Program Portfolio Lead (Internal Applicants Only)

Program Portfolio Lead – Full Time Hire- US Enterprise

Job Description

Job Family US Enterprise

Job Function Programs

Career Track Programs

Job Level Level 4

Job Title Program Portfolio Lead

Pay Grade BG-9

Reporting Line US Enterprise Director

Supervises 4 Direct Reports: Workforce Placement, Retention, & Growth Manager; Community Learning and Family Wellbeing Manager; Data Management & Quality Coordinator, Workforce Design & Implementation Lead; Consultants as needed

Career Path

Status Full time, grant funded; continuation depends on funding. 40 hours a week. Weekday daytime hours, with regular evenings and some weekends, because classes run when participants can come.

Duty Station/Location Minneapolis Hub

On-site, hybrid, remote On-site, non-remote position (expected to work 80% -100% in office, at community sites, or with employers)

Travel expectations Frequent local travel to employer, training and community sites across the Twin Cities metro.

About Alight Alight is a proximity-driven humanitarian organization that restores power and agency to people experiencing displacement. For nearly 50 years, we've walked alongside our customers, displaced communities, in some of the most challenging and complex places in the world. We center the choices, dignity and lived experience of the people we serve, even when it complicates the work.

Alight's purpose is to inspire and unleash abundance in every person. Our mission is to build a meaningful life for and with the displaced: not just meeting basic needs, but building lives filled with joy, dignity and connection. We co-create solutions hand in hand with the communities we serve, because they know best what they need.

About the U.S. Enterprise team Alight U.S. connects New Americans in the Twin Cities to the networks, resources and knowledge they need to navigate employment, education and other U.S. systems. We serve all New Americans: anyone born outside the United States, and their children.

The Role

The Program Portfolio Lead translates program strategy into a coordinated and effective delivery system across Alight’s workforce and community-based initiatives. Reporting to the Director, the Lead supervises and supports Program Managers, aligns implementation across programs, and strengthens the systems, practices, and performance management needed to achieve grant commitments and customer outcomes. While Program Managers remain accountable for the staff, budgets, deliverables, partnerships, and outcomes of their assigned programs, the Program Portfolio Lead provides portfolio-wide oversight, identifies shared risks and opportunities, and drives continuous improvement. The role ensures that Alight’s programs operate as a cohesive, customer-centered portfolio rather than as a collection of individual grants.

Key Responsibilities

1. Program Portfolio Leadership & Strategy (25%)

• Partner with the Director to implement and continuously refine Alight U.S.’s program strategy, with a particular focus on how programs collectively advance economic stability, employment pathways, and longer-term opportunities for the families we serve.
• Translate strategic priorities into operational workplans, milestones, team objectives, and clear areas of accountability across the program portfolio.
• Help create greater coherence across programs and services so that employment, resource navigation, community-based programming, education and training connections, and other supports work together rather than as isolated activities.
• Lead implementation planning for new programs, pilots, service models, partnerships, and workforce initiatives.
• Identify patterns across participant outcomes, service utilization, employment outcomes, community needs, and implementation experience to inform program and workforce strategy.
• Identify opportunities for participants to move more effectively between programs, services, partners, and pathways based on their goals and needs.
• Develop and drive implementation of program refinements based on data, participant feedback, staff experience, and implementation learning.
• Partner with the Director to translate learning from individual programs and grants into larger opportunities for innovation, partnership, funding, and systems-level impact.

2. Program Delivery & Team Management (40%)

• Directly supervise and coach Program Managers responsible for Alight U.S. programs and services.
• Support Program Managers in effective team leadership, performance management, workload planning, staff development, and resolution of complex delivery and personnel challenges.
• Establish clear performance expectations, work priorities, decision-making responsibilities, and accountability measures.
• Facilitate regular cross-program planning focused on deliverables, barriers, dependencies, customer experience, and continuous improvement.
• Track milestones, deliverables, outcomes, and performance indicators across the program portfolio.
• Ensure individual programs successfully meet their commitments while identifying opportunities for coordination, shared infrastructure, and integration across teams.
• Drive solutions to ensure activities remain aligned with approved workplans, budgets, program objectives, and organizational priorities.
• Enable compliance with grant requirements, documentation standards, and reporting deadlines in partnership with Program Managers and relevant organizational teams.
• Identify operational risks and support the development and implementation of mitigation plans.
• Promote a culture of accountability, learning, collaboration, innovation, and customer-centered service delivery.

3. Learning, Evaluation & Continuous Improvement (20%)

• Lead regular review of program outcomes, customer experience, and operational effectiveness across the portfolio.
• Consolidate and interpret performance and learning across programs to identify trends, shared barriers, unmet needs, and opportunities for improvement.
• Use qualitative and quantitative findings - including participant feedback and frontline staff learning - to improve services, processes, and program models.
• Look beyond individual grant metrics to understand how Alight’s collective services are contributing to greater economic stability and opportunity for participants and families.
• Ensure lessons learned are documented, shared across teams, and incorporated into existing and future programming.
• Help identify promising practices, models, and prototypes that warrant further testing, investment, or expansion.
• Promote evidence-based and human-centered decision-making across the program portfolio.

