Executive Director
TGR Learning Lab
Los Angeles
Founding Market Leader | Full-Time, Exempt
Reports To: SVP, Southern California
Location: Los Angeles, California – on-site, with local and occasional national travel
Status: Full-Time, Exempt (comprehensive benefits, paid time off)
Compensation: Competitive and commensurate with experience
About TGR
For nearly three decades, TGR Foundation has worked to create a world where opportunity is universal and potential is limitless. Founded in 1996, the Foundation has reached thousands of young people with STEAM education, career-connected learning, college-access programming, and health and well-being experiences – all designed to help students connect their passion to their purpose.
TGR Learning Labs are the Foundation’s flagship expression of that mission: physical and programmatic hubs where students, educators, and industry partners come together to build the skills, networks, and sense of possibility that change life trajectories.
After more than two decades of impact from a single flagship in Anaheim, the Foundation is entering its most ambitious chapter. A successful Philadelphia expansion (from one lab to two) is now the proof point for a national multi-market model: scaling from two Labs to five-plus over the coming years, with active builds in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Augusta and beyond.
The Opportunity
This is not a traditional nonprofit Executive Director role, and it is not a site-management job. TGR Foundation is hiring the founding leader who will build and own an entire market – from the ground up – as a flagship node in a growing national system.
The Executive Director is entrepreneur, fundraiser, civic leader, program operator, and national partner, rolled into one. You will stand up the Lab before the doors open: hiring the local team, establishing the local board and advisory council, securing the multi-million-dollar local funding base, and forging the education, corporate, philanthropic, and community partnerships that make the Lab a fixture of its city.
Once open, you will run a high-performing learning lab: delivering programming with excellence, representing the Foundation publicly, cultivating a donor and partner portfolio, and working shoulder-to-shoulder with national teams in programs, development, marketing, and operations to keep local impact and national strategy aligned.
We are looking for a builder. Someone who has started, scaled, or transformed something meaningful – and who is energized by the messiness of 0→1 and the discipline of 1→scale. Someone comfortable closing a six- or seven-figure gift in the morning, coaching a program manager at lunch, and sitting across from a superintendent or CEO in the afternoon.
Core Responsibilities
The Executive Director’s work is organized around five pillars. Each is a first-class responsibility – not a secondary add-on – and the role cannot succeed without excellence across all of them.
1. Market Leadership & External Affairs
- Serve as the face and voice of TGR Foundation in Los Angeles — the primary representative to media, public officials, school system leaders, civic institutions, and the communities the Lab serves.
- Set the local strategy and vision in partnership with the national leadership team; translate national priorities into a credible, differentiated market plan.
- Build the civic footprint of the Lab: show up at the tables that matter, join the coalitions that move policy and resources, and ensure TGR is a known and trusted institution in the city.
- Stand up and chair a local advisory board or council of influential community, corporate, and philanthropic leaders; activate members as ambassadors, connectors, and funders.
- Shape the narrative: work with national marketing and communications to elevate local stories, secure earned media, and position the Lab as a destination for partners and talent.
2. Fundraising & Partnerships
Fundraising is a central, non-negotiable function of this role. The Executive Director is the market’s top revenue leader and is accountable for building a sustainable, diversified, multi-million-dollar local funding base.
- Own the local annual and multi-year fundraising plan; personally lead cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship of major individual, corporate, foundation, and public funders.
- Build a qualified pipeline from scratch where needed - identify, research, and open doors with new donors and prospects; systematically move relationships from introduction to investment.
- Secure cornerstone corporate and philanthropic partnerships that fund programming, capital needs, and endowment-style support, and that create career-connected opportunities for students.
- Partner tightly with the national Development team on shared donors, gift agreements, events, stewardship communications, and CRM hygiene; leverage national infrastructure rather than duplicating it.
- Personally steward the Foundation’s highest-value local relationships - anchor partners, naming donors, campus partners - with the sophistication those relationships require.
- Hit or exceed annual revenue targets that fully offset the local operating budget, with a clear path to growth year-over-year.
3. Pre-Launch & Program Execution
Pre-Launch (Months Before The Doors Open)
- Own the local annual and multi-year fundraising plan; personally lead cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship of major individual, corporate, foundation, and public funders.
- Build a qualified pipeline from scratch where needed - identify, research, and open doors with new donors and prospects; systematically move relationships from introduction to investment.
- Secure cornerstone corporate and philanthropic partnerships that fund programming, capital needs, and endowment-style support, and that create career-connected opportunities for students.
- Partner tightly with the national Development team on shared donors, gift agreements, events, stewardship communications, and CRM hygiene; leverage national infrastructure rather than duplicating it.
