Most Important Skills For a Senior Manager of Academics at TNTP
Ashley, a Senior Manager of Academics at TNTP, highlights "strategic prioritization" as crucial, balancing multiple projects for maximum impact while working with diverse clients. The ability to "motivate and influence" colleagues and clients, combined with "cross-cultural agility" and clear communication, are also essential for success in this role, given the diverse teams and communities they work within.
Strategic Prioritization, Cross-Cultural Agility, Motivating and Influencing, Communication, Project Management
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Ashley D. Essary
Senior Manager of Academics
TNTP
Texas Christian University (2010)
University of Colorado at Denver, MA in Curriculum & Instruction: Pedagogy for Urban Leadership, concentration in English Language Acquisition
Fine Arts, Music
Education
Strategic Management and Executive
Honors Student, Scholarship Recipient, Took Out Loans, LGBTQ, First Generation College Student
Video Highlights
1. Strategic prioritization: Balancing multiple projects and tasks while maximizing impact.
2. Motivating and influencing: Effectively communicating ideas and convincing others.
3. Cross-cultural agility: Working effectively with diverse teams and understanding different perspectives.
Transcript
What sort of skills are most important for a job like yours?
There are a few different things that are going to ground this habit at tntp, because that's what we focus on in terms of how we can grow in our jobs. Strategic prioritization is a big one.
That's about balancing multiple asks and projects and doing all of them well, not just with quality, but in a way that has strategic impact. I'm on two contracts, and people are on maybe one up to six contracts at the same time, working with a variety of different clients. So you really need to know how to balance all of that for the greatest impact, not just so that it all gets done.
Another component is motivating and influencing, up, down, and across different clients and colleagues. How can I convey a point of view really clearly and convince people of what I want them to do?
Then another one is cross-cultural agility, which is really understanding myself and understanding the perspectives of others so that I can work effectively across lines of difference and build really inclusive, diverse teams and equitable outcomes, especially in education.
A lot of what we're doing is going into communities, so it's really important to understand that community. tntp is really great about having a very diverse team across age, experience, race, etc. Being able to work with people who have different backgrounds is really key to my job.
Generally, as a senior manager, clear communication is super important. I'm communicating to thousands of teachers, hundreds of coaches, and communicating to clients and communicating with teammates. My ability to be really clear and succinct about what it is that I am wanting or saying is really important for not just effective professional development and effective client emails, but just in the work generally. It's very valuable.