Executive Director, AP Credit and Placement

College Board – AP&I

Location: This is a fully remote role. Candidates who live near CB offices have the option of being fully remote or hybrid (Tuesday and Wednesday in office)

Type: This is a full-time position

About the team

The College Board’s Advanced Placement and Instruction (AP&I) division develops and administers coursework taken by almost 4 million students worldwide each school year, and the related subject-matter exams utilized by thousands of colleges and universities for course placement and awarding of college credit. The AP Product Strategy department in the AP&I division identifies and evaluates new program opportunities, including ways to expand upon AP’s value proposition, and secures AP’s value to students and families.

The AP Credit and Placement team, an expanding, nine-person unit which sits within the AP Product Strategy department, achieves ambitious goals for credit availability across all AP courses, both established and recently launched courses, as well as contributing to the development of and laying a foundation for credit availability for courses that have yet to launch. The team is committed to expanding opportunities for students, and is equally committed to assuring that colleges and universities find value in providing students with advanced placement and credit for their AP scores.

The AP Credit and Placement team is dedicated to expanding AP’s reach by developing and implementing strategies that secure AP credit policies, helping students earn college credit and placement. The team builds scalable models that enhance faculty understanding of AP course and exam content and student outcomes. Our team is dedicated to forward-thinking policy development and to ensuring that AP continues to be valued by and provide value to higher education leaders for its role in preparing and accelerating students.

About the Opportunity

As the Executive Director, AP Credit and Placement, you will be responsible for leading the team to surpass our goals and consistently secure and expand the landscape of credit availability. You’ll focus on rapidly securing credit for new and recently launched AP courses and exams while assuring continued acceptance of all AP subjects for credit by colleges and universities.

You are motivated by the impact that credit has on propelling students to college and to degrees, particularly students currently underrepresented in college. You are equally committed to assuring that colleges and universities find value in providing students with advanced placement and credit for their AP scores, partnering with a range of campus leaders to connect AP credit acceptance to their goals for student retention and success.

You have a campaigner’s mindset and toolkit, and are motivated by demanding, measurable goals. You enjoy crafting new strategies while improving upon proven approaches. You like to understand the return to your investments and seek ways to bring highly effective efforts to scale.

In this role, you will:

Strategy, Analysis, and Prototyping (35%)

• Use data to set goals, prioritize opportunities, evaluate strategies, and determine what’s working and what’s not

• Communicate with colleagues using data and evidence about the progress to—and barriers to—goals

• Identify data-backed opportunities to start and to stop doing work and to reassign the resources of the team to the highest-promise initiatives

• Scale high-impact, high-efficiency initiatives while ruthlessly retiring lower-impact, low-return activities

• Partner with other teams across College Board to introduce, gain support for, test, and refine ideas for driving new approaches to awarding AP credit by colleges and universities in order to deliver value to AP students

Lead and Manage the AP Credit and Placement Team (35%)

• Lead and inspire a high-performing team of 8-10 staff to achieve the team’s ambitious credit and placement goals, fostering a culture of collaboration, inclusion, growth and excellence

• Set vision and priorities for the team, track and mange progress to goals, and provide coaching and support to ensure team members meet and exceed goals, remain engaged, and contribute meaningfully to our mission

• Cultivate an inclusive and high achieving culture that enables all team members to live out College Board’s Operating Principles

• Bring proven leadership experience and consistently embody College Board’s Manager Expectations in your work

• Ensure effective communication across all levels, promote transparency, and drive alignment of team’s capacity to organizational and divisional priorities

• Manage time-sensitive requests of the team from internal stakeholders

• Provide coaching and support to staff in the development and delivery of presentations to ensure they deliver results

• Partner with VP to drive overall departmental staff engagement alongside peers leading teams in the AP Product Strategy department

Development and Execution (15%)

• Collaborate with colleagues across the organization to design, execute and revise activities that lead to higher ed acceptance and to colleges’ and universities’ credit commitments

• Employ data to measure and highlight gaps in policies and their impact on students, and to otherwise shape our core messages about the impact of credit policies

• Design and manage high-impact advisory councils to help steer our credit policy work and provide meaningful guidance on critical areas of opportunity and risk

• Develop and execute strategies for expanding AP credit in 2-year colleges, requiring you to understand variation in strategy required for influencing 2-year institutions (including message, decision-makers, and aligned incentives)

• Broker new credit and placement models for AP courses taught within the career and technical education space

• Secure new and strengthen existing statewide and systemwide credit policies to maximize value to students and families

Broadscale Outreach and Constituent Engagement (15%)

• Exponentially expand faculty awareness of course and exam content standards and of student outcomes

• Build and own strong relationships with select key university partners and other influential stakeholders

• As needed, represent the team at external convenings and events

• Support external facing teams with knowledge of credit availability and need as well as the best tested messages

About You

To qualify for this role, you must have:

• Expertise in Higher Education, nonprofit environment, or college access for 10+ years

• 5+ years of performing as a team leader/management role in the Higher Education, nonprofit or college access space

• A strategic and inclusive leadership style: you set clear priorities, build effective team structures, plan for future needs, and foster a culture of belonging

• A proven ability to drive performance and growth: you set high expectations, deliver real-time, evidence-based feedback, and coach team members to take smart risks, stretch their skills, and achieve meaningful impact

• Critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, enabling you to navigate challenges and propose solutions that balance competing priorities

• Outstanding communication skills, capable of conveying complex ideas to a range of audiences, from senior leadership to project teams to external stakeholders

• Strong relationships and a track-record of effective outreach to and engagement with campus decision-makers

• A passion for innovation, always seeking out new opportunities to achieve your goals and broaden your impact

• Effective storytelling in service of compelling others to action

• An eye for detail and quality, ensuring that all communications meet the required standards for college credit and placement decision-makers

• Ability to assess talent, align resources with priorities, set clear objectives, and ensure goals drive actions across the team

• The ability to travel 6-8 times a year to College Board offices or on behalf of College Board business

• Authorization to work in the United States

All roles at College Board require:

• A passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work

• Authorization to work in the United States for any employer

• Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and a comfort learning and applying new digital tools independently and proactively.

• Clear and concise communication skills, written and verbal

• A learner's mindset and a commitment to growth: welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously improving through iterative learning and user input.

• A drive for impact and excellence: solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing what matters most, and continuously improving through learning, user input, and external benchmarking.

• A collaborative and empathetic approach: working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success.

About Our Process

• Application review will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.

• While the hiring process may vary, it generally includes: resume and application submission, recruiter phone/video screen, hiring manager interview, performance exercise such as live coding, a panel interview, a conversation with leadership and reference checks.

What We Offer

At College Board, we offer more than just a paycheck—we provide a meaningful career, a supportive team, and a comprehensive package designed to help you thrive. We’re a self-sustaining nonprofit that believes in fair and competitive compensation, grounded in your qualifications, experience, impact, and the market.

A Thoughtful Approach to Compensation

• The hiring range for this role is $152,000-$210,000.

• Your exact salary will depend on your location, experience, and how your background compares to others in similar roles at the College Board.

• We aim to make our best offer upfront—rooted in fairness, transparency, and market data.

• We adjust salaries by location to ensure fairness, no matter where you live.

You’ll have open, transparent conversations about compensation, benefits, and what it’s like to work at College Board throughout your hiring process. Check out our careers page for more.