- Personally steward the Foundation’s highest-value local relationships - anchor partners, naming donors, campus partners - with the sophistication those relationships require.
- Hit or exceed annual revenue targets that fully offset the local operating budget, with a clear path to growth year-over-year.
Ongoing Program Execution
- Deliver the TGR Learning Lab model with excellence - STEAM education, career-connected learning, college access, and health and well-being programming - calibrated to local student needs
- Ensure the Lab is a safe, inspiring, and welcoming space for every student, family, educator, and partner who walks through the door.
- Oversee enrollment, attendance, persistence, and outcomes; build a data-driven culture of continuous improvement using program and survey data.
- Partner with the national Programs team to implement shared curriculum, surface local insights, and contribute to the evolution of the TGR Learning Lab model across markets.
4. Team & Operational Leadership
- Recruit, develop, and retain a high-performing team of educators, program leads, and operations staff; build a bench of local talent capable of scaling with the Lab.
- Set clear goals, operating cadences, and performance standards; coach managers and hold the team accountable to outcomes.
- Cultivate a workplace culture rooted in equity, excellence, curiosity, and belonging - one where staff are proud to build their careers.
- Own the local P&L: build and manage the multi-million-dollar annual operating budget in partnership with the national CFO; make disciplined trade-offs between program ambition and financial sustainability.
- Oversee facility operations, safety, compliance, technology, and vendor management in coordination with national operations.
5. Collaboration with the National Team
- Operate as a market leader inside a national system - not as an island; actively leverage national shared services across programs, development, marketing, HR, finance, technology, and operations.
- Represent the local market’s perspective in national planning; advocate for the resources, tools, and policies your team needs to win locally.
- Share playbooks, talent, and lessons learned with peer Executive Directors across markets; help build the “how we do it” of TGR at national scale.
- Model a one-team mindset: what is good for the national mission is good for the market, and vice versa.
Local Market Partnerships
The Executive Director will serve as TGR Foundation’s lead representative on the Lulu’s Place academic and athletic campus in Westchester, working alongside the Kimmelman Family Foundation, the USTA Foundation, and Winward Academy to maximize cross-campus programming and impact. Core education partners include LAUSD, Inglewood Unified School District, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (including St. Bernard High School), and a network of CBOs serving under-resourced communities across South and West LA. The ED will cultivate a local donor base drawn from Los Angeles’ entertainment, technology, sports, and private philanthropic communities.
Candidate Profile
We are looking for a proven builder and market leader — someone who blends executive presence, entrepreneurial drive, and a deep personal commitment to educational opportunity. Candidates will typically bring the following:
Experience
- 5+ years of progressive leadership experience, with meaningful time in roles where you were personally accountable for revenue, external relationships, and organizational outcomes.
- Demonstrated success as a builder - launching, scaling, or materially transforming an organization, program, or market (nonprofit, education, mission-driven enterprise, or equivalent).
- A track record of raising significant philanthropic or mission-aligned revenue, including personal ownership of six- and seven-figure gifts and multi-year partnerships.
- Experience leading teams of educators and operators in service of outcomes for young people, particularly those from under-resourced communities.
- Experience operating inside, or in close partnership with, a national organization - and comfort balancing local autonomy with national alignment.
- Established relationships or credible pathways into the target market’s education, corporate, philanthropic, and civic ecosystems strongly preferred.
Attributes
- Entrepreneurial. You see the gap and the opportunity before anyone has asked you to.
- Externally credible. You can walk into a room of superintendents, CEOs, donors, or elected officials and hold your own.
- Relationship-driven. Your first instinct is to build the network; your second is to activate it.
- Operationally disciplined. You can run a budget, a dashboard, and a team review - and you expect the same of your people.
- Mission-obsessed. You come back to students and families as the reason for every decision.
- High-integrity and low-ego. You represent a national brand with care, and you share credit generously.
- Resilient. You do not need everything to be figured out to move; you bring order to ambiguity.
Skills & Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree or equivalent professional experience preferred.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication; strong public-speaking presence.
- Sophisticated stakeholder management - from students and staff to donors, boards, and public officials.
- Strong financial literacy and comfort owning a multi-million-dollar operating budget.
- Proficiency with Microsoft 365; fluency with Salesforce (or comparable CRM) strongly preferred.
- Willingness and ability to work evenings and weekends as required by programming, fundraising, and community events.
Base Pay Range
$175K-$205K
This role is eligible for a performance bonus.
Equal Opportunity & How to Apply
TGR Foundation is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a team whose backgrounds and lived experiences reflect the communities we serve.
To apply, please submit a cover letter and résumé as a single PDF to Carrigan Johnson at [email protected]. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
As this is a confidential search, we’re unable to respond to individual inquiries or arrange exploratory calls at this stage.