Organization: The Scholarship Academy
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Position Type: Full-time
Work Environment: Primarily on-site with local travel to partner schools and community locations
Reports To: Executive Leadership
About The Scholarship Academy
The Scholarship Academy helps students and families navigate the complex process of preparing for college, identifying financial aid opportunities, and securing scholarships. We partner with schools, districts, community organizations, and families to provide practical guidance that helps students make informed postsecondary decisions and reduce the financial barriers associated with higher education.
Our work combines direct student support, school-based programming, technology, professional training, and volunteer engagement to expand access to high-quality college affordability guidance.
Position Summary
The Scholarship Academy is seeking an experienced college access and scholarship professional to serve as its Senior Director of Scholarship Success.
This position is designed for a leader who understands both the day-to-day realities of supporting high school students and the systems-level work required to coordinate college and career readiness initiatives across schools and districts.
The ideal candidate has previously worked as a high school counselor or in a comparable school-based college access role, has directly helped students identify, apply for, and win scholarships, and has experience supervising counselors, advisors, coordinators, or other student-support professionals.
The Senior Director will provide strategic and operational leadership for TSA’s scholarship-success efforts, support school and district partnerships, supervise program execution, strengthen scholarship-related curriculum and systems, and help facilitate courses within TSA’s Train-the-Trainer program.
This is not a general nonprofit operations position. It requires substantial experience in high school counseling, college access, scholarship advising, financial aid planning, and school- or district-level program coordination.
Key Responsibilities
Scholarship Success Strategy and Program Leadership
- Develop and oversee TSA’s strategy for helping students identify, apply for, and win scholarships.
- Ensure scholarship programming reflects the needs of students in grades 9–12 and provides age-appropriate preparation throughout high school.
- Establish consistent standards, processes, and tools for scholarship advising across TSA programs.
- Help students and families understand local, institutional, private, and need-based scholarship opportunities.
- Strengthen systems for scholarship identification, application planning, essay support, recommendation requests, deadline management, and award tracking.
- Use program data to identify gaps, improve student outcomes, and guide program decisions.
School and District Coordination
- Serve as a senior program contact for school and district partners.
- Coordinate scholarship-success initiatives with counselors, college advisors, school administrators, district leaders, and community partners.
- Translate partnership goals into practical implementation plans, timelines, responsibilities, and measurable outcomes.
- Support the alignment of TSA programming with district-level college and career readiness priorities.
- Help identify opportunities to expand TSA programming across additional schools and districts.
- Represent TSA in meetings, presentations, working groups, and community conversations related to college affordability and scholarship access.
Staff Supervision and Program Execution
- Provide direction, coaching, and accountability to program coordinators and other scholarship-support staff.
- Support coordinators as they manage day-to-day program execution, school-level logistics, and volunteer engagement within their assigned program areas.
- Establish clear expectations, workflows, and communication practices across the program team.
- Review program performance and help staff resolve implementation challenges.
- Promote collaboration across student support, technology, training, communications, and partnership functions.
- Help build a professional culture centered on student outcomes, continuous improvement, and accountability.
Training and Capacity Building
- Help facilitate courses within TSA’s Train-the-Trainer program for counselors, college access professionals, educators, volunteers, and community-based practitioners.
- Contribute to the development and refinement of training materials, facilitator guides, case studies, activities, and assessment tools.
- Translate scholarship and college affordability expertise into practical strategies that professionals can use with students and families.
- Facilitate engaging adult-learning experiences in virtual and in-person settings.
- Coach participating professionals on how to implement scholarship-support practices within their own schools and organizations.
- Support TSA’s broader goal of expanding the number of professionals who can provide effective college affordability guidance.
Curriculum, Evaluation, and Continuous Improvement
- Review and strengthen scholarship-related curriculum for students, families, educators, and college access professionals.
- Ensure programming is practical, accurate, culturally responsive, and aligned with current college affordability practices.
- Develop systems for tracking participation, application activity, scholarship awards, student progress, and partner outcomes.
- Collaborate with leadership to prepare program reports for schools, districts, funders, board members, and other stakeholders.
- Use qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate program effectiveness and recommend improvements.
- Identify emerging scholarship, financial aid, and college access trends that may affect TSA’s students and partners.
Required Qualifications
Successful candidates should meet most or all of the following requirements:
- At least seven years of progressively responsible experience in high school counseling, college access, college and career readiness, financial aid advising, scholarship programming, or a closely related field.
- Prior experience working as a high school counselor, college and career advisor, college access professional, or in a comparable school-based student-support role.
- Direct experience helping high school students identify, complete, and submit scholarship applications.
- Demonstrated knowledge of local scholarships, private scholarships, institutional aid, financial aid planning, and the college application process.
- Experience supervising counselors, advisors, coordinators, educators, or other student-support professionals.
- Experience coordinating programs or initiatives across multiple schools, departments, or partner organizations.
- Strong understanding of the needs of students from low-income, first-generation, and historically underserved communities.
- Experience facilitating professional development, adult-learning courses, workshops, or Train-the-Trainer programs.
- Strong written communication, public speaking, facilitation, and relationship-management skills.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities, establish systems, meet deadlines, and maintain accountability across a team.
- Ability to work on-site in Atlanta and travel locally to schools, district offices, training sites, and community locations.
Preferred Qualifications
- Master’s degree in school counseling, education, higher education, nonprofit leadership, public administration, counseling, or a related field.
- Current or previous school counseling certification.
- Experience working at the district level on college and career readiness initiatives.
- Experience managing college access counselors or school-based advising teams.
- Demonstrated success helping students secure local, regional, institutional, or national scholarships.
- Knowledge of FAFSA, state financial aid programs, college financial aid offers, and college affordability planning.
- Experience developing scholarship, financial aid, or college-readiness curriculum.
- Experience managing grants, program budgets, partnership deliverables, or funder reporting.
- Familiarity with student information systems, customer relationship management platforms, learning management systems, or college access technology.
What Success Looks Like
During the first year, the Senior Director of Scholarship Success will be expected to:
- Establish a clear and consistent scholarship-success strategy across TSA programs.
- Improve coordination among program staff, schools, district partners, and volunteers.
- Strengthen the quality and consistency of scholarship advising provided to students.
- Develop measurable processes for tracking scholarship applications, awards, and student progress.
- Successfully facilitate courses within TSA’s Train-the-Trainer program.
- Build strong working relationships with counselors, school administrators, district leaders, and community partners.
- Help TSA expand its capacity to serve more students without sacrificing program quality.
Ideal Candidate
The strongest candidate will be equally comfortable:
- Coaching a student through a local scholarship application.
- Advising a counselor on scholarship-support practices.
- Supervising program staff.
- Facilitating a professional training course.
- Presenting outcomes to school or district leadership.
- Building systems that improve consistency and accountability across multiple program sites.
This position is ideal for an experienced school counseling or college access leader who wants to move beyond serving one school and help strengthen scholarship outcomes across multiple schools, programs, and communities.
The Scholarship Academy offers a competitive compensation and benefits package commensurate with experience.
Applications that do not demonstrate direct scholarship, high school counseling, or college access experience may not be considered.
Pay: $95,000.00 - $115,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
- Professional development assistance
Work Location: In person
