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 Sr. 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 balancing how to amplify the successful national supplemental and California core strategy nationally.

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 sales targets across new logo acquisition, and expansion for both supplemental and core.
• Build & Scale Talent: Recruit, hire, coach, and retain top-tier frontline Account Executives that can effectively balance selling core and supplemental Newsela products in adoption and open territory.
• 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 Alignment: Shape Newsela’s go-to-market approach for core subjects (including Core ELA/ELD) and supplemental subjects (ELA, Social Studies, STEM, Writing). While California is our first state and we have a team deployed, you will need to fully bring to life the vision for selling during a state adoption cycle while balancing that in one team with supplemental GTM motions. Further, you will lead our other regional teams as we roll out our national core solution into their territories over the next 12+ months. You will continuously align strategy with unique territory needs, including helping managers balance core and supplemental strategies by state and subject.
• 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+ years directly focused on K-12 core curriculum sales (ELA/ELD highly preferred).
• 4+ years Sales Leadership Experience: Proven track record as a second-line leader or Senior Sales Manager leading quota-carrying teams to a collective annual revenue target of $8M+.
• Core Curriculum Mastery: Demonstrated experience leading teams or directly executing multi-year core curriculum adoption campaigns aligned with state board approvals, district funding streams, and complex procurement cycles.
• Enterprise Deal Leadership: Extensive track record navigating large enterprise district accounts (20,000+ students) and managing high-stakes school board and state-level approval processes.
• Framework & Tool Mastery: Deep proficiency in structured sales methodologies (MEDDPICC, Challenger) and sales tech stack execution (Salesforce, Gong, Salesloft, and AI-driven workflow optimization).
• Location & Travel: Willingness to travel up to 30–40% to meet with district/county leaders and support managers in field execution.
• Education & Authorization: Bachelor’s degree in Business, Education, or related field (or equivalent practical experience); legally authorized to work in the US.

This role is classified as an exempt salaried role and is not eligible for overtime.

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