Vice President Operations (North Central) - Remote

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Summit School Services companies share a strong commitment to provide the highest level of transportation safety, quality transportation, outstanding customer service and positive employee relations. Our corporate headquarters, located in Warrenville, Illinois, houses the administrative and corporate support functions for the organization. Our 250+ local customer service centers (CSCs) are supported by regional operations teams located throughout North America.

Position Overview

The Vice President of Operations ensures operational excellence across a geographically diverse portfolio by standardizing best practices, driving performance discipline, and building a strong leadership bench. The VP plays a critical role in shaping culture, strengthening compliance, enabling scalable growth, and ensuring that Region Managers and the locations they lead operate with clarity, alignment, and accountability. This role also serves as a strategic thought partner to the SVP, influencing enterprise priorities through operational insight and field-driven feedback.

Reporting Structure

• Reports to: Senior Vice President, Operations
• Direct Reports: Region Managers (2-X regions depending on scope)

Key Responsibilities & Expectations

Operational Leadership

The VP, Operations is expected to use data-driven insights to identify performance trends, intervene with precision, and uphold a high-performance operating rhythm across all regional teams.

• Driving overall operational performance across regions, ensuring results meet or exceed standards for safety, service delivery, labor stability, cost controls, and profitability.
• Establishing consistency by standardizing operational processes and ensuring best practices are implemented and sustained across every location.
• Preparing regions for scale-ensuring readiness for new contracts, expansions, and customer-driven growth by proactively addressing operational gaps and resource needs.
• Leading stabilization and turnaround efforts in underperforming regions, deploying targeted remediation plans, and ensuring accountability for rapid improvement.

Drive Revenue Growth

The VP, Operations is expected to have a growth-mindset and continuously be securing new opportunities to increase revenue through expanding routes and charter activity across all regional areas.

• Develop a growth-mindset with General Managers and teams to ensure local opportunities are identified and implemented.

Leadership & Talent Development

The VP, Operations cultivates a disciplined talent culture where performance is clear, coaching is proactive, and leadership readiness is continuously strengthened.

• Coaching and developing Region Managers through structured performance expectations, regular 1:1 engagement, and clear feedback mechanisms.
• Fostering a culture rooted in people-first leadership, safety, customer service, performance excellence, and continuous improvement.
• Holding Region Managers accountable for developing General Managers and CSC leadership, ensuring capable pipelines.
• Leading succession planning for Region Manager and General Manager roles, identifying high-potential leaders and supporting their development.
• Partnering with HR to assess leadership bench strength, identify skills gaps, and implement development plans that support organizational growth.

Execution & Alignment

The VP, Operations acts as a critical conduit between enterprise strategy and field execution, ensuring that organizational priorities translate into tangible operational outcomes.

• Converting the Company's direction, policies and processes into clear regional action plans with measurable objectives and execution milestones.
• Ensuring initiatives and standards are deployed consistently with strong change-management support and follow-through.
• Serving as the escalation leader for complex operational, labor, safety, or service issues, enabling rapid resolution and protecting the customer experience.
• Prioritizing and filtering issues to shield the SVP from unnecessary operational noise, elevating only high-impact concerns.

Field Presence & Stakeholder Engagement

The VP, Operations is expected to be a highly visible field leader-balancing strategic oversight with hands-on engagement that reinforces culture, drives consistency, and builds customer confidence.

• Conducting regular site visits to assess operational health, engage teams, and reinforce performance expectations.
• Building trust-based relationships with customers to exceed expectations and identify opportunities for additional business growth.
• Strengthening credibility with location leaders and frontline supervisors through transparent communication and partnership.

Working collaboratively with Safety, HR, Labor, Operations Improvement and other support functions to ensure compliance and maintain operational excellence.

Pay range for this position starts at $200,000 annual salary.

Qualifications

Qualifications & Experience

• Extensive experience leading multi-site, field-based operations with full accountability for safety, service, and financial performance.
• Demonstrated success coaching and developing experienced leaders, with a strong track record of building bench strength.
• Deep operational judgment, particularly in safety, labor relations, and risk mitigation within complex, regulated, or service-intensive environments.
• Ability to travel extensively across the assigned geography to maintain strong field engagement.
• Field-first mindset with strong operational credibility and hands-on leadership style.
• Direct, fair, and decisive, capable of holding leaders accountable while building trust and partnership.
• Strategic thinker with disciplined execution skills, capable of balancing long-term vision with immediate operational needs.
• Calm under pressure, able to navigate crises and high-stakes issues while maintaining alignment and focus.
• Must reside in IL, WI, IA or MN

Summit School Services has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with its policies and values, including sexual exploitation and abuse, harassment, abuse of authority, and discrimination. Summit School Services is committed to promoting the protection and safeguarding of all children and passengers.

We offer medical, dental, vision, basic life insurance coverage, holiday pay, and PTO accrual. Additionally, employees are able to enroll in a retirement savings plan.

At Summit School Services our goal is to be a diverse workforce that is representative of the communities we serve. All employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information (including characteristics and testing), military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Summit School Services LLC's independent subsidiaries and affiliates are an equal employment opportunity (EEO) employer

The pay rate range, along with most all of the other terms and conditions of employment, vary between different sites, geographical markets, customer/ contractual terms and positions.

If you have questions about this posting, please contact [email protected]