Role: Program Entrepreneur
Reports to: CEO
Salary: $150-175K
Status: Full-time
Location: Remote, U.S.-based (10-20% travel)

Who We Are:

National Math Stars ensures mathematically extraordinary students from all communities have the resources they need to reach the frontiers of math and science.

Through our Awards Program, we collaborate with schools and districts to identify and recognize their highest-achieving 2% of 2nd- and 3rd-grade math students. Those students are invited to a competitive admissions process, which aims to select the top talent from all communities. (You could roughly think of this as “the best young mathematician in every ZIP code,” if the US didn’t have quite so many ZIP codes!) We admit those top students (our “Stars”) and work with them (and their families) over the course of a decade to support their journeys to the frontiers of STEM.

We launched National Math Stars with our current support program, which is geared towards high-need families. It provides them with significant scholarships, fully funded courses and camps, individualized guidance, mentoring, and community gatherings to achieve exceptional outcomes. This program currently serves 71 students and is in the process of recruiting a third cohort, of 100 additional Stars, from across six states.

In response to overwhelming demand from families with talented kids and in service of achieving our goal of supporting top talent from all communities, we will be launching a new program. We envision this program will be much larger (with cohorts of thousands, not hundreds) and will admit students from every community (including high-income). The support this program offers will be lighter-touch, lower-cost, and more community-driven, but will still significantly improve participants’ chances of extraordinary achievement in math and science.

Role Overview:

In the 2025-26 school year, in addition to growing our current support program, National Math Stars will pilot a scalable, lower-cost program that can serve a large number of equally talented (but lower-need) Stars and families. Our Program Entrepreneur will be responsible for designing this program, running the pilot, and building out the team and tools to scale it up. Taking our learnings from operating the Stars program so far, they will build with the aim of sustainably supporting ~4,000 new Stars per year, empowering them with the resources, guidance, mentorship, and community to reach the frontiers of math and science.

Notes:

We are open to hiring multiple candidates for this role, to pilot different approaches
Our preferred start date for this role is early June, though we have flexibility for the right candidate(s)
This is a remote position with estimated 10-20% travel for team meetings and conferences

Key Responsibilities:

The Program Entrepreneur’s key responsibilities in their first year include:

(1) Develop and run a new venture pilot

Pick a set of scalable supports to pilot as this program offering
Working with our outreach and admissions team, identify 200-250 candidates to participate in the pilot (and a waitlist for expanding the pilot)
Directly support all pilot families
Identify and set up “force multiplier” tools that enable impactful support at this scale
Experiment with various forms of support (e.g., text-based advising, webinars, newsletters, on-demand calls)
Experiment with various ways to build community scalably (e.g., online forums, interest clubs, parent-organized meet-ups)
Set up data tracking systems and feedback mechanisms to ensure we can measure participant progress and satisfaction
Manage a ~$150K budget (in 2025; more to be allocated in 2026) for tools, software licenses, and direct participant support (e.g., mailings, competition fees, scholarship pool)
If possible, expand scope of pilot over the course of the year, to support 500+ families

(2) Prepare for future program design and growth

Identify specific, measurable “north star” metrics for program success, within the categories of engagement/retention and math progress/outcomes
Through supporting families, identify the most impactful resources and interventions
Determine the best existing software tools and vendors to support this program
Determine gaps in off-the-shelf tools and whether/what we need to develop in-house
Identify feasible advisors-to-families ratio for future growth
Sketch out team design and long-term costs for future growth

(3) Support other departments and overall strategy

Stay closely aligned with Head of Programs and Head of Partnerships, gathering and sharing learnings that could impact program delivery, outreach, and/or admissions
Regularly report on progress to Leadership Team and Board of Directors
In collaboration with CEO and Leadership Team, advise on pace of growth, target geographies, and other strategic decisions

After the conclusion of the initial pilot in 2025-26, the CEO and Program Entrepreneur will work together to re-define the role. If we’ve landed on a proven, scalable support model, this will evolve into a team leadership role over a new National Math Stars department.

Skills and Experience:

We envision the right candidate for this role is likely a past start-up founder, community builder/manager, or product manager. However, we are open to other backgrounds.

We are looking for:

Excitement for our mission and goals
Entrepreneurial drive to build new programs, processes, and structures from scratch
Experience as a founder or early employee at a start-up (for- or non-profit)
Experience managing and improving operations through a period of rapid growth (e.g., by identifying and quickly onboarding suitable tools, vendors, contractors)
Experience conducting user research and designing/improving user experiences
High level of autonomy and relentless drive to get things done
Comfort with ambiguity
Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Ability to grow supportive, participant-led communities at scale
Ability to gather and interpret quantitative and qualitative data (including through experimentation), and to use that data to inform decision-making
Understanding of the advanced math / STEM enrichment space (previous experience with STEM enrichment is a plus but not required; STEM degree a plus but not required)
Understanding of the needs of highly gifted children and their families (previous experience working with gifted students is a plus but not required)

We know that many strong candidates may not check all of these boxes. If the role seems like a good match for your personal mission and experience, we encourage you to apply even if you meet only some of these criteria.

We value and encourage diversity and solicit applications from all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, gender, sex, age, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, medical condition, veteran status, gender identity, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.

Benefits:

All full-time roles at National Math Stars include a competitive benefits package:

Fully paid health, vision, and dental coverage for employees, plus partially paid coverage for dependents
401K plan with automatic company contributions
Work-from-home stipend for purchase of a laptop and/or home office supplies
Generous paid time off, including parental leave
Free pie every Pi Day

As we are a non-profit, there is no equity ownership in the company, and thus that is not part of our compensation package.