Senior Strategist - Future of Education and AI Innovation

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career. Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families. The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:   Grade: Professional 312 Pay Range: $109,900.00 - $170,400.00 Job Description The Senior Strategist within the Program Experience Futures team owns a portfolio of AI initiatives from first concept through prototypes. This role sets the evidence standards the team uses to decide what advances and what stops, designs and runs experiments that answer questions leadership cannot answer any other way, and translates emerging technology into decision-ready recommendations for academic and operational partners. The Senior Strategist works independently on ambiguous, high-visibility problems, mentors Strategists, and represents the team’s work to partner directors and university leadership.   Location: This position will be based on-site at our Salt Lake City, UT office. Essential Functions and Responsibilities Innovation Portfolio Ownership : Own a portfolio of Innovation initiatives end-to-end, from problem framing and hypothesis through prototype, evaluation, and handoff or sunset. Recommend which initiatives advance, scale, or stop. Strategy Development : Develop AI strategies that connect emerging capabilities to specific student outcomes and institutional priorities. Translate broad direction from leadership into scoped, testable workstreams. Prototyping and Experimentation : Design and build prototypes and experiments that test whether an approach works before the university invests in it. Define the question, the method, and the threshold for success in advance. Evidence and Evaluation Design : Set the evaluation design for assigned initiatives, including instrumentation, measures, comparison conditions, and analysis plan. Produce findings that partners can act on and defend. Data Analysis and Insight : Analyze quantitative and qualitative data to produce insights that change decisions. Distinguish signal from noise and state confidence honestly. Cross-Functional Partnership : Build durable working relationships with academic programs, assessment, technology, institutional research, and student-facing operations. Secure the alignment an initiative needs before it needs it. Responsible AI Practice : Apply the university’s Responsible AI standards throughout design and deployment. Identify ethical, legal, privacy, accessibility, and bias risks early, document them, and drive mitigation with the AI Ethicist and governance partners. Emerging Technology Assessment : Track the AI and learning technology landscape. Evaluate vendors, models, tools, and research, and convert what matters into clear recommendations with tradeoffs and cost. Knowledge Transfer and Enablement : Build the artifacts that let others use the work, including documentation, playbooks, briefings, and