Managing Director
COMPLETED- This position has been filled.
Company
The BARBRI Group companies meet the legal education needs of law students and attorneys throughout their careers and work to improve legal and professional learning by providing superior opportunities for law schools, law firms and law- and finance-related businesses. At the core of The BARBRI Group Companies is BARBRI Bar Review, which has helped more than 1.3 million lawyers around the world pass a U.S. bar exam. The company also provides online J.D., post-J.D. and international programs for U.S. law schools, and specialized ongoing training and certifications in areas such as financial crime prevention, and eDiscovery. The BARBRI Group, founded in 1967, is a Leeds Equity Partners portfolio company headquartered in Dallas with offices throughout the United States and around the world.
The BARBRI Group believes that every student deserves the most effective educational experience possible. Utilizing advances in the behavioral and learning sciences along with emerging technology BARBRI is able to create amazing opportunities for the students they serve.
Internally, the BARBRI team delivers on passion, excellence, innovation, and collaboration. Being a member of this team means being passionate about helping others succeed; striving to clear the bar, then raise it. This group of thought leaders mixes curiosity and creativity to see new solutions. Working as a team results in winning as a team.
BARBRI is the leading legal-focused OPM in the world. With an unmatched history of studying and understanding how the law is taught, they are uniquely able to bring legal education to students anywhere, any time. Rather than competing with law schools, BARBRI complements them — making a strategic decision to partner with them, help modernize their offering, and expand their reach. As the only provider who has both a proven methodology to ‘train the trainer’ as well as benchmark law school learning, BARBRI is in prime position to expand its core business and bring its data-driven, proven methods to law students everywhere.
Founded in 1980 and recently acquired by BARBRI, The Center for Legal Studies is a legal education company focused on providing students with the most affordable and effective legal education possible. The curriculum is delivered to students via live lecture, online, DVD, and Text-only formats through over 150 colleges and universities nationwide, providing students with the flexibility necessary to achieve their academic goals while continuing with their everyday lives. The common law and legal training curriculum are continually updated and applicable in common law countries worldwide. CLS online courses were recently awarded top honors by Thomson West Publishing International. A few of the partner schools include George Mason University, SUNY, University of Texas, California State University, University of Wisconson, and Ivy Tech Community College.
Supported for the past two years by parent company BARBRI, iLaw partners with law schools to create, market, deliver, monitor, and operate online high-quality programs and courses. iLaw brings U.S. law subjects to select international markets and partners with a diverse group of private and public law schools. The iLaw team understands accreditation and regulation, can provide insights into curricular and faculty matters as well as help institutions with an array of non-academic services. Through the years iLaw has delivered online content to more than 12,000 law students, lawyers, and non-lawyers in different professions. A few of the partner schools include UNH, Ohio State University, Vanderbilt University, Florida State, Georgia State, Boston University, University of Arizona, and Arizona State.
Opportunity
As a newly created position, the Managing Director will be a critical member of the highly collaborative and low-ego executive team, reporting directly to CEO Stephen Fredette. BARBRI offers the nimbleness of a startup with a 50-year track record of success fundamentally committed to delivering the best possible products to students. The Managing Director will have the opportunity trailblaze, making a mark in post-secondary education not available elsewhere; no other company focuses as strongly on the legal profession as BARBRI. Headquartered in Dallas, TX the Managing Director, if not already in the area, will be expected to perform the majority of their duties onsite.
The Managing Director will critically integrate and grow both the CLS and iLaw programs. With learning and development reporting to the greater BARBRI team, the Managing Director will strategize the overarching goals of content and curriculum creation/curation and how those courses can articulate with and be monetized across multiple partner schools. Specifically, there is considerable opportunity across CLS to put additional courses in place. Additionally, the Managing Director will take on process management and integration; while iLaw and CLS have similar business models they are currently using different tools to achieve their goals. Driving efficiencies across the two brands will enable BARBRI to deliver more courses to more students across strategically determined schools.
Priorities for this role include:
- Driving Execution – Translate strategic priorities into operational reality; Align communication, accountabilities, resource capabilities, internal processes, and ongoing measurement systems to ensure that strategic priorities yield measurable and sustainable results.
- Building Partnerships – Identify opportunities and act to build strategic relationships between one’s area and other areas, teams, departments, units, or organizations to help achieve business goals.
- Leading Change – Identify and drive organizational and cultural changes needed to adapt strategically to changing market demands, technology, and internal initiatives; Effectuate new approaches to improve results by transforming processes, products and services.
- Building Organizational Talent – Establish systems and processes to attract, develop, engage, and retain talented individuals; Create a work environment where people can realize their full potential, thus allowing the organization to meet current and future business challenges.
The Managing Director is in a strategic operations and delivery role and will be depended upon to provide support to the larger organization by upholding the following core responsibilities:
- Develop and implement new systems, metrics, procedures, and organizational changes for the delivery of successful programs and courses augmenting visibility into the overall OPM offering
- Manage all operations related to the online programs, most importantly creating metrics to evaluate student interest and enrollment, developing a scorecard for each course to evaluate and determine continued success
- Manage processes and resources necessary to achieve budgeted revenue and EBITDA for all online programs
- Program and partner relationship management and oversight to ensure program success
- Manage enrollment and retention resources to ensure partner goals and budget goals are met; develop a strategic outlook across all customers ensuring proper monetization of all partner schools and programs
Ideal Candidate
The Managing Director possesses significant experience in the OPM market in a senior role with P&L responsibility. This includes student procurement, enrollment and retention, course evaluation, and partner support. The ideal candidate has grown, expanded, and sunsetted courses and curricular offerings. The ability to determine course efficiencies across partners will be crucial. S/he will be able to deliver to determined metrics in a sometimes ambiguous and evolving environment while working with a wide range of people and departments across the organization. The ability to build bridges across internal brands and departments will ensure this person’s success.
More specifically, s/he has the following experiences and skill sets:
- General Management background with an exemplary understanding of OPM
- Deep understanding of enrollment/retention metrics in a call center experience environment
- Ability to monetize relationships and courses across partner schools
- Past success in examining and building/reengineering operations and procedures, developing and implementing new strategies and procedures and scaling to support rapid revenue growth
- Strategic mindset to aid in business development outreach and construction of favorable revenue share programs
