Chief Operating Officer

What You'll Do

The Chief Operating Officer will serve as the senior most enterprise operating leader, responsible for growing the organization from $58M to $100M over the next three years. They will be charged with making the enterprise simpler, while enabling it to scale globally. The COO will be tasked with a mission-critical next-level assignment: preserve what is strong, correct inadequate practices, and create a simpler enterprise that can grow across markets, products, and geographies without recreating complexity.

As the CEO's principal internal operating partner, the COO will establish a common operating system, and build the management discipline and delivery model needed to grow without proportional increases in cost, headcount, risk, or organizational friction. Leading a suite of functional experts managing individual business lines, the COO will own how the enterprise operates.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership

• Build one enterprise operating system: establish clear decision rights, process owners, planning and review rhythms, resource allocation, performance measures, risk escalation, and follow-through.
• Design for scale: create repeatable processes, shared standards, clear regional accountabilities, disciplined localization, and capacity and partner models that can support substantially greater global reach and volume.
• Make growth economically scalable: improve throughput, service quality, contribution margin, and customer experience without adding cost and headcount at the same rate as revenue and activity.
• Extend operating discipline across the enterprise: oversee integrated performance, contribution margin, delivery, customer experience, global scalability, capacity, and leadership effectiveness, including functions outside the COO's reporting lines, while preserving each chief's authority and accountability.
• Simplify first: eliminate unnecessary layers, handoffs, approvals, duplication, exceptions, and workarounds before standardizing or automating the work.

Team and Organizational Leadership

• Manage, coach, develop, and lead a high-performing team: oversee integrated performance, contribution margin, delivery, customer experience, global scalability, capacity, and leadership effectiveness, ensuring business leads can run the system, surface facts early, make timely decisions, and deliver results.
• Serve as a thought partner, mentor, and coach to people managers: advise on organizational structure and processes with an eye to equity, efficiency, impact, and scalability.
• Lead organization-wide planning: ensure the team understands key goals and that workstreams and resources are aligned to organizational goals; track and share performance against key indicators.
• Drive organization-wide effectiveness and efficiency: lead cross-functional teams with colleagues from other departments to monitor and create strategies to minimize institutional risk and maximize effectiveness.
• Lead continuous improvement: Champion and manage change across the organization, and invest internal and external key stakeholders in strategic initiatives, always ensuring that excellence is at the center of decision making.

Who You'll Work With

You will report to AMPP's Chief Executive Officer.

You will directly supervise six direct reports:

• Vice President, Credentialing
• Senior Director, Learning & Development
• Director, Education Operations
• Senior Director, Standards & Technology Engagement
• Senior Director, PMO, Quality & Support
• Director, Technology & Digital Experience

The overall team of 30-50 staff will include the following business lines:

• Education
• Credentials, and Accreditation
• Community, encompassing Membership, Chapters, User Experience, Publications, and Conferences
• Enterprise Project Management
• Business Systems and Facilities

You will frequently collaborate with the executive team, which includes the Chief Growth Officer, Chief Intelligence and Innovation Officer, and Chief Financial Officer. You will:

• Partner with the Chief Growth Officer to convert market strategies and demand generation into disciplined operational execution and strong margins.
• Collaborate with the Chief Intelligence and Innovation Officer to operationalize digital platforms and technological advancements.
• Work closely with the CFO to ensure financial truth, strict controls, and seamless alignment between operating plans and the organization's budgeting and forecasting.

• 15+ years of relevant operations experience, with a minimum of 10 years leading operations in organizations of $30M or more, with meaningful P&L, planning, forecasting, portfolio, and global operating-model experience, ideally in a people-driven organization such as an association, training or credentialing business, professional learning organization, etc.
• Experience as a proven simplifier and scaler who has reduced organizational complexity and built repeatable operating systems across multi-business, globally distributed environments.
• Leadership experience in a global context, with demonstrated success effectively navigating cross-cultural environments.
• Exceptional track record leading high-performing, data-driven teams; ability to coach and develop others to achieve ambitious outcomes and foster a culture of accountability.
• Exceptional judgment, low-ego, cross-functional influence, and the courage to surface difficult facts early and directly.
• Excellent communication and relationship-building skills with internal and external stakeholders, including the ability to prioritize, negotiate, and manage expectations effectively.
• Stellar critical and analytical skills with a track record of driving growth and setting ambitious, data-driven strategic plans, informed by data and external market conditions.
• Experience with NetSuite by Oracle and Nimble is a plus

Location and Work Environment

The preferred location for this role is Houston, Texas. However, candidates located anywhere within the United States are welcome to apply and work remotely.

Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the US and travel internationally without restriction. Domestic travel is estimated at 30-35% and international travel is estimated at 5-10%.

Compensation

The salary range for this role is $325,000 - $350,000. A bonus is possible and dependent upon AMPP's financial performance.

Reasonable Accommodations

AMPP is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you have a disability and you believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or to submit an online application, please e-mail hr@ampp.org or call toll-free +1-800-797-6223. This email and phone number will direct you to our Human Resources and someone who can assist disabled job seekers whose disability prevents them from being able to apply online. Only messages left for this purpose will be returned. Messages left for other purposes, such as following up on an application or technical issues not related to a disability, will not receive a response.

Equal Opportunity Employer

AMPP International is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.