Sr. Project/Operations Coordinator

About WestEd

As a community of over 1,400 researchers, practitioners, consultants, and administrative professionals from all backgrounds and life experiences, we are committed to making a qualitative difference in the lives of youth, children, and adults. We conduct and apply research, develop evidence-based solutions, and provide consulting services across the country in both rural and urban communities to improve equitable outcomes for individuals from infancy through adulthood. Serving as trusted partners in the areas of education, health, and justice, our teams enhance capacity within communities and school districts to prioritize impact - asking the right questions, customizing methodologies, developing relevant tools, and implementing best practices specific to a diverse range of stakeholder needs.

WestEd supports individual initiative, excellence, and hard work of all individuals in our hiring and work practices. WestEd complies with all applicable federal and state anti-discrimination laws, as well as OFCCP requirements. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, or status as a protected veteran.

SPECIAL NOTICE REGARDING THE WORK LOCATION OF THIS POSITION-Although WestEd provides the option of working at one of its facilities for employees, many roles allow employees to choose to work remotely for their own convenience. The decision to allow remote work at the employee's convenience is based on the requirements of the position or project in question.

Brief Description:

As the Senior Project Coordinator, you are the operational engine behind a portfolio of statewide education agency transformation engagements. Content and subject-matter experts bring the strategy, the methodology, and the technical substance. Your job is to help them operationalize it: to take a plan that lives in an expert's head, a proposal, or a scope of work and turn it into a schedule, a tracker, a protocol, and a set of documented steps the whole team can run. You keep those structures current as priorities and sequencing shift, and you document them well enough that someone who was not in the room can follow them.

Under the current portfolio, on medium-sized scopes of work, this role serves as the sole project management resource for that scope, directing delivery end to end in partnership with the assigned content leads. On larger scopes, it also works under the direction of a Senior Project Manager and one or more project directors, with the Senior Project Manager providing day-to-day direction and informal mentorship. The incumbent should be comfortable moving between both modes.

In both modes, this is a delivery and operations role rather than a content role. Change management, technical assistance, and subject-matter deliverables are authored and owned by work strand leads.

The Opportunity

This role deliberately spans a wide range of responsibilities. In a single week it can involve rebuilding a project plan after a workstream is adjusted, sitting with a content lead to document a methodology, running quality assurance on a deliverable before it goes to the client, and confirming catering and room setup for a two-day working session. The balance shifts by week and by engagement phase. Candidates who are energized by owning both the structural and the hands-on ends of delivery will do well here; candidates looking for a purely strategic project management role will not. This role is accountable for making sure that work is planned, sequenced, documented, quality-assured, and shipped on time and within budget.

Core Focus Areas and Responsibilities

Operationalizing Plans and Documenting the Work

• Work with content and subject-matter leads to translate their methodologies and technical approaches into sequenced work plans with owners, due dates, dependencies, and review gates, surfacing and documenting the operational steps a plan assumes but does not state.
• Write and maintain the procedures, checklists, and templates that allow a plan to be executed by staff who did not design it.
• Set up and maintain knowledge management for each project, including file architecture, version control, access permissions, and the record of decisions, approvals, and client direction; onboard team members onto the tools and protocols in use.

Planning, Scheduling, and Delivery

• Translate contract scope of work into detailed schedules, timelines, and task plans, and maintain the supporting planning documents, including charters, work plans, trackers, RAID logs, and dependency maps, as priorities and sequencing shift.
• Maintain project tracking that gives the team visibility two to three weeks ahead, flag conflicting deadlines with proposed options, follow up with team members on action items, and keep governance documentation current, including RACI charts, sponsorship maps, and decision logs.
• Estimate staff and resource needs to inform planning, support budget development and reforecasting for renewals, and maintain the risk and issue register, raising emerging schedule, budget, scope, and quality risks with recommended options and tracking mitigation to closure.

Deliverables, Quality Assurance, and Invoicing

• Track all contract deliverables against due dates and contract requirements, maintaining a single source of truth for deliverable status across engagements.
• Coordinate quality assurance before deliverables go to the client, including proofreading, brand compliance, accessibility review, and formatting, routing work to the appropriate reviewers, holding the QA schedule, and elevating substantive feedback to the responsible content lead.
• Prepare and submit invoices for completed deliverables, tracking the acceptance conditions that trigger each invoice, and monitor spending and level of effort against task-level and total not-to-exceed amounts, flagging variances to project leadership.

