OpenSciEd | Chief Executive Officer

Description

Chief Executive Officer Opportunity

OpenSciEd seeks a CEO to guide its next stage of growth: expanding access to high-quality K–12 science education and ensuring that adoption translates into strong classroom implementation and meaningful learning for all students.

Fast Facts

Compensation: $300,000–$325,000 + benefits

Location: Remote | Anticipated start: Q1 2027

Reports to: OpenSciEd Board of Directors

The Organization

Developed with leading science educators, researchers, and classroom teachers, OpenSciEd’s free, NGSS-aligned instructional materials engage all students in student-led science learning. Its materials, professional learning, and ongoing support help schools and districts create science classrooms where students investigate, ask questions, use evidence, and build explanations about the world around them.

OpenSciEd has earned trust as a leader in high quality, open-source science curriculum and professional learning. As curriculum development advances, the next CEO will expand reach, strengthen educator and partner support, ensure financial stability, and respond thoughtfully to emerging technologies, including AI, while protecting the quality, openness, and student-centered approach that distinguish the organization.

What You Will Accomplish

Lead the strategy. Implement an innovative, field-responsive strategic plan that affirms OpenSciEd’s leadership in shaping the future of science curriculum.

Scale adoption and impact. Grow adoption and market share while protecting the freely accessible core. Define successful implementation and connect professional learning, user feedback, partner standards, and product improvement so all students—especially those in communities underserved or underrepresented in science—experience the intended quality of instruction.

Build an adaptive culture. Strengthen a work culture grounded in trust, transparency, educator voice, and OpenSciEd’s core values, enabling alignment and effective leadership through change.

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APPLICATIONS CLOSED | The Application Deadline was Monday, November 2, 2026 at 11:00pm ET

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CEO Priorities

The CEO will guide OpenSciEd’s next stage of growth, expanding access to high-quality science education while strengthening classroom implementation and long-term financial sustainability. The role’s priorities span strategic planning and implementation (30%), revenue generation (25%), and partnerships (25%), with additional focus on culture transformation (10%) and collaboration with the Board and executive team (10%). Together, these priorities call for a leader who can translate vision into action, build strong relationships, and cultivate a culture of trust, learning, and shared purpose.

Who Should Apply

We welcome leaders with significant experience in the following areas:

• Creating and executing innovative, field-responsive strategies
• Leading and motivating high-performing teams around a shared vision
• Building cycles of innovation, learning, and continuous improvement
• Designing, building, and scaling high-quality curriculum
• Building consensus across diverse stakeholder groups

Potential candidates may include:

• Education nonprofit C-suite leaders
• Chief Academic Officers
• Chief Operating Officer
• Chief Growth Officers
• Chief Product Officers
• Chief Innovation Officers
• EdTech and startup leaders
• Executives with past or current school system experience



Support Across The Field

OpenSciEd’s work is supported by funders including Amazon Future Engineer, Gates Foundation, Andrew Carnegie Foundation, Overdeck Family Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Cambiar Education. This support helps advance OpenSciEd’s mission to expand access to high-quality, student-centered science education.

What Stakeholders Say

“OpenSciEd has pioneered curriculum by which classroom teachers, district and state leadership, researchers and curriculum developers work together…

their impact has truly been remarkable to the field”

— Jill Cowart, former Assistant Superintendent of Academic Content, Louisiana Department of Education



Requirements

CEO MISSION: Execute OpenSciEd’s strategy with flexibility and responsiveness to changes in the market—protecting its mission, vision, values, integrity, and accessibility while strengthening the capabilities needed for long-term relevance, sustainability, and scale.

PRIORITIES

Execute and adapt the Board-approved 2026–2030 strategic plan while protecting OpenSciEd’s mission, values, accessibility, and field leadership.

Enhance curricular offerings through continuous improvement, evidence, usability, and responsible technology integration.

Catalyze curriculum-based professional learning through flexible, high-quality provider networks and technology-enabled supports.

