Manager of college success

Michigan Hispanic Collaborative (MiHC) is hiring an excellent, mission-driven Manager of College Success to lead the people, partnerships, systems, implementation, and outcomes that help MiHC college students persist, graduate, and launch into meaningful early careers. This role is for a leader who brings both heart and discipline: a strong people manager, systems thinker, relationship-builder, and outcomes owner who can translate strategy into consistent, high-quality support for students.

About MiHC and Everything to Win

MiHC exists to economically empower first-generation students and young professionals by helping them build the knowledge, relationships, confidence, and support needed to move from aspiration to opportunity.

Everything to Win (ETW) is MiHC's postsecondary decision-making infrastructure. ETW helps students recognize their strengths, understand their options, build critical competencies, and make informed decisions about life after high school, including college, credentials, training, military or service, career pathways, and employment with advancement potential.

ETW is not a single class, workshop, coaching program, or handoff. It is a structured, team-based model that connects classroom learning, coaching, family engagement, postsecondary planning, college success, future pathways, career exposure, and long-term economic mobility. MiHC is building a consistent, scalable, outcomes-focused model grounded in purpose, clarity, and follow-through.

How We Work: One Team

No part of the student journey is outside the work. If a student's decision, barrier, or next step affects their future, it belongs to the team. This does not mean every person does every task. It means every team member understands the full student journey, makes warm handoffs, communicates across roles, and does not treat student barriers as someone else's problem.

About the Role

The Manager of College Success leads MiHC's work with scholars from the College Access handoff through degree completion and early career launch. The Manager owns the consistent implementation and continuous improvement of MiHC's ETW College Success model and is accountable for meaningful relationships, informed decision-making, capital-building, persistence, completion, career conversion, warm handoffs, and disciplined documentation across the College Success team.

This role manages and develops College Success Coaches; ensures strong coaching, risk response, caseload management, documentation, quality review, and escalation practices; and helps staff address complex scholar barriers while building student agency and independence. The Manager does not simply oversee activity. The Manager makes excellent coaching visible, develops professional judgment, addresses inconsistent execution or missed expectations, and builds the conditions, tools, partnerships, and accountability needed for coaches and scholars to succeed.

The Manager works closely with College Access and Future Pathways leaders and coaches, Innovative Learning Educators, MiHC leadership, families/caregivers, colleges and universities, financial-aid and student-success offices, career offices, mental health professionals when appropriate, Hispanic professional organizations, employer partners, funders, and community partners. The role ensures that high school-to-college and college-to-career transitions are coordinated and that lessons from college persistence strengthen the full ETW model.

The Kind of Leader We Are Looking For

Students already bring talent, culture, intelligence, resilience, and ambition. They do not need a system that waits until a crisis to respond. College Success Coaches do not need a manager who only tracks tasks. They need a leader who builds clarity, strengthens practice, uses data thoughtfully, coaches staff through challenges, removes barriers, and holds the team accountable to students and outcomes.

The right person is strategic and practical, reflective and decisive, relationship-centered and accountable. This is not "good intentions" work. It requires sound judgment, people leadership, operational discipline, partnership development, data fluency, and the ability to turn learning into improvement while keeping students at the center.

What You Will Do

• Manage, coach, and develop College Success Coaches through clear expectations, regular supervision, observation, balanced case and documentation review, specific feedback, learning actions, and verified improvement. Recognize strong practice and address missed expectations, inconsistent execution, or performance concerns promptly and directly.
• Ensure the team distinguishes activity from quality. Evaluate not only whether outreach, meetings, referrals, and tasks occurred, but whether coaching reflects a meaningful relationship, sound judgment, informed student decision-making, development of student agency, and verified follow-through.
• Lead disciplined review of the full caseload so each student's relationship, current circumstances, risk and transition status, plan, next action, owner, and follow-up are understood and current—not simply documented as completed activity.
• Ensure every active scholar maintains and owns a current College-to-Career Life Design Plan that meaningfully guides coaching and connects purpose, possible pathways, degree progress, financial realities, all six ETW capitals, career exploration, and concrete next steps. Monitor the quality and use of plans, not merely their completion.
• Build coaches' ability to provide developmental, culturally responsive coaching across the six ETW capitals—human, knowledge, financial, social, cultural, and navigational—so students strengthen their judgment, relationships, confidence, and ability to navigate systems independently.
• Ensure coaches consistently meet MiHC's standards for meaningful contact, dynamic risk response, escalation, documentation, and increased support during summer transition, college entry, the first semester, graduation, and other high-risk periods.
• Use observation, case and plan review, coaching notes, dashboard data, scholar voice, and verified outcomes to identify patterns in coaching quality, student experience, risk, and follow-through; translate findings into staff development, service recovery, and continuous improvement.
• Manage caseload capacity based on student count, risk, and transition demand; ensure urgent or complex cases have appropriate manager visibility and initiate reprioritization, redistribution, coverage, or service recovery when coaching quality or student support is at risk.
• Coordinate warm and verified handoffs and support coaches in navigating complex academic, financial, personal, institutional, and career-related barriers. Work across MiHC teams and with families, colleges, career offices, employers, and community partners so students experience one coordinated system of support.

