Project Associate, High Potential Students

About the Role

Central Square Foundation (CSF) is a non-profit philanthropic organization working to ensure quality school education for all children in India. The High Potential Students (HPS) workstream aims to support bright young minds from underprivileged backgrounds in becoming future innovators, researchers, and leaders. By 2030, CSF aims to transform the learning journeys of 1 lakh students.

Key Responsibilities

Programme Implementation and Coordination

• Support the execution of key programme priorities under the High Potential Students workstream, especially across model schools.
• Build and manage working relationships with diverse stakeholders, including regional government teams, school leaders, programme partners, educational nonprofits, vendors, and internal CSF teams.
• Coordinate with implementation partners to monitor and review programs across EdTech, assessments, academic enrichment, and career pathways, ensuring effective progress tracking, timely identification of gaps, and appropriate follow-through on action items.
• Support stakeholder convenings, partner check-ins, review meetings, and government updates by collating data, preparing materials, documenting discussions, and tracking next steps.

Project Management, Reviews and Reporting

• Maintain programme trackers, timelines, meeting notes, action-item logs, data templates, and other tools required for day-to-day monitoring and review.
• Manage timelines and deliverables for assigned workstreams to ensure that activities are on track and aligned with project objectives.
• Prepare clear written outputs, including field visit notes, meeting minutes, update emails, review notes, progress summaries, presentations, reports, and internal briefing documents.
• Provide timely updates to internal teams and CSF leadership on implementation progress, key insights, risks, opportunities, and areas for course correction.

Data, Field Insights and Documentation

• Support rigorous data cleaning, validation, and analysis to identify trends, implementation gaps, inconsistencies, and areas requiring follow-up or course correction, while also supporting the development and maintenance of dashboards, trackers, and other data platforms for programme monitoring and review.
• Conduct targeted field visits to schools and institutions to gather operational and academic insights, understand implementation realities, and document observations.
• Document key learnings, field insights, implementation challenges, and emerging practices to inform reviews, reporting, programme improvement, and future scale-up.

Problem Solving and Agile Support

• Identify, assess, and escalate implementation risks and bottlenecks in partner delivery, school-level execution, data availability, or communication, while supporting proactive issue resolution.
• Collaborate with internal teams to ensure smooth project delivery, timely communication of progress, and follow-through on agreed priorities.
• Support emerging priorities and time-sensitive tasks that may arise from government stakeholders, programme partners, or internal teams, with the ability to respond quickly, organise next steps, and drive closure in a dynamic work environment.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Skills: Project management, data analysis, documentation, reporting, communication (written and oral), stakeholder coordination, problem-solving, agility.
• Tools: Proficiency with data platforms, trackers, and other monitoring tools.

Qualifications

• 0 to 2 years of post-qualification work experience, preferably in the education sector, development sector, programme management, EdTech implementation, assessments, school-system reform, or government-facing projects.
• Strong project management skills or demonstrated ability to manage timelines, trackers, follow-ups, action items, and multiple priorities simultaneously.
• Good writing and oral communication skills, with proficiency and fluency in English and Hindi.
• Good project delivery skills, including the ability to coordinate with partners, schools, government teams, and internal colleagues to drive execution and ensure closure on deliverables.
• Ability to work with student-level, school-level, assessment, platform usage, or programme monitoring data to derive implementation insights and support reviews.
• Strong documentation and reporting skills, including the ability to prepare meeting notes, progress updates, field visit reports, review materials, and concise internal briefs.
• Strong growth and learning mindset, with attention to detail, ownership of assigned tasks, problem-solving orientation, agility to take up emerging priorities, and willingness to travel across implementation schools within/outside of Delhi NCR.