Elevate OpenSciEd’s brand and strengthen its partner ecosystem to increase awareness, demand, adoption, and impact.

Build the internal systems, culture, governance, and financial sustainability required to deliver the strategic plan.

SUCCESS INDICATORS

Execute and adapt the Board-approved 2026–2030 strategic plan while protecting OpenSciEd’s mission, values, accessibility, and field leadership.

• Within six months, translate the plan into an annual operating roadmap with accountable owners, budgets, milestones, dependencies, and risks.
• Within one year, establish a Board dashboard for quality and usability, scale, and sustainability; set annual milestones toward the 2030 ambitions, close priority baseline gaps, review progress quarterly, and recommend course corrections annually.
• Apply OpenSciEd’s greenlighting criteria to all major new product, technology, service, and partnership opportunities, documenting pursue, discuss, or do-not-pursue decisions.
• Communicate progress and impact annually to staff, partners, funders, users, and the field.

Enhance curricular offerings through continuous improvement, evidence, usability, and responsible technology integration.

• By 2028, launch or have underway all Board-approved “to pursue” initiatives for elementary curriculum, middle school v2.0, high school v1.5, derivatives, and technology-enabled enhancements.
• By 2030, earn a green EdReports rating in every grade band, with embedded multilingual-learner supports, and demonstrate improved student outcomes compared with other materials.
• By 2030, achieve 80% satisfaction with content among teachers and students using certified materials and registered users, segmented by product line when data permit.
• Maintain a technology strategy, advisory group, evidence standards, and guardrails; apply the greenlighting criteria to major investments and partnerships.

Catalyze curriculum-based professional learning through flexible, high-quality provider networks and technology-enabled support.

• Differentiate professional learning by grade band, intensity, cost, and audience; strengthen certified-provider standards; expand on-demand and leader supports; and report participation, satisfaction, and margin annually by service line.
• By 2030, achieve 80% satisfaction with aligned supports and ensure 80% of teachers using OpenSciEd feel confident and well-prepared to deliver the materials.
• By 2030, 66% of teachers participating in implementation studies demonstrate high-quality instructional practices aligned with OpenSciEd materials.
• By 2030, more than 50% of adoption districts engage in certified professional learning and on-demand professional learning exceeds 75,000 views.

Elevate OpenSciEd’s brand and strengthen its partner ecosystem to increase awareness, demand, adoption, and impact.

• Execute differentiated marketing and communications strategies with annual reach, engagement, and conversion targets by audience, offering, and product line.
• By 2030, reach 300,000 registered teachers—150,000 elementary, 65,000 middle school, and 85,000 high school—and achieve 10% elementary, 25% middle school, and 10% high school market share.
• By 2030, secure institutional purchases from 25% of schools and 40% of districts with 20,000 or more students that serve high percentages of low-income students and students of color; achieve an 80% repurchase rate within three years.
• By 2030, achieve 90% staff agreement that OpenSciEd has sufficient, high-impact partnerships to magnify its impact.

Strengthen the internal systems, culture, governance, and financial sustainability required to deliver the strategic plan.

• Scale integrated data, research, and financial infrastructure with reliable annual measures of revenue, reach, usage, implementation, and impact.
• By 2030, cover 100% of general operating expenses with earned revenue; ensure 90% of initiatives requiring external funds are at least 90% funded; and begin each fiscal year with 100% of operating funds committed.
• By 2030, achieve 90% staff agreement that OpenSciEd has the operational, financial, and data infrastructure needed for success.
• By 2030, complete the independent 501(c)(3) transition, meet public-charity requirements, establish durable governance and succession practices, and align roles and professional development with the strategy.
• Model a culture in which change is encouraged and embraced.
• • Leaders are empowered to identify and take action on shifts to the organization’s status quo.
  • Data is leveraged to inform strategic shifts.
  • OpenSciEd has an open posture to feedback from the market.