Director, Sales (Core & Supplemental)

Why You’ll Love This Role Newsela is seeking a strategic, high-growth Director of Sales to lead, scale, and inspire our Core Curriculum and Supplemental sales organization. Reporting directly to the Senior Director of Sales, you will oversee the Sales Managers and Account Executives driving the expansion of Newsela’s core curriculum and Newsela supplemental portfolios with an immediate strategic focus on navigating California’s complex state adoption landscape. In this role, you will lead through frontline managers to build high-performing sales teams, architect regional go-to-market strategies, and partner with district- and state-level education leaders. You will foster a positive, "people-first" high-performance culture while establishing predictable revenue models, refining enterprise sales plays (utilizing MEDDPICC), and positioning Newsela as the premier core curriculum partner across school districts. What You’ll Be Doing Strategic Leadership & Revenue Growth • Drive Regional Strategy & Quota Achievement: Accountable for consistently meeting or exceeding regional and state core curriculum sales targets across new logo acquisition, expansion, and multi-year state adoption campaigns. • Build & Scale Talent: Recruit, hire, coach, and retain top-tier frontline Account Executives. Build a scalable org structure capable of expanding from localized California core adoption initiatives into multi-state core curriculum opportunities. • Pipeline Oversight & Strategic Forecasting: Deliver precise, reliable monthly, quarterly, and annual regional revenue forecasts to executive leadership. Maintain rigorous pipeline discipline across teams, ensuring a minimum of 2.5x pipeline-to-quota coverage at all times. Management Coaching & Operational Excellence • Cultivate a High-Performance, "People-First" Culture: Lead through frontline leaders by creating an environment that empowers teams, celebrates wins, and establishes repeatable best practices across territories. • Manager & Deal Coaching: Conduct regular deal and pipeline reviews with Sales Managers and Senior AEs. Leverage methodologies like MEDDPICC and insights from tools such as Gong to coach on complex K-12 procurement, school board approval navigation, and multi-year adoption cycles. • Performance & Territory Management: Guide managers in designing and executing comprehensive regional territory plans. Oversee team performance management on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis, providing actionable feedback and establishing gap-to-goal strategies when necessary. Market Execution & Field Engagement • Executive & Field Modeling: Travel up to 30–40% within the region to co-sell, model leadership behaviors in the field, and build executive relationships with key district superintendents, county office leaders, and state adoption decision-makers. • GTM Strategy (Core Adoption and Supplemental): Shape Newsela’s go-to-market approach for our Core Curriculum (including Core ELA/ELD) as well as our Newsela Supplemental Portfolio. Continuously align strategy with unique K-12 demographics, funding shifts, state initiatives, and adoption frameworks. • Cross-Functional Executive Partnership: Serve as the strategic voice of the field to executive leadership, Product, Field Marketing, Customer Success, Enablement, Finance, and Operations teams to inform future core product development and streamline go-to-market alignment. • Data-Driven Operations: Oversee accurate CRM usage (Salesforce) and leverage modern AI sales tools to optimize territory prioritization, deal flow analytics, and operational efficiency across the leadership hierarchy. About You • 10+ years total K-12 Sales Experience: Deep expertise in the K-12 EdTech and instructional material space, with a minimum of 5+ y