Senior Project Manager

Come join the Goddard Systems, LLC (GSL) corporate team and help shape a nationally recognized leader in early childhood education!

GSL supports approximately 700+ Goddard School locations across the U.S., helping franchisees deliver high-quality, play-based learning to more than 100,000 children and families. Our corporate team drives the strategy, systems, and support that enable schools across the network to thrive.

The Senior Project Manager is responsible for orchestrating Goddard’s portfolio of strategic, cross-functional initiatives: owning the governance cadence, integrating dependencies and risks, and holding stakeholders accountable to their commitments. This role exists to turn strategy into measurable business outcomes by anchoring each initiative to an owner and target, driving decisions to closure, and ensuring work transitions cleanly to product and business owners. Every initiative this role orchestrates makes it easier for franchisees, families, and GSL teams to do their best work, advancing Goddard’s mission to partner to create joyful, supportive environments where children flourish.

• →Own and run the enterprise operating cadence for the strategic portfolio (collective reviews, initiative deep dives, and decision and commitment tracking), facilitating forums that end in decisions, owners, and due dates rather than status updates, and setting clear delivery expectations (quality, scope, time, resources, purpose, and desired outcome).
• →Integrate initiatives into a single governance view; surface and resolve cross-initiative dependencies, resource gaps, and blockers with recommended solutions, and maintain the RAID register, dependency log, milestone trackers, and stage gates.
• →Anchor every initiative to a measurable business outcome with a named owner, baseline, target, dashboard, and decision thresholds; challenge vague requirements until business value is defined, and track benefits realization and value delivered to the business and franchisees, not just on-time delivery.
• →Prepare decision-ready pre-reads for the Leadership Team and Steering Committee that frame outcomes, risks, and trade-offs, translating technical inputs into executive-ready decisions and presenting the business impact of risks so leadership can act.
• →Build relationships with team members and stakeholders through regular touchpoints, ensure they understand the business value (the “what” and “why”) of the work, and hold them, including senior leaders, accountable to their commitments; escalate resource, timeline, and decision conflicts to governance, and recommend stopping or redirecting initiatives when the evidence warrants it, regardless of sunk cost.
• →Lead roadmap integration and sequencing across short-, mid-, and long-term goals, delivering value in increments tied to milestones in partnership with the IT Product Lead/Product Owner and Technical Lead.
• →Govern the project-to-BAU hand-off so work transitions to business and product owners with defined roles and responsibilities, documented processes, and clear enhancement and support ownership.
• →Manage vendor partners to value and service levels, challenging vendor and workstream claims rather than accepting reported status at face value, and pressure-test the strongest counterargument to a plan before others depend on it; evaluate governance structures and retire those that have become performative.

• Run governance and decision forums that end in commitments, owners, and due dates
• Hold senior stakeholders accountable without direct authority
• Frame decisions, risks, and trade-offs clearly for executive audiences
• Integrate dependencies, risks, and resources across multiple concurrent workstreams
• Define and track KPIs and benefits realization to report business outcomes
• Translate technical detail into business decisions without owning every technical detail
• Move decisively with incomplete information, matching decision speed to the cost of being wrong
• Drive and reinforce change adoption using a formal, agreed-upon methodology
• Lead enterprise software, technology, and business-process implementations
• Work proficiently with enterprise software, collaboration, unified communications, and cloud-based technologies
• Build and maintain governance materials, decision logs, RAID registers, and best-practice documentation
• Bring leadership along, anticipate next steps, and help build the organization’s project management practice, while staying current on business direction and emerging trends

• PMP, PgMP, or equivalent certification
• Formal change-management certification (e.g., Prosci/ADKAR)
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Technology, or a related field is preferred

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Management, or a related field, or equivalent combination of education and relevant experience
• At least 7 years of program/project management experience, including 3+ years managing enterprise-level or cross-functional programs with multiple concurrent workstreams
• Experience running governance forums that drive decisions and outcomes
• Experience partnering with product and technical leads through implementation and managing project-to-BAU transitions

• This role requires the ability to remain in a stationary position and work at a computer for extended periods; communicate and exchange information with internal and external stakeholders through in-person, telephone, and virtual interactions; occasionally move files, documents, or other work materials; and travel periodically, if required by the position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of the role.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed and are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, skills, duties, or physical requirements associated with the position.

• Establish a consistent portfolio operating cadence in which Leadership Team and Steering Committee forums end in documented decisions, owners, and due dates
• Deliver a single integrated view of the strategic portfolio (roadmap, dependencies, RAID register, and stage gates) that leadership uses to make decisions
• Ensure every active initiative has a named owner, baseline, target, and dashboard, with benefits realization reported for in-flight work
• Complete at least one clean project-to-BAU hand-off with defined ownership, documented processes, and a support model
• Earn recognition from senior stakeholders as a trusted, neutral integrator who brings issues forward already diagnosed with a recommended path