4. Partnership & Program Integration (15%)

• Support strategic relationships with employers, workforce development partners, community organizations, education and training providers, government partners, and other organizations important to participant success.
• Ensure programs and partnerships reflect both participant realities and the needs and opportunities within the systems participants are navigating.
• Facilitate collaboration across employment, resource navigation, community-based programming, case management, and other Alight services.
• Identify gaps that Alight does not need to fill directly and build stronger connections to partners capable of meeting those needs.
• Represent Alight U.S. programs in meetings, presentations, convenings, and external engagements as assigned.
• Provide regular portfolio-level updates to leadership and funding partners, connecting individual program performance to the larger strategy.

What Success Looks Like Success in this role means that Alight U.S. programs do not simply operate successfully as individual grants or services - they increasingly function as a connected portfolio that helps people move toward greater economic stability and opportunity.

The person in this role will:

• Partner closely with the Director and Program Managers to ensure strong implementation and delivery across Alight U.S. programs.
• Build the systems, rhythms, and accountability needed for Program Managers to lead their teams effectively and with increasing independence.
• Coordinate work across grants, programs, and teams to improve alignment, consistency, learning, and operational excellence.
• Help teams understand how their individual programs contribute to a larger participant journey and identify opportunities to create stronger connections between services.
• Ensure learning from frontline delivery informs program decisions, future models, funding opportunities, and organizational strategy.
• Translate the Director’s strategic vision into practical systems, priorities, processes, and team execution.
• Contribute to program innovation, business development, partnerships, and sustainability efforts that strengthen Alight’s impact and position in the broader workforce ecosystem.
• Help Alight move beyond a collection of individual programs toward a cohesive, customer-centered approach in which multiple services and pathways collectively advance economic stability for the families we serve.

Qualifications

Education & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Human Services, Workforce Development, Public Administration, Social Sciences, Business Administration, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 7+ years of progressively responsible experience leading human services, workforce development, refugee or immigrant services, community-based programming, or related work.
• Demonstrated experience overseeing multiple programs, service areas, or complex grant-funded initiatives simultaneously.
• Significant experience supervising and developing managers and program teams.
• Experience translating organizational strategy into operational execution, team priorities, systems, and measurable outcomes.
• Experience using program data, reporting systems, participant feedback, and implementation learning to improve service delivery.
• Strong experience building partnerships across community-based organizations, government, employers, education and training providers, or other cross-sector stakeholders.
• Experience working in environments where programs must respond and adapt to changing community needs, funding conditions, and external systems.

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• Strong understanding of workforce development, economic mobility, human services, and the systems that influence economic stability for New American and other underserved communities.
• Ability to see connections across programs and translate multiple activities, grants, and services into a coherent customer experience and program strategy.
• Strong operational leadership and ability to move between high-level strategy and the practical details required for successful implementation.
• Strong supervisory, coaching, and team-development capabilities, particularly in supporting Program Managers and emerging leaders.
• Ability to manage multiple programs, stakeholders, funding requirements, and competing priorities.
• Experience with performance management, program data, dashboards, reporting tools, and continuous improvement practices.
• Strong facilitation, change management, problem-solving, and partnership-building skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including funder reporting, executive-level presentations, and communication across diverse teams and stakeholders.
• Ability to use evidence, customer experience, and operational learning to challenge assumptions and improve program performance.
• Ability to work effectively in an evolving environment where programs, partnerships, and strategies continue to develop over time.

Other

• Driver’s license and Motor Vehicle Check clearance along with access to dependable transportation required.
• Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States
• Flexibility to work regular evenings and some weekends.
• Languages: English proficiency required. A second language spoken by New Americans in Minnesota (for example Somali, Oromo, Amharic, Arabic, Dari, Pashto, Karen, Spanish, Swahili or French) a plus.

Values Alignment You are curious and truly listen. You appreciate the complexities of human beings. You ask questions, seek information, and dig deeper into understanding a problem holistically before working to solve it. You enter a space with humility and an eagerness to learn.

You believe shared ownership creates better outcomes. You trust displaced customers to guide the way forward. You’re open to new and different possibilities, are motivated in what an abundant future could hold, and you generate ideas sparked from insight – and foster spaces that are safe for others to generate their ideas too. You bring others in, build ecosystems, and share power with those who care about this more than you do. You adapt your work to make space for others.

You embrace transformation. You recognize and honor that our work centers people – a constantly changing and complex customer within a constantly changing and complex world. And so too, we must constantly change. You believe in the abundance of human beings and you understand that to unleash that abundance, we must bravely enter a bold new chapter capable of transforming the future.

You value beauty. You believe a meaningful life includes joy, dignity, and connection. You place weight on the experience people have – of a place, a space, a person, a service. You strive to create things that are human-worthy and you believe quality should be determined by those experiencing it.

Benefits & Compensation

• Salary range is $77,000 - $86,000 , commensurate with experience.
• Benefits-eligible position
• Borderless Team of 2,500 staff worldwide that sees possibility, celebrates moments of abundance, shares new ideas, and strives to do a better thing every day.
• Learning & Development – Access hundreds of free online learning courses to take at your own pace and tailor to your professional goals.
• Flexible Leave Time – Between vacation days, personal leave days, and holidays, you have ample opportunities to take time off when you need it.

Alight is an Equal Opportunity Employer offering employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, citizenship, physical or mental disability, or protected veteran status. Alight complies with all applicable laws governing nondiscrimination in employment. We strive to represent the diverse communities we serve. Applicants who contribute to this diversity and those who bring lived experience with displacement are strongly encouraged to apply.