Vice President of Product Management

Graduate School USA

GSUSA is the career learning platform that provides training and workforce solutions to federal the government workforce. Graduate School USA is part of American Public Education, Inc. (APEI), which is a publicly-traded company focused on “Educating the Service-Minded”. We are “re-imagining” and transforming Graduate School USA to upgrade our product offerings, establish new delivery modes, implement and utilize new technology features to deliver best-in-class training and learning products.

This role will be central to the future of GSUSA and we are seeking an innovative, and forward-thinking Vice President of Product Management that can improve GSUSA’s current product offerings and introduce new and innovative product sets to a changing marketplace. GSUSA operates as a stand-alone subsidiary and leverages the resources of APEI’s shared services and centralized functions. The Vice President of Product Management is responsible for the overall portfolio of GSUSA product domains and product sets as well as various delivery methods. This role is responsible for exploring, determining, and directing the development of new product domains as well as curtailing or exiting existing ones as warranted. “Product” primarily relates to the actual course content and delivery method, but also maintains partial responsibility for the overall customer experience.

Each of the GSUSA training topic areas has its own target market and customer needs. The VP will lead and support a team of Product Directors who are each assigned to guide the portfolio for one or more of those topic areas (called “Domains”).

Responsibilities:

• Participates as a member of the GSUSA Executive team to set product and services goals for the school that align with the overall strategy for the school.
• Sets the Product strategy for school including: mix of courses, modality, frequency of offerings, and pricing.
• Helps the Product Directors remain customer and overall market focused. Drives hypothesis testing approach where appropriate.
• Monitors customer feedback and uses that information to drive product decisions
• Combines and prioritizes the goals and initiatives from each GSUSA Product Director into a single prioritized annual and quarterly accomplishable plan within assigned annual budget
• Seeks continuous improvement in the collaboration amongst Product Directors and between the Product Team and the rest of the organization
• Improves the decision-making structure and ability of the Product Team members
• Supports the Product Directors in managing their portfolios with improvement over time
• Finds and develops partnerships with third-parties to offer new products and/or domains to GSUSA customers
• Responsible for ensuring that the GSUSA website reflects the current product offering and catalog
• Ensures clear and effective communications between Product team members and other GSUSA (or APEI shared service) teams:
  • Business Development: establishes documents and communications so that BD has the knowledge and materials to effectively sell products, provides product team resources for deep product and industry knowledge on proposals and customer meetings as needed
  • Marketing: indicates to marketing where revenue can be best impacted by product marketing, partners with marketing on best methods, provides product team resources to help craft messaging and specific content for marketing materials, attends events, drives relationships with government related associations for collaborative marketing
  • Learning Development: provides LD with a specific ordered list of approved backlog projects across all the Domains, provides product management resources as product owners for LD projects, finds and contracts SMEs for project efforts, monitors LD spending and adjusts projects as needed, partners with LD for process improvement over time
  • Learning Technology: partners with learning technology and IT team to establish best modality and 3rd party tools to maximize learner experience, revenue, and margin
  • Operations: Recommends course scheduling, maintains a focus on product operability and scalability
• Partners with the APEI Product Management team to design, adopt, and execute product management best practices
• Partners with the APEI Product Management team to seek customer and product synergies across educational unit brands and products.
• Ensures that the operating structure of the Product team is positioned for growth and excellent customer service
• For annual budgeting, contributes an overall understanding of product opportunity vs. cost (for ROI) to help determine how much budget should be apportioned for Product Management, Product Marketing, and Product Development

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree required; Master’s and/or relevant certifications Preferred
• Experience working with or selling into the federal government
• Knowledge and practical application of product management
• Experience in the education/training space
• Experience leading a team
• Preferred:
  • 7-10 years of Product Management
  • >2 years working with Federal workforce
  • >5 years in education space

Colorado Pay Law/NYC Pay Transparency Law

If you are a Colorado or New York City resident and this role is available in Colorado, New York City or remote, you may be eligible to receive additional information about the compensation and benefits for this role, which we will provide upon request. Please send an email to recruiting@apei.com

About Us:

Founded in 1921, Graduate School USA (GSUSA) is an independent, not-for-profit educational institution based in Washington, DC, offering workforce training and services across the U.S. and around the world. The organization is a leading provider of professional development and training courses for the federal government and private sector, serving organizations and individuals with programs designed to support organizational missions, career and occupational development, and the personal ambitions of adult learners. GSUSA’s courses and programs are delivered by instructors with real-world government experience, including customized training solutions, distance education, and leadership training.

Graduate School USA is an Equal Opportunity Employer: Race, Color, Religion, Sex, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, National Origin, Age, Genetic Information, Disability, Protected Veteran Status, or any other legally protected group status.