Partner Relations Manager

We are looking for an experienced Partner Relations Manager (internally referred to as an Account Manager) to join our Academic Account Management team!

 As a Partner Relations Manager (higher education), you will act as the primary point of contact for our current and future North American schools holding a book of 30-40 academic clients based in Canada and the US. You will be responsible for the renewal and expansion of those accounts, driving faculty adoption of the Riipen platform, and building Riipen’s brand on and off campus. Leveraging your knowledge of the higher education industry you will establish and nurture relationships with decision-makers and educators at your institutions to ensure they find success with Riipen and can partner with us on encouraging their colleagues to adopt Riipen in their classes. 

Your passion for sales and delivering exceptional customer support will connect employers, students, and academic partners to the right experiential learning opportunities helping students throughout North America connect with some of the world’s most exciting companies and find jobs they love when they graduate.

This role collaborates with academic clients across Eastern, Central, and Pacific time zones. The ideal candidate will have flexibility in scheduling and availability.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive revenue growth and contract renewals for a book of accounts across North America working with all contacts associated with the account including educators, career services, and decision-makers;

• Develop account success plans at the account and educator level; deeply understanding the goals of the account and the individual educators using the Riipen platform to drive the best possible experience;

• Coordinate with partners at academic institutions to design a detailed rollout plan for top-down and organic bottom-up faculty adoption with targets and timelines customized for the academic partners’ goals utilizing all Riipen customer-facing teams; 

• Work closely with the Academic Sales team to successfully transition new accounts to our services and set them up for future success;

• Conduct regular check-ins and follow-ups with decision-makers and educators at institutions in your book of accounts;

• Host webinars, platform demos, meetings and workshops (including on-site, when possible) to spread Riipen brand awareness at your partner institutions; 

• Consult on experiential learning assignment design and development with educators;

• Create proposals and presentations to drive renewal and expansion discussions; 

• Report on key metrics for your accounts that align with Riipen departmental and company OKRs (Objectives and Key Results);

• Partner with career services teams to help them engage their own employer and alumni networks in project-based learning;

• Work closely with our Customer Success team to ensure that your accounts are receiving exceptional customer service; 

• Work closely with Employer Partnerships to ensure we are acquiring good-fit projects for academic institutions.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

Great Candidates Will Have...

• 5+ years experience in a client-facing relationship-building or sales role, ideally in a role focused on account growth and expansion; 

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent diploma in education, business, marketing, or related discipline;

• Previous experience working in or a clear understanding of the education sector (higher-ed preferred);

• A sales mindset, working to meet and exceed revenue targets through delivering exceptional, value-add relationships with your accounts;  

• Experience in presenting to clients and are comfortable building engaging sales-based presentations to a range of audiences;

• Passion and experience in building strong relationships both in person and remotely;

• A data-driven spirit, driven and motivated to understand metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to hit your goals;

• An entrepreneurial spirit and enjoy working in a fast-paced, start-up environment;

• A natural ability to inspire our customers to get excited about working with Riipen;

• Strong problem-solving, organizational, and analytical skills.

Bonus Points:

• Experience working in or closely with a SaaS business;

• Knowledge of or experience with project-based experiential learning;

• Experience and success working with remote teams;

• Experience with HubSpot, G-Suite for Business.

If you feel like you don’t check all the boxes but have the potential to learn what you don’t know, still apply! We believe that diverse teams are high-performing teams and we strive to employ individuals with a diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. 

If this role excites you, we look forward to receiving your application!

Benefits

• 4-weeks of annual vacation 

• Extended Health and Dental benefits from your first day

• Work From Home Stipend and a Learning & Development fund after 6 months of employment

• Remote work environment with work travel opportunities (when appropriate)

We appreciate your interest and application. Only those applicants under consideration will be contacted. 

Riipen is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. Employment decisions are based on merit and business needs, and not on race, colour, creed, age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, marital status, medical condition, physical or mental disability, military service, pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions or any other classification protected by federal, state or provincial and local laws and ordinances. 

Reasonable accommodation is available for qualified individuals with disabilities, upon request.

About Riipen

Conceptualized by Dana Stephenson and Dave Savory for their capstone entrepreneurship project at the University of Victoria, Riipen addressed an issue that they faced personally as learners — the challenge of gaining relevant work experience, building a network of possible employers, and then demonstrating their skills to that network in order to find work that would help them start their careers. They were facing the graduation conundrum — You can’t get a job without experience, but you can’t get experience without a job. 

Since inception in 2013, Riipen has expanded its reach internationally and has developed a state of the art technology platform that caters and provides significant competitive advantages for organizations and academic institutions while staying true to their original goal of supporting student development. Riipen has enabled 193,000+ students at 590+ post-secondary institutions and training providers to partake in applied learning with 31,000+ companies. All of this leads us to our mission: Eliminate Underemployment.