Head of People

Rize Education Overview

• Mission: fundamentally transform higher education and provide every student with an enjoyable and riskless pathway to a fulfilling career

• Initial Problem: colleges desperately need to increase enrollment & improve outcomes, but can’t afford the upfront investment & costs for new degree programs

• Solution: high-quality, flexible degree programs that dramatically reduce cost and risk. By allowing colleges to add new online courses taught by other institutions, Rize provides non-profit, accredited colleges & universities with the fastest and most affordable way to add skills-based majors & minors for college credit

• Funding: raised Series B in 2024 from Thrive, Founders Fund, Flume, Strada, and other investors to pursue significant growth and product improvements. Projected to be profitable by Fall 2026 with no need for additional funding

• Team: 45+ person team that includes college athletes, educators, Jeopardy! participants, Ivy Leaguers, and hustlers who paid their own way through community college, all with the shared goal of improving education for current and future generations

The Role

Rize powers 500+ academic programs for over 100 colleges seeking innovative ways to grow enrollment and improve student outcomes. We have built an incredible team, all working toward our primary goal: creating an educational product that will transform the college experience by increasing student transparency and ROI. We are looking to add an analytical, thoughtful, empathetic, and high-output individual who will be excited and motivated by the high standard of excellence we seek to maintain.

Position Overview: The Head of People will be responsible for helping Rize hit our ambitious growth goals via employee hiring, retention, and professional growth. Rize is poised to grow past 60 people by July 1, 2025, and will likely raise a larger financing round when we hit $20m+ ARR in CY 2026. We are therefore looking for a leader to work directly with the founders to formulate our People strategy and organizational design. You will help us build a scalable organizational structure and People team & function that ensures all employees get the experience they want out of their time at Rize and are operating at their very best. The role combines hiring process management, organizational planning and strategy, executive & employee coaching, compensation and performance reviews, and other integral company functions geared toward providing people with the transparency and growth opportunities they need to feel happy and fulfilled working at Rize.

Who are we looking for?

We are looking for a strategic partner that can work with and help coach the founding team as we design an organizational structure that optimizes for company growth and sets people up for success by motivating them to be the best they can be. The ideal candidate views themselves as a motivator, coach, and leader rather than an appeaser or risk manager. If one or more of the below describes you, we’d love for you to consider the role!

• You view the People function as more than an HR / risk management role. You are interested in working directly with the founding team to solve our biggest organizational problems in pursuit of transforming higher education. Your aim is to ensure Rize has the people, structure, and processes necessary to win.

• You value meritocracy. You will always advocate to hire or promote the best person for any given role, regardless of their background.

• You are excited about building something from the ground up. We are intentionally hiring this role early in order to set ourselves up for long-term operational success, and we want to work with someone who is comfortable creating the people function from scratch.

• You understand the immense value and importance of the People function. You know that you will be one of the primary levers we have to improve company performance and efficiency and hit our key KPIs and goals, and you are motivated by that responsibility.

• You have a growth mindset. You never think of yourself as a finished product, and are constantly seeking ways to push yourself and those around you to get better.

• You have a good sense of humor. You recognize that parts of this job can be intense, and have an affect that can roll with the punches.

• You are an empathetic listener. You know that a key part of this role is creating buy-in from all members of the Rize team, and know how to build and maintain credibility with people.

• You want to help others get better. You understand that it’s your job to help set people up to achieve personal and professional success, not make them feel good.

• You have strong convictions, loosely held. You are not afraid to have and share your opinion, but will change your mind when confronted with conflicting evidence / information.

• You value teamwork and togetherness. You are focused on things that bring us together, rather than trying to emphasize individual qualities that separate us.

• You are comfortable being uncomfortable. You are uninterested in buzzwords like “psychological safety” and help people seek solutions to their problems rather than just listening to them.

You will report to Connor (our co-founder / COO), take over management of Clare (our Talent and People Operations Lead), and work closely with all teams and managers to ensure our People structure and principles are effectively disseminated throughout the company.

Responsibilities

• Hiring Process Management: Lead all hiring processes and ensure we are keeping an extremely high talent bar across all areas of the company.

• Organizational Structure, Planning, and Strategy: Periodically re-evaluate our organizational structure to ensure it optimizes company growth & optimizes performance.

• Employee Growth Opportunities: Create a transparent system of growth opportunities employees can work toward (e.g. compensation, management, title, etc) with clear benchmarks. Work with managers to implement this system effectively with reports.

• Career and Growth Coaching: Work with managers to ensure they are effectively handling all aspects of their jobs and growing in their effectiveness (you will have a budget available related to bringing in advisors to help with this).

• Compensation and Performance Reviews: Run and iterate on the company compensation and review processes to ensure employees are happy and receiving updates on how they are tracking toward their growth benchmarks.

• Compensation Management: Ensure Rize is consistently on track toward profitability and fast revenue growth while still paying team members the maximum we can afford to.

Primary KPIs

• Employee retention

• Employee happiness

• Company’s financial efficiency

• Time-to-hire and hire success rate

Qualifications

We are open to hiring people from a range of backgrounds for this role. If you have experience in consulting, operations, executive coaching, or recruiting and this role interests you, we encourage you to apply! Specifically, we are looking for the following qualities:

• 7+ years total experience in a related field

• You have worked at a company of 50-500 people and have experience with helping that team grow

• You have experience working with individuals to improve their skillet (management training is a bonus)

• You have run hiring processes at scale

• You are excited about improving employee engagement and promoting a collaborative work environment

• You detest workplace politics and are hoping to build a company culture of high autonomy, individual responsibility, and merit-based hiring and promotions

• You seek organizational structures that reduce emphasis on meetings and committees

• You are obsessed with solving problems, and have a proven track record applying general frameworks to provide individualized solutions to a wide range of problems

• You exhibit a high standard of personal accountability and you are a doer

• You are seeking a high degree of autonomy, ownership, and growth in your next role

• You are low ego and humble; you are willing to work with and learn from others

• Preference for the ability to come into the NYC office for roughly 50%+ of work days (we just signed a lease for a new office in Flatiron!)

Compensation

Compensation will vary with experience, but a rough range will be:

• Salary: $175,000 - $240,000, depending on experience

  • Potential for incentive compensation

• Equity: 6,000 - 8,000 shares

Press and Publications

The Higher Education Model is Broken. Together We Can Fix It.

Expert View: Sharing courses could help small private colleges survive

What To Do About The High Costs Of Higher Education: One Model Of School Collaboration