Senior Director, Strategic Initiatives

Opening:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is North America's largest transportation network, serving a population of 15.3 million people across a 5,000-square-mile travel area surrounding New York City, Long Island, southeastern New York State, and Connecticut. The MTA network comprises the nation’s largest bus fleet and more subway and commuter rail cars than all other U.S. transit systems combined. MTA strives to provide a safe and reliable commute, excellent customer service, and rewarding opportunities.

Job Summary:

Acting as a senior internal consulting leader, this role combines strategic judgment, rigorous problem-solving, disciplined implementation, and team leadership to drive lasting operational change and financial impact for one of the world's most complex transportation systems.

This position supervises teams tackling complex, high-priority initiatives with significant organizational impact, partnering with senior leaders to develop strategic solutions and advance implementation across organizational boundaries. Collaborating with and across operating agencies and headquarters functions to align stakeholders and deliver measurable, sustained improvements in operational performance, financial health, or service quality.

Responsibilities:

Lead the structured diagnosis of complex operational and financial challenges, guiding managers and analysts in framing issues, testing hypotheses, validating insights, and developing recommendations grounded in rigorous data analysis and commercial judgment.
Drive implementation of solutions across complex, cross-functional environments, mobilizing teams, setting a disciplined execution cadence, removing barriers, escalating issues early, and ensuring changes are implemented and sustained.
Serve as a trusted partner to key agency stakeholders in solving nominated problems and helping translate priorities into executable plans.
Help translate priorities into a focused work plan, allocating resources, removing blockers, and holding the team accountable to milestones and targets.
Guide and support managers and analysts through their initiatives, helping structure work plans, clearing obstacles, quality-checking analysis, and ensuring pragmatic recommendations.
Directly manage Senior Managers and Managers by setting goals, evaluating performance, and making decisions on hiring, development, and performance management. Build a high-performance culture grounded in accountability, rigor, and continuous improvement, and a strong pipeline of future leaders.
Lead additional enterprise projects that advance MTA’s strategic objectives, exercising sound judgment, adaptability, and stewardship of MTA resources.

Required Knowledge/Skills/Abilities:

Strong interpersonal and influencing skills, with a demonstrated ability to drive outcomes through cross-functional collaboration, stakeholder alignment and effective leadership without direct authority.
Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills, with a proven ability to turn complex business challenges into data-driven strategies and actionable recommendations.
Proven ability to develop, evaluate, or deliver commercially sound business cases, including assessing opportunities, evaluating trade-offs, quantifying value, and building alignment among senior stakeholders.
Demonstrated ability to lead implementation in complex organizations, navigate competing priorities, adapt approaches, and drive successful outcomes.
Ability to prioritize among competing needs and opportunities and manage multiple initiatives and teams.
Ability to build trusted relationships, develop networks, and influence decision-makers across functions and levels.
Proven track record directly managing and developing teams, including hiring, performance management, coaching, and succession planning. Demonstrated ability to build bench strength and retain top talent.

Required Education and Experience:

Bachelor’s Degree in Arts/Sciences (BA/BS); an equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.
Minimum 10 years of progressively responsible experience, including significant experience in management consulting, corporate strategy, enterprise transformation, strategic advisory roles, or senior product leadership roles within large, complex organizations. Candidates with 7+ years of experience at a top-tier management consulting firm (i.e., McKinsey, Bain, BCG) with demonstrated experience leading complex engagements and advising senior stakeholders may be considered in lieu of the full 10-year requirement.
Minimum 5 years of progressively responsible people management experience, including ownership of hiring, performance management, coaching, and succession planning.

The Following is/are preferred:

Master’s degree in Arts/Sciences (MA/MS) or other relevant graduate degree.
Direct experience with both private and public sector organizations
Exposure to the transportation sector
Strong data & analytics experience, including SQL, Power BI, Tableau, and advanced Excel modeling
Demonstrated technical acumen and the ability to leverage AI and emerging technologies