ROLE TITLE: Director, Ignite Ambassador Manager

POSITION REPORTS TO: VP, Early Talent with helix to SMD, Activate Recruitment

LOCATION: Flexible/Remote

WHAT YOU’LL DO

We are seeking a strategic and entrepreneurial leader to build and lead a national network of Ignite ambassadors who will help expand our undergraduate pipeline through the power of peer-to-peer influence. This role sits at the intersection of early talent recruitment, community-building, and leadership development, helping Teach For America (TFA) reach students earlier in their college journey and create meaningful pathways into Ignite, the Corps, and long-term engagement with our mission. As Director, Ignite Ambassador Manager, you will lead the design and execution of a national peer engagement model that increases visibility, belonging, engagement, and application activity among undergraduate students.

You will recruit, develop, and manage a distributed cohort of up to 50 Ignite alumni ambassadors who serve as TFA’s most credible and connected presence on their campuses. Drawing on both centralized systems and local campus influence, you will create the structures, training, and activation strategies that enable ambassadors to build awareness, cultivate community, identify high-potential student leaders, and generate sustained engagement with TFA opportunities. You will partner closely with early talent recruiters, recruitment teams, and other stakeholders to ensure ambassador efforts strengthen the broader recruitment ecosystem while maintaining dedicated focus on undergraduate engagement and long-term pipeline development.

The ideal candidate will be passionate about developing emerging leaders and have the ability to design systems that empower a network of 50 national ambassadors to generate leads and cultivate real community on their campuses. In your day-to-day, you will translate that passion into coaching rhythms, accountability structures, and activation strategies that keep ambassadors engaged and performing at a high level. Your success will be measured not just by the leads your network generates, but by the strength and cohesion of the community your ambassadors build around TFA's mission.

This role requires a nuanced understanding of how Gen Z students engage with opportunity and communities. The goal of this role is to lead and develop a national cohort of Ignite alumni ambassadors so they become TFA's most credible and connected presence on undergraduate campuses, turning peer relationships into a pipeline of future corps members and fellows.

WHAT YOU’LL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR

Primarily responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Manage and develop a national cohort of up to 50 campus ambassadors (50%)

• Cultivate, hire, coach, support, and hold accountable a distributed team of Ignite alumni ambassadors, maintaining regular 1:1 and cohort-wide touchpoints that drive performance, impact, belonging, and growth.

Build upon past learnings to develop a targeted early talent ambassador program (20%)

• Build and refine the systems, training, onboarding, and activation playbooks that enable Ignite ambassadors to generate undergraduate leads and cultivate community on their campuses.

Drive lead generation results and track pipeline health (15%)

• Set clear goals for ambassador-driven lead volume, monitor progress against benchmarks, and use data to adjust strategy and coaching in real time.

Coordinate across internal TFA teams to align ambassador activity with broader recruitment strategy (10%)

• Partner with early talent recruiters, recruitment team leaders, regional staff, and other relevant teams to ensure ambassador efforts connect to and strengthen TFA's existing campus presence and recruitment funnel.

Manage program operations and reporting (5%)

• Maintain ambassador records, performance data, and program documentation, and surface insights and updates to leadership on a regular cadence.

A WEEK IN THE LIFE

On any given week, you might start Monday reviewing ambassador activity reports and flagging which of your 50 ambassadors need a check-in, a push, or a win celebrated. Midweek, you are running a cohort call that doubles as both a training and a community moment, keeping your national network energized and connected across campuses. You are also in conversation with an early talent recruiter in a regional hub who wants to coordinate a campus push, making sure your ambassador in that market is briefed and ready. By Thursday, you are coaching a first-year ambassador through their first tabling event, troubleshooting in real time while also pulling together a quick data snapshot for your director. Fridays often involve thinking ahead, refining your activation playbook, responding to ambassador questions that came in across the week, and making sure the pipeline your team is building is visible and legible to the broader Early Talent team.

YOUR EXPERIENCE

Your areas of knowledge and expertise that matter most for this role (minimum qualifications):

Prior Experience

• 5+ years of professional experience in recruitment, talent acquisition, leadership development, higher education, nonprofit management, or a related field required.

• Prior Teach For America (TFA) college recruitment experience with a strong record of results required.

• Experience directly managing and developing a distributed team, ambassador program, fellowship, internship program, student leadership program, or other network-based initiatives. Management of distributed or remote teams, particularly in environments where direct reports are spread across multiple geographies and operate with significant autonomy preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

A strong candidate has:

• In-depth understanding of TFA’s programmatic offerings, including our corps members and Ignite fellow programs.

• Familiarity with TFA campus recruiting, university relations, or undergraduate pipeline development, including an understanding of what drives college student engagement and peer-to-peer influence.

• Demonstrated success creating accountability, engagement, and performance management systems for individuals operating across multiple locations or campuses.

• Experience using quantitative and qualitative data to monitor performance, identify trends, evaluate program effectiveness, and adjust strategy.

• Experience building or scaling a new program, fellowship, or ambassador network from an early stage, including designing onboarding, training, and performance management systems.

• Exposure to lead generation, field marketing, or community-building strategies in a campus or youth-facing context.

• Graduate-level education in education leadership, nonprofit management, organizational development, or a related field is a plus but not required.

Work Demands

• Occasional evening and weekend work is required to support ambassador activations, cohort events, and national convenings.

• Some travel will be required and varies based on the strategy or needs of the time.

YOUR FUTURE TEAM

You will sit on the Early Talent team at Teach For America, a small, high-ownership team focused on building the next generation of TFA corps members and fellows by going earlier and deeper into the undergraduate pipeline. The team operates across a national network of campuses, managing both direct recruitment and the cultivation of long-term relationships with students who are years away from their corps application. Your closest collaborators will be Early Talent Recruiters who hold specific campus and regional relationships, and together your work will form the connective tissue between TFA's brand on campus and its ability to grow a diverse, mission-aligned corps. This is a team that moves fast, builds things that do not yet exist, and believes that the most powerful recruiting tool TFA has is a student who already believes in the mission talking to another student who has not yet heard of it.

YOUR COMPENSATION

The applicable salary range for each U.S.-based role is based on where the employee works and is aligned to one of 3 tiers according to a cost of labor index in that geographic area. Starting pay for the successful applicant will depend on a variety of job-related factors, which may include education, training, experience, location, business needs, or market demands. New hires are typically brought into the organization at a salary between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint depending on qualifications, internal equity, and the budgeted amount for the role. The expected salary ranges for this role are set forth below. These ranges may be modified in the future.

• Tier A: $78,700 to $101,200

• Tier B: $85,700 to $110,400

• Tier C: $92,800 to $119,500

You can view which tier applies to where you plan to work here.

HOW TO APPLY

If you think you’d be a good fit for this role,

• Prepare a response to the following initial application prompt in 500 words or less.

  • Describe your emerging vision for the impact that Ignite Ambassadors will have on Teach For America’s Early Talent campaign.

• Submit an application through our online portal.

  • In the portal, please upload your resume and response to the prompt in the “Resume / Cover Letter” section.