The Company
ILO Group is a women-owned, women-led education strategy and implementation firm that helps public education leaders take on their biggest priorities and turn ambitious ideas into results.
ILO was founded after years of working alongside superintendents, state chiefs, and other senior education leaders and seeing a consistent challenge: leaders were being asked to drive consequential change without always having the capacity, specialized expertise, or hands-on support required to deliver. ILO was built to fill that gap.
The name stands for In the Life Of, reflecting how the firm works. ILO partners closely with leaders and their teams, often over multiple years, helping them solve difficult problems, build the capacity to execute, and adapt as priorities evolve.
ILO’s team includes former superintendents, state education leaders, district executives, strategists, coaches, and specialists who understand the realities of leading complex education systems. They pair that practitioner experience with strong strategy, project management, and implementation discipline.
Today, ILO’s clients collectively serve approximately one in two of the nation’s public school students. The firm has grown by staying close to its clients, investing in an exceptional team, and maintaining a high bar for execution and service.
Opportunity
ILO Group is seeking a senior marketing leader who can help translate the firm’s reputation, expertise, and client impact into its next stage of growth.
The right person will operate comfortably at both the strategic and tactical levels: advising the CEO and leadership team on how to grow the business while also rolling up their sleeves to write the content, rethink the website, develop the materials, analyze what is working, and build the infrastructure needed to support a more intentional growth strategy. This role reports directly to the CEO.
The successful candidate will help the leadership team determine how best to achieve growth goals and will ultimately be accountable for building the strategies, priorities, and mechanisms that turn ILO’s reputation and expertise into measurable business impact.
ILO operates in a highly collaborative, matrixed environment. You will work across the executive leadership team and draw on internal and external resources to execute, while creating the connective tissue that keeps work moving. Success will require knowing when to dig in personally, when to leverage others, and how to bring the right people and resources together around a shared outcome.
This is an opportunity for an entrepreneurial executive who enjoys building rather than inheriting a finished machine.
Key Responsibilities
Develop the Growth Strategy
Partner closely with the CEO and leadership team to define how ILO should approach its next stage of growth.
- Translate the firm’s business goals into a clear growth and marketing strategy.
- Identify opportunities to expand ILO’s reach across its areas of expertise, including academics, career planning, AI, and leadership development.
- Determine how successful work in one geography or area of expertise can be translated into opportunities elsewhere.
- Represent ILO in person at conferences, client events, and team convenings, with regular travel required.
- Establish meaningful KPIs that connect marketing and growth activity to business outcomes, including pipeline and revenue generated, event and campaign conversion, and consistency of brand presence across ILO’s practice areas, rather than measuring activity for its own sake.
- Evaluate what ILO is currently doing, determine what is working, and prioritize where investment or change is warranted.
- Own and manage the marketing and growth budget, allocating resources against the priorities identified above.
Clarify the ILO Story
ILO’s work is broad and highly customized. One of the central challenges will be making that breadth easier for prospective clients and partners to understand.
- Clarify ILO’s brand, positioning, and messaging.
- Develop a compelling way to communicate the firm’s capabilities without losing the highly personalized nature of its work.
- Organize existing work and expertise into clear categories.
- Develop case studies and reusable collateral while respecting client confidentiality.
- Articulate what differentiates ILO from other education consulting and implementation firms.
Build a More Effective Market Presence
ILO has a strong reputation within its network but has significant opportunity to become more intentional about how it shows up in the market.
- Develop and manage a thoughtful content strategy and editorial calendar.
- Build a stronger digital presence that extends the natural conversations ILO is already having with education leaders and creates new opportunities for the firm to reach and engage its audience
- Determine which opportunities events, panels, podcasts, op-eds, social media, media relations, and other thought leadership are worth pursuing.
- Use data, analytics, and behavioral insights to determine which channels, messages, formats, and cadences are driving engagement, conversion, and business impact.
Ideal Candidate
The ideal candidate will bring senior-level marketing and growth experience combined with an unusually high degree of intellectual curiosity, judgment, and willingness to execute. You are excited by the opportunity to build and shape a marketing function rather than inherit an established playbook and make incremental changes. You thrive in white space and bring the ability to create structure, sequence priorities, and establish a sustainable operating rhythm where one does not yet exist.
You have experience in the following areas:
- Has successfully built or transformed a marketing, communications, or growth function rather than simply operated within a mature one.
- Can move easily between an executive conversation about strategy and the details required to execute it.
- Is an exceptional writer and communicator who understands how to turn complex ideas into compelling stories.
- Understands the K-12 education ecosystem and has experience communicating with or selling to district and/or state education leaders.
- Is politically sophisticated and understands the care required when communicating in a complex environment.
- Is comfortable working with data and using it to determine what deserves more and less attention.
- Has strong business instincts and understands the connection between brand, reputation, marketing activity, and revenue.
- Is highly collaborative, low ego, and receptive to feedback.
- Can push back thoughtfully when necessary while maintaining a strong partnership with the CEO and leadership team.
- Thrives in a high-expectation, fast-moving environment, brings significant ownership and attention to detail, and holds a consistently high bar for the quality of their own work while being energized by a team that expects the same of itself.
- Can make a compelling case for the resources needed to accomplish the work while remaining personally accountable for driving execution and delivering results
Learn More
The Knowledge Leaders search process is thorough and may include: a written assessment, multiple interviews (recorded and in person), background and social media checks, employment and education verifications, a drug screen, and professional reference checking. After all, our mission is to transform education by recruiting the best world leaders.
Submit your resume to Peggy Williams at Knowledge Leaders.
Knowledge Leaders, LLC provides equal employment opportunities to all applicants and candidates for employment. Knowledge Leaders, LLC prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type based on race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.
