Venture Associate London, England
Job description
Venture Associate
Location: Ark Schools Central
Reports to: Director (STEM Excellence Portfolio)
Location: West London – currently operating an agile working policy with two core days (Mon and Weds) in the office
Contract: Permanent
Pattern: Full time (standard full-time hours 9am – 5.30pm, part time hours will be considered)
Salary: £45,000 to £60,000 (pro-rated if part time)
We are looking for a new Venture Associate to join the Ark Venture’s team. This is a hands-on, high impact role for an individual keen to make a positive impact on the lives of young people.
You will work as part of an experienced team alongside inspirational charities and social enterprises to help them to successfully grow, become sustainability, and deliver systemic change. You will also help us research new opportunities, launch new ventures and support existing organisations. To do this you will work across functions, covering everything from analytics and strategy through to operations and implementation.
Initially your role will focus on supporting colleagues working to create a range of new opportunities for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to fulfil their potential in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) education and careers; with the potential to also support a broad range of children and young people-focused initiatives.
As a growing team at an exciting inflection point, there is a lot of scope for you to develop new skills, to grow your role within the team and to influence the success of our ventures. This role is a fantastic opportunity for someone who is passionate about improving social mobility and tackling educational inequality.
- Develop our ventures’ strategic planning as they move towards scale, sustainability, and independence
- Developing hypotheses for future growth and testing them via quantitative and qualitative analysis
- Provide day-to-day operational support for Ark’s ventures
- Producing analytics for operational decision-making
- Identifying areas for improvement across multiple ventures and developing knowledge, insights, and recommendations
- Pooling knowledge across the ventures (e.g. by identifying and sharing good business practice from one venture to the others, and encouraging interaction between the ventures)
- Improving the capabilities of our ventures, e.g. by identifying ways to increase the use of data and analytics amongst ventures
- 3+ years’ experience in strategic or analytical roles, e.g. as an analyst or associate in a strategy consultancy
- Experience in strategy consulting and/or producing quantitative and qualitative analysis
- Experience of working with a diverse and complex range of stakeholders
- Strong interpersonal skills and confidence when meeting internal and external stakeholders – ability to persuade, influence and hold others to account
- Flexible, highly organised and able to multi-task and prioritise work to meet deadlines. Comfort working in a small, dynamic, growing organisation
- Happy working with a degree of ambiguity, and creating processes and ways forwards where they might not yet exist
Our network of 39 schools in the UK achieves great results for young people, and some of our schools are among the best in the country. The ventures that we develop, and support are tackling some of the most challenging problems facing young people, both in the UK and around the world.
Many of these ideas start in Ark schools. Others come from innovators and partners outside of Ark. But they all share the ambition to address some of the most intractable issues in education and society and they all have the potential to deliver widespread system change.
Ark Ventures works to overcome the some of the barriers which prevent social issues being addressed at real scale. We provide ventures with bespoke support which includes expertise, access to funding, operational support and networks. The ventures we support are not-for-profit but develop business models which are financially sustainable in the long term.
- 27 days annual leave plus bank holidays, rising with each year of service up to 30 days after 3-years’ service. This entitlement is pro rata for part time employees. This entitlement excludes bank holidays
- Full office closure between Christmas and New Year
- Hybrid working, with currently two days a week in our state-of-the-art office in West London working alongside colleagues
- Regular social events, monthly free breakfast, and daily fruit
- A flexible approach to working with understanding and consideration for work life balance and personal commitments
- As an Ark employee, you will have the opportunity to be part of the TPT (The Pension Trust) scheme, our workplace pension scheme where we make an 11% contribution; you are not required to contribute towards this scheme unless you choose to
- Access to high-quality professional learning throughout your career, offering both face-to-face sessions and a bespoke online learning platform
- Access to Ark Rewards scheme offering savings from over 3,000 major retailers, interest-free loans available for season tickets or a bike, gym discounts offering up to 40% off your local gym and free eye tests
