Program Associate, Statewide Implementation and Change Leadership

Program Associate Of Statewide Implementation & Change Leadership

About WestEd

As a community of over 1,400 researchers, practitioners, consultants, and administrative professionals from all backgrounds and life experiences, we are committed to making a qualitative difference in the lives of youth, children, and adults. We conduct and apply research, develop evidence-based solutions, and provide consulting services across the country in both rural and urban communities to improve equitable outcomes for individuals from infancy through adulthood. Serving as trusted partners in the areas of education, health, and justice, our teams enhance capacity within communities and school districts to prioritize impact asking the right questions, customizing methodologies, developing relevant tools, and implementing best practices specific to a diverse range of stakeholder needs.

WestEd supports individual initiative, excellence, and hard work of all individuals in our hiring and work practices. WestEd complies with all applicable federal and state anti-discrimination laws, as well as OFCCP requirements. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, or status as a protected veteran.

SPECIAL NOTICE REGARDING THE WORK LOCATION OF THIS POSITIONAlthough WestEd provides the option of working at one of its facilities for employees, many roles allow employees to choose to work remotely for their own convenience. The decision to allow remote work at the employee's convenience is based on the requirements of the position or project in question.

WestEd seeks a Program Associate of Statewide Implementation & Change Leadership lead large-scale state education modernization engagements including stakeholder engagement, change strategy, communications, training rollout, and adoption support from plan to sustained adoption in the field.

Position Overview

As a Program Associate, you'll help state education agencies turn policy and ideas into real results for districts and the students they serve. You'll support modernization projects like improving how districts are monitored for special education compliance, or making state education funding easier to track and understand: moving an agency from good intentions to programs that actually work on the ground. You'll independently define and execute the work on assigned project components and, as your experience grows, on small projects working from objectives and direction set with a project director, who also provides checks for quality. Day to day, that means engaging stakeholders, building out plans for how new programs will roll out, drafting clear communications to keep everyone informed, developing training and technical assistance materials in partnership with subject-matter experts and clients, and contributing to the proposals and reusable resources that sustain this line of work.

Core Focus Areas

This position will join a team of staff working on WestEd's growing collection of statewide modernization partnerships in which WestEd plays a broad implementation-support role for state education agencies frequently coordinating alongside the state's technology vendors and IT departments as systems and processes change together. Working in collaboratively with content/subject-matter leads and represent WestEd alongside other project staff interacting with SEA and district-level clients. This role is responsible for ensuring that state-level initiatives translate into adoption at the school, district, and/or county level.

Working collaboratively with content/subject-matter leads, the Program Associate has regular, direct interaction with SEA and district-level clients in partnership with the project or task lead including internal quality review before client meetings and debriefs afterward. This role leads assigned adoption workstreams that translate state-level initiatives into adoption at the school, district, and/or county level, and designs and delivers new professional learning and technical assistance for clients on small projects and assigned components.

Because WestEd's modernization work spans multiple content areas (e.g., fiscal software systems, IDEA/IFSP processes, professional learning platforms) this role is expected to apply a consistent adoption methodology across engagements that differ in subject matter, rather than developing a novel approach for each one. There will be support provided to ensure the methodology carries from one context to another. Over time, the Program Associate is expected to gain internal recognition as a go-to resource on this methodology and to support the development of reusable tools and resources for WestEd's established modernization service offerings. However, there is an anticipated concentration in special education, and candidates with familiarity with special education content are encouraged to apply.

What We're Looking For:

Education and Experience

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience; advanced degree preferred. Some experience with statewide or large-scale implementation SEA, regional, district wide or large-scale technical assistance context.
• Experience leading a defined workstream or project component through a change in policy or practice, including exercising judgment under ambiguity not just exposure to change initiatives.
• Developing subject matter expertise in change management or implementation practice, with the ability to advise clients on assigned components in partnership with project leadership.

Technical Skills

• Strong planning and sequencing ability with implementation and training plans.
• Ability to support the authorship of communications frameworks and stakeholder/systems maps that inform client implementation of initiatives.
• Facilitation of listening sessions and advisory groups.
• Ability to facilitate drafting a process map or flowchart.
• Working knowledge of change management or implementation methodology (e.g., Lean Six Sigma, ADKAR, Prosci, improvement science, implementation science or equivalent) as applied to public-sector or education contexts.
• Ability to develop and deliver professional learning and technical assistance materials for clients, in partnership with content leads.
• Ability to draft assigned sections of proposals and scopes of work, drawing on prior project work and/or materials.
• Ability to track deliverables, level of effort, and spending for assigned workstreams and small projects against the contract schedule and budget.
• Comfort presenting to clients and at regional or national convenings, with advance quality review of material.

Soft Skills

• Sound judgment and composure in ambiguous, high-stakes situations.
• Strong stakeholder management and political discretion.
• Systems-level thinking, with the ability to see how people, process, technology, and policy interact within an agency, and to surface those interactions and their implications for project leadership.
• Comfort holding multiple concurrent initiatives without loss of quality or attention.
• Ability to build relational trust with key stakeholders.
• Willingness to give and receive documented feedback, and to informally mentor colleagues on assigned project tasks.

Preferred

• Prior work in state agencies, regional service agencies, large school districts or national TA centers.
• Familiarity with compliance-heavy or federally monitored environments (fiscal, IDEA, ESEA, or comparable accountability systems).
• Survey design and qualitative synthesis experience for readiness assessment and adoption measurement.
• Experience contributing to proposals, scopes of work, or other business development materials.
• Experience presenting at regional or national conferences, or contributing to blogs, briefs, or other Publications.

Geographic Preference

• West Coast, Pacific Northwest, or Mountain West preferred
• Will require multi-day in-person travel to Oregon several times per year

Candidates should be able to speak to each of the following with concrete examples from their own experience.

Judgment Under Ambiguity

Change management in a statewide context rarely follows a fixed plan given the countless variables. The successful candidate will have demonstrated experience recognizing when an engagement is shifting in real time and adjusting approach accordingly, rather than executing a static roadmap regardless of what stakeholders are signaling. At this level, that means anticipating problems, generating options grounded in precedent and prior WestEd work, and bringing recommendations to the project director rather than resolving statewide strategy alone. Candidates should be prepared to discuss a specific instance in which an original plan did not hold and describe how they responded.

Systems Thinking

This role requires the ability to view a state education agency as an interconnected system spanning people, process, technology, and policy rather than a set of independent workstreams. This orientation should enable anticipation of where initiatives may conflict or compete for the same field capacity, the judgment to raise those conflicts to project leadership, and the ability to contribute to stakeholder and systems maps that clients can act on directly, not only reference.

Relationship-Based Leadership

What distinguishes strong candidates is the ability to build trust with SEA and district staff, navigate political dynamics with discretion, and alongside the project director be received as a credible representative of WestEd in the field, including with stakeholders who are skeptical of the change underway.

Responsibilities & Other Skills

• Serve as project lead for assigned components of statewide engagements and, as experience grows, as entry-level project director for small projects (typically under $100K in annualized revenue), working from objectives and direction set with project leadership and with checks for quality.
• Support the development of stakeholder mapping, segmentation,