What You Bring

• Mission-driven commitment to educational equity, economic mobility, college persistence, and early career success, with a belief in the talent, agency, and potential of the students and communities MiHC serves.
• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree in higher education, counseling, education, social work, nonprofit leadership, public administration, or a related field preferred but not required.
• Five or more years of relevant professional experience in college success, higher education, student affairs, advising, financial aid, career services, college access, youth development, nonprofit programming, or a related field strongly preferred.
• At least two years of demonstrated experience managing and developing staff, including setting expectations, providing feedback, supporting performance, and building a strong team culture.
• Deep understanding of the academic, financial, institutional, social, and career-related factors that affect first-generation college students' persistence and completion.
• Experience working with first-generation students, low-income students, Latino students, immigrant families, multilingual families, and/or students from under-resourced communities.
• Demonstrated ability to design and improve programs, translate strategy into implementation, manage competing priorities, and follow through across people, partners, deadlines, and deliverables.
• Strong data and quality-improvement fluency, including the ability to interpret dashboards and qualitative evidence, identify risk and equity patterns, review coaching quality, ask useful questions, and turn findings into action.
• Strong relationship-building, facilitation, and communication skills with staff, students, families/caregivers, college personnel, employers, partners, and organizational leadership.
• Proven ability to build and sustain strategic partnerships across institutions and sectors.
• Ability to lead independently while operating as part of a coordinated, cross-functional team.

Strongly Preferred

• Spanish-English bilingual ability.
• Experience working in or closely with colleges and universities, including student-success, advising, financial-aid, persistence, or career-services functions.
• Experience supervising coaches, advisors, case managers, educators, or other student-facing professionals.
• Experience with FAFSA renewal, scholarship support, satisfactory academic progress, institutional policies, degree planning, campus resources, internships, and early career preparation.
• Experience building partnerships with college leaders, Hispanic professional organizations, chambers, employer resource groups, and employer partners.
• Experience developing dashboards, dynamic risk systems, weighted caseload models, case-review routines, quality rubrics, continuous-improvement processes, or outcomes reports.
• Experience with life-design, strengths-based, decision-coaching, social-capital, career-development, or other developmental approaches that build student agency rather than dependence.
• Familiarity with Detroit, Southwest Detroit, Grand Rapids, Wyoming, Michigan colleges and universities, or MiHC communities.
• Personal or professional connection to first-generation, Latino, immigrant, or under-resourced communities.

Core Competencies

• People leadership and staff development; strategic and operational leadership; relationship-centered and developmental coaching; cultural responsiveness; college persistence and completion expertise; Life Design and capital-building; dynamic risk and caseload management; early career strategy; qualitative and quantitative quality review; data governance; partnership development; clear communication; systems thinking; problem-solving and resourcefulness; outcome ownership; cross-functional collaboration; sound judgment; curiosity and learning orientation; calm, steady leadership under pressure.

What Success Looks Like

• Students experience MiHC as one coordinated team and receive consistent coaching that helps them make informed decisions, build independence, and navigate systems from college entry through early career launch.
• College Success Coaches consistently demonstrate MiHC's standards for meaningful relationships, coaching quality, dynamic risk response, documentation, warm handoffs, Life Design, capital-building, career development, and verified follow-through.
• Coaches receive clear expectations, strong supervision, observation, specific feedback, and meaningful development—and coaching quality and professional judgment improve over time.
• Students receive proactive transition support, stay enrolled, renew FAFSA and scholarships on time, make informed academic and financial decisions, use campus resources, and progress toward degrees.
• Student risk and transition needs are current and actionable, with appropriate coaching attention, manager visibility, capacity response, and verified next steps.
• Scholars maintain and own current College-to-Career Life Design Plans, build all six ETW capitals, use career resources early, and complete substantive career-connected experiences before graduation.
• Graduating scholars complete degree and career-launch requirements, evaluate offers or intentional next steps, and transition with a first-90-day plan and continued support route.
• College and employer partnerships create clearer pathways, faster problem-solving, and greater opportunity for students.
• Dashboard data, quality samples, scholar voice, and verified outcomes lead to visible staff learning, service improvement, and program adjustments.

Role Fit

This role is for a leader who can hold the big picture and the details at the same time. The strongest candidates can develop people, improve systems, build partnerships, interpret data, and step into difficult student or staff challenges with clarity and steadiness. They understand that college persistence is built through relationships, systems, timely action, and coordinated support—and that college success includes graduation and transition into a meaningful early career.

Why This Work Matters

MiHC's promise is that students should not have to navigate complicated systems alone. Through Everything to Win, students build the competencies, confidence, relationships, and support they need to make informed decisions about life after high school. The Manager of College Success ensures that promise continues once students enter college: building a strong team and a reliable system that helps students renew aid, use campus resources, persist through challenges, gain professional experience, graduate, and launch into early careers.

The Manager of College Success helps ensure that talent translates into opportunity—and that opportunity becomes lasting economic mobility.