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Sakai Foundation Executive Director search

Sakai Foundation Search for Executive Director

(Posted March 13, 2010)

Update! The Foundation is Pleased to Announce Ian Dolphin as Executive Director

The Sakai Foundation Board of Directors seeks a visionary leader to serve as Executive Director of the Foundation. The Executive Director is the chief officer of the Sakai Foundation, a nonprofit organization formed by the members of the Sakai Project community. The Sakai Project, established in 2004, continues to develop open source Collaboration and Learning Environment software to meet the needs of higher education. The Sakai Foundation has grown from the original core institutions to nearly one hundred academic and corporate members around the world. The Sakai community has active teaching and learning groups, as well as design and programming contributors from across the higher education and commercial constituency. Today, Sakai software is deployed as the primary teaching and learning system at over 200 institutions, and six continents. Anyone is welcome to use the software without charge, and to participate in the community.

The Sakai community is marked by active development projects, a deeply engaged teaching and learning constituency, and well established communities of practice, all contributing significantly to the development of the Sakai software. The Executive Director manages the Foundation activities and staff, leads the community, and engages with agencies and organizations on behalf of the Foundation.  Because the Sakai community is global, and the staff spread across the US and Europe, there is no location requirement for the position. We welcome applications from all locations.

A job description for the Executive Director position may be found below.

Interested candidates should submit a letter of interest and resume/cv to Mary Miles (Board Secretary), mmiles@sakaifoundation.org  Resumes will be accepted through April 20, 2010. Confidential inquiries may be directed to the interim Executive Director, Lois Brooks, lbrooks@sakaifoundation.org

[position description] For a pdf version of the Position Description, click here ->

 

 

 

     Position Title:      Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
     Reports to:          Chair, Sakai Foundation Board of Directors
     Date of Hire:        On or about June 1, 2010
     Terms:                 This position is full time, continuing and exempt

Position Summary:

The Sakai Foundation seeks an experienced, creative, mature, visionary leader to fill the position of Executive Director (ED).  The Sakai Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports the Sakai community that produces open source software tools for teaching, learning, research and collaboration for higher education. The Foundation has a purposefully small staff.  Much of the innovation and tool development is done by the distributed community of Sakai users and developers.  The ED will facilitate this community in every way possible. He or she will represent the foundation publicly and in business negotiations.

The Executive Director is the chief officer of the Sakai Foundation. Candidates should have a distinguished record in leading organizations and working effectively in distributed, collaborative communities. Demonstrated experience leading software development is required, and experience in an academic institution and/or in an open source community is highly desired.

Scope of position

 The Executive Director is responsible for the successful planning and operations of the Sakai Foundation and, more broadly, for enhancing the collaboration across the community. He or she will develop priorities for the Foundation’s efforts, and assure that all members of the community are well informed on the plans and directions for the projects in the community. The Executive Director will assure that planning processes are in place, and will assure coordination of programmatic initiatives and work effort across all projects in the Foundation.

He or she will communicate and represent the activities of the Foundation to the Sakai community and to the public.  He or she will develop and maintain effective partnerships with other organizations to foster interoperability and cohesion within the academic software development community.  Within the Foundation, he or she will manage human and fiscal resources, projects and priorities.

The person in this position must be able to work comfortably in a demand-driven environment, with responsibility for the coordination of a large number of sophisticated and interrelated software products and requirements. The incumbent must be able to respond quickly to challenges by proposing and facilitating the development and implementation of well-conceived solutions that meet the needs of the Sakai Foundation members.

The ED will work with the Foundation Board and other stakeholders to develop a financial sustainability strategy that will allow for growth of the community through further development of a broad range of constituencies.  This will include a multifaceted communication effort to reach a broad range of constituencies, a redefined membership model, and growth of the community, potential scale economies with peer Foundations.  This position requires extensive experience in delivering academic technology services, which may be gained through a combination of professional experience and education. This position requires excellent leadership and communication skills, expertise with technology, and demonstrated effectiveness in managing staff and projects. While the position is location independent, extensive travel is required.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Leadership:

  1. With the Board of Directors, establish the Foundation’s strategic and financial plans, including establishing annual goals and objectives. Regularly assess and report progress for technology and community development by seeking community input and engaging their support, and evolving the plans to meet changing technology and community priorities.
  2. Identify and respond to opportunities and challenges.
  3. Develop and implement operational strategies that assure consistent and timely progress toward the Board-authorized long-range strategic plan. 