Convenings, Meetings, and Coordination

• Coordinate end-to-end logistics for in-person client meetings, workshops, retreats, council and advisory body meetings, and multi-day working sessions, including venue and room setup, audiovisual needs, catering, travel, registration and attendance, and dietary and accessibility accommodations.
• Draft and maintain facilitator agendas and run-of-show documents in partnership with content leads, assemble and quality-check participant materials, send pre-event and post-event participant communications, and capture decisions and next steps.
• Draft agendas for and facilitate standing internal team meetings, capture notes and action items, prepare recurring status updates, manage the project team calendar, and coordinate materials production and printing.
• Serve as a scheduling, logistics, and status point of contact for client counterparts and coordinate dependencies with technology vendors, state IT departments, and delivery partners, consulting the Project Director on anything that changes scope, budget, or timeline.

What We're Looking For:

Education and Experience

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience, with familiarity navigating public-sector timelines.
• Experience coordinating or managing multi-workstream projects or contracts where the project plan changed materially after kickoff, ideally in public sector, education, or professional services consulting.
• Experience working alongside subject-matter experts and translating their approach into an operational plan the wider team could execute.
• Hands-on experience running logistics for in-person professional convenings, workshops, retreats, or multi-day meetings.

Technical Skills

• Proficiency in Asana (preferred), Smartsheet, or a comparable project management platform such as Monday.com, MS Project, Airtable, or Jira, with the ability to build trackers, dashboards, and templates rather than only update existing ones.
• Ability to translate a contract scope of work into a detailed schedule with dependencies, owners, and milestones, and to adjust it as priorities shift.
• Ability to design a durable project structure, such as a template, workflow, or reporting format, and to document a process clearly enough that someone who was not in the room can follow it.
• Budget tracking, invoicing, and cost monitoring against task-level and total not-to-exceed contract amounts.
• Deliverable quality control, including proofreading, brand compliance, and working knowledge of digital accessibility standards, plus strong spreadsheet skills in Google Workspace and Microsoft Office.

Soft Skills

• Organizer by instinct, creating structure and keeping information current.
• Service orientation toward internal teammates and content experts, with the patience to draw out what they intend and the judgment to structure it without taking over the substance.
• Adaptable under changing plans, treating resequencing as routine, and proactive in surfacing risk before it becomes client-facing, escalating with a recommendation rather than an open question.
• Meticulous attention to detail in documents, schedules, budgets, and logistics, while holding multiple concurrent engagements at different phases.

Preferred

• Direct prior experience with Asana and/or Smartsheet specifically.
• CAPM, PMP, or comparable project management certification, which is useful to demonstrate knowledge but not a substitute for the experience above.
• Experience supporting a governing board, council, commission, or other public advisory body, or prior work in state agencies, regional service agencies, large districts, or national TA centers.

Geographic Preference

• West Coast, Pacific Northwest, or Mountain West preferred.
• Will require multi-day in-person travel to Oregon several times per year.

*Note: Visa sponsorship is not available for this position. Successful candidates must be authorized to work in the United States.

WestEd conducts a criminal background check and education verification for all new hires. Any offers of employment will be contingent on receiving a clear background check in accordance with applicable law.

SALARY AND BENEFITS:

The full salary range for this position, WestEd level (10), is $92,000 to $143,000 but WestEd does not typically hire at or near the top of the salary range. The typical hiring range for this role is $92,000 to $115,000. The actual offer considers multiple factors, including but not limited to education, experience, internal equity, and other organizational needs.

In addition to the base salary, benefits include:

* 15% contribution toward retirement effective day 1 of employment and immediately 100% vested

* Pre-tax Flexible Spending Accounts and Health Savings Account option

* All health/welfare benefits are effective the first of the month following the hire date

* PTO: 19 days (increases to 21 days beginning the third year of employment), 12 paid holidays

* Life Insurance: value of 3x gross salary, max of 500k

* Opportunities for annual merit-based performance increases + annual incentives

* Professional development opportunities & mentorship program

For more details about our benefits, go to: https://www.wested.org/work-at-wested/#benefits WestEd is a Drug Free Employer and maintains a drug-free workplace. #LI-Remote #Circa-Remote

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor's legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)