Stronger Principals, Stronger Superintendents, and Redesigning School Leadership Teams)
• Build Holdsworth's approach to working with external evaluators — identifying which parts of our work merit third-party evaluation, and managing those relationships and contracts.
• Regularly engage outside experts who can pressure-test our methods and lend credibility to our results.
• Drive clarity and alignment across the team by translating the strategy into clear work portfolios and goals, ensuring each team member understands how their work contributes to broader success.

Lead a high-performing team

• Lead the Learning & Impact function, currently a team of senior analysts and a coordinator, supporting evaluation across all three of Holdsworth's program areas.
• Foster a winning team culture where all team members are valued, supported, and empowered to do their best work
• Lead strategic talent planning by assessing current capabilities, identifying future needs, and developing short- and long-term strategies to ensure the team has the right talent to meet its goals.
• Model and reinforce leadership excellence by setting clear expectations, providing regular feedback, and holding others accountable.
• Continuously assess and, as needed, evolve team structures to ensure the team has what it needs to succeed.

Serve as a key member of the Holdsworth Center Program Leadership team (HCPL), supporting the organization to pursue its mission

• Operate with an organizational leader mindset, contributing to strategy and decision-making beyond the scope of your direct team
• Work closely with the Chief Program Officer and President on the overall direction of Holdsworth’s learning and impact strategy
• Collaborate closely with programming Managing Directors to successfully mobilize our measurement framework
• Support the broader work of The Holdsworth Center and its objectives to develop leadership in K-12 public education in Texas
• Represent Holdsworth externally and with a variety of senior external stakeholders, including at times, engaging with the Holdsworth governing board
• Serve as the connective link between the Learning & Impact function and the rest of the organization — helping the program leadership team, the rest of the organization, and at times the board understand what our data shows and how to act on it.

Strong candidates will have a range of prior experience and capabilities to include:

• Strong alignment with organizational values—Drive for Excellence for Every Student, Be of Service, Believe in People. Demonstrated commitment to and engagement in learning and actions to promote excellent outcomes for every student.
• Highly collaborative work style and ability to work well in a team environment, establish good rapport at all levels of the organization, collaborate with experts and work with and relate to people from diverse backgrounds.
• Demonstrated ability to thrive and lead in a fast-paced, dynamic environment, to adapt to an ever-changing, growing organization and to bring structure to highly ambiguous or complex topics; embraces a portfolio of work that may change over time.
• Self-motivated individual who demonstrates initiative without waiting for direction.
• Exceptional receptivity to feedback motivated by deep curiosity, keen learning mindset, and above all an obsession with delivering the highest impact for our leaders.
• Superb time management and organizational skills; the ability to independently manage multiple events at one time at a rapid pace; demonstrated ability to be thorough, with strong attention to detail.
• Advanced degree (master's or doctorate) in education, public policy, applied or quantitative social science, statistics, or a related field.
• Strong working knowledge of both quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods. Able to balance technical rigor with practical implementation needs.
• Deep familiarity with Texas's school accountability system and student achievement data.
• Experience leading high-performing teams.
• Comfort operating at the executive level: framing complex technical work in easy-to-understand language that builds confidence and trust.

Nice to Have

• Experience serving as a third-party program evaluator, or leading relationships with an external evaluation or applied research organization.
• Background in management consulting or a similar field where data was used to drive practical decisions under real-world constraints.
• A strong existing network (or ability to quickly build relationships with) data/measurement experts in Texas and/or nationally

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary range: $158,900 to $180,000
• Compensation for the role will depend on several factors, including but not limited to your qualifications, skills, competencies, and experience. The Holdsworth Center also factors internal pay equity in evaluating compensation.
• This position is eligible to participate in company benefits, including but not limited to medical, dental, and vision coverage, life and AD&D, short- and long-term disability coverage, four weeks of paid time off, employee assistance program, pet insurance, participation in a 401k program that includes a company match, and many other additional benefits.

Job Requirements and Expectations

• This is a full-time role based in Texas. Location is flexible within the state. The Center is based in Austin; if living outside Austin, the Managing Director should expect frequent travel to Austin (~2 times per month).

How to Apply

Interested candidates can submit their resume and a completed application online.

At The Holdsworth Center, every application is reviewed by a member of our team. We do not use artificial intelligence to screen, score, or filter resumes or cover letters – your materials will be read by a real person.

At the Holdsworth Center, all employment decisions are based on job requirements and individual qualifications without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.