Communication: 

  1. Assure the Foundation and its mission, programs, products and services are consistently presented in strong, positive images to relevant stakeholders.
  2. Foster the Foundation’s goals through a successful, multifaceted communications program. Communicate widely and regularly with stakeholders at all levels of academic institutions, targeting both current community members as well as potential members and potential adopters.
  3. Within the community, lead and facilitate the development of practices and policies for the Sakai community. 
  4. Work constructively with the community to foster activities, encourage community involvement, and develop best practices for technology, process and pedagogy. 
    Assure that the Board is kept fully informed on the status of the Foundation and important factors influencing it.

Outreach:

  1. Represent the programs and point of view of the foundation to agencies, organizations, and the general public. Bring expertise to initiatives and contribute toward development of policy, work practice improvements, and positive outcomes. 
  2. Publicize the activities of the foundation, its programs and goals.
  3. Develop and maintain effective partnerships with other organizations to assure cohesion and interoperability. 
  4. Actively engage community members around the world.

Technology: 

  1. Maintain a working knowledge of significant developments and trends in the field. Ensure that the Sakai community remains abreast of, and facilitate the appropriate development and use of the latest technology advances. 
  2. Engage the technical community with the Sakai network of developers, as well as peer software projects, to ensure maximum interoperability of code and content with peer educational projects.
  3. Assure a high-quality, dynamic and innovative environment central to meeting the needs of a largely virtual community for software development. 
  4. Assure there is up-to-date information, access to resources, and venues for debate, discussion and exchange on topic issues with and within the whole Sakai community.

Product Management: 

  1. Assure the Foundation provides high-level coordination for a distributed software development and deployment effort, including design, marketing, promotion, and delivery of quality programs, products, and services.
  2. Assure coordination and facilitation of the myriad of activities related to the success of the Sakai code base, documentation, and training.

Program Management: 

  1. Manage the day-to day operations of the Sakai Foundation. Monitor projects and budgets ensuring that mandates are executed in an effective manner consistent with Foundation policies.
  2. Effectively balance resources with need. Be responsible for the recruitment, employment, and release of all personnel including both paid staff and volunteers.
  3. Ensure that job descriptions are developed, that regular performance evaluations are completed, and that sound human resource practices are in place.
  4. Maintain a climate that attracts, keeps, and motivates a diverse staff of top quality people.
  5. Develop and maintain sound financial practices. Work with the staff, designated financial personnel and auditors, and the Board in preparing a budget. See that the foundation operates within budget guidelines.

Positioning: 

  1. Develop and widely communicate a value proposition for participation in the Sakai community as an adopter and as a contributor.
  2. Identify potential (international and national) new initiatives and partnerships to build the community and generate revenue for the purpose of enhancing the original mandate and goals of the project. This may include merged activities with peer open source and open content communities.
  3. Oversee fundraising planning and implementation, including identifying resource requirements, working with the Board to determine membership models, researching funding sources, establishing strategies to approach funders, submitting grant proposals and administrating fundraising records and documentation.

Administration: 

  1. Fulfill administrative requirements of the Sakai Foundation including: assuring that the By-Laws of the Foundation are adhered to; and actively participating in Sakai Foundation Board as a non-voting member.
  2. Jointly, with the Board chair and designated officers, conduct official correspondence of the organization and execute legal documents.
  3. Establish all administrative policies and procedures.

QUALIFICATIONS: 

  • Demonstrated ability to lead, plan, and support a functionally organized, technically oriented environment, with staff working on a wide variety of technical and service activities. Ability to forecast, develop and implement organizational initiatives. Ability to think strategically and programmatically and to engage others in working toward a shared vision.  Ability to set priorities, allocate resources, provide follow-through, assure a well-organized workforce and to provide evaluation of projects and efforts. Experience leading software development projects is highly desirable.
  • Excellent management skills, and demonstrated ability to lead, motivate and direct professional and technical staff. A proven track record in creating highly effective teams distributed across geographical and cultural boundaries is required. Demonstrated success in managing fiscal, technology, and human resources. Excellent project management skills, including demonstrated ability to deliver software on deadline that meets functional specifications. Ability to resolve issues quickly in a collaborative culture and to make decisions that meet Sakai Foundation objectives.
  • Excellent oral, written, and interpersonal communication skills. Demonstrated success in communicating effectively with executive, technical and professional audiences. Demonstrated ability to consistently, effectively and tactfully communicate with people at many levels about academic, administrative, and technical topics. Demonstrated ability to develop and maintain effective working relationships.
  • Extensive experience (8 or more years) in academic leadership, technology leadership and/or community development. B.A./B.S. required; advanced degree highly desirable.