College Board Employee Reviews about "senior leadership"

Pros

Great PTO and benefits package

Cons

If you are Caucasian and Jewish you will most likely thrive here. If you are anything else you will most likely not reach senior leadership level nor be promoted. It takes nothing but looking at the executive leadership to see the lack of diversity.

Pros

Benefits are superb! = College tuition for your children (yes you read that right!) = Very significant company donation to retirement plan = Good health care Also a fantastic mission on paper - conceptually a great opportunity to do some great things. Most of the staff (especially in New York and the field) are very nice, well intentioned and passionate about the work (Reston is nice but leader seems to be going in reverse / "full speed backwards!") Great long term potential for a company making lots of money.

Cons

The new leadership seems to be all about rhetoric - in other words 'lots of sizzle, little steak!'. The in-fighting and politics are mind numbing - new leadership appears to be flailing. COO seems good but might be too steep of a hill to climb to make the organization functional w/o changing senior leadership. Good intentions and great messaging but seemingly going backwards - severe micro-management, no real commitment to doing what is best for students (too much focus on leadership agendas vs. real action). Leadership makes bold but ill informed statements without listening to the implications from the staff = not being able to deliver on unrealistic commitments. Not enough focus on real results and improving the organization. Simply not a modern organization - from dated HR practices, to lack of organizational alignment on results, to poor technology leadership, to lots of politics and favortism, to lack of results driven culture. Seem more interested in creating a 'salute to leadership' culture than driving any real improvements. Needs real leadership change but recent changes seem to have included some very poor ones. Smart does not equal effective...

Pros

Good benefits and good mission

Cons

Senior leadership makes poor decisions on hiring incompetent people and laying off competent people. Also, it's very difficult to find a different position within the company.

Pros

Flexible schedule. Great benefits, including a wonderful 4013B contribution. Great mission and colleagues. Events are awesome.

Cons

Senior leadership is terrible. Cronyism is sickening and crippling to the culture. Lots of insecure managers who do not know how to lead. Too much bickering between teams. General feeling of negativity is pervasive. Limited career options. The most toxic environment I've ever encountered.

Pros

Lots of fine colleagues doing great work at the middle and lower rungs of the org. Excellent benefits, paid time off, and compensation.

Cons

- Don't be fooled by the many brief, bland positive reviews on here, which read like they were lifted from a PR playbook. - Since Coleman came on board, the corporate culture has nosedived into toxicity and chaos. The dysfunction centers at the ED, VP, and SVP levels. Senior leadership use shady PR tactics to communicate internally. They obfuscate and pit departments against each other. Not a culture of cross-team collaboration: more like a network of sweaty gladiator pits. - Enormous projects are mismanaged. Information is hoarded. Well meaning employees are pushed to their limits. - What passes for feminism here is merely 'Lean In' superhero worship.

Pros

Mission. Benefits. Comp. People.

Cons

Misinformed and incompetent senior leadership.

Pros

Good benefits, competitive pay, full-time remote work. I enjoy working with my immediate colleagues.

Cons

Senior management is very cliquey. With the recent reorganization it was disappointing to see that 99+% of the cuts were below the VP level and many employees have recognized it as well. I guess senior leadership felt that their positions are critical and self-reflection is not a virtue. Also, senior leaders made the decision who to eliminate from their ivory tower with ZERO input from managers, in some cases letting good performers go and keeping low performers. The reorg added workload to many, some significantly. Work life balance is not a priority although they claim it is and you can forget about diversity. Their answer was to ask managers to submit names of minority employees that should be considered for promotion. If you want promoted, you better do more than a good job and plan on acting like a toady with your manager and above.

Pros

Great opportunity with a mission driven employer, if you are on a team that functions as a team rather than as individuals who happen to work together. At the end of the day, you do good things for schools and students.

Cons

Brutal contracts process often dismays clients. You're hands are often tied there. Teams often find it difficult to work cross-functionally. Vague senior leadership.

Pros

There are a few great people still here, which makes this a nice place to work still..

Cons

You have to be part of the 'Sallie Mae' club to do well in IT and Ops group in this company. There are so many incompetent Executive Directors that I have lost count. In my team too, few are favored too much, they get the most favorable assignments, get to sit in on all senior leadership meetings. They also got promoted solely because they were either friends with someone at the Senior Leadership or purely by their past association at Sallie Mae.

Pros

The organization has very good benefits. The organization's mission is good.

Cons

Senior leadership is bad. Specifically, current IT leadership is extremely bad.