Chief Ecosystem Officer (Education AI Strategy)

At Instructure, we believe in the power of people to grow and succeed throughout their lives. Our goal is to amplify that power by creating intuitive products that simplify learning and personal development, facilitate meaningful relationships, and inspire people to go further in their education and careers.

The opportunity

Over the next decade, someone will build the AI-native stack that education runs on. If it's not Instructure, Instructure gets disrupted. Meeting this moment means making decisions about where to build, where to partner, and where to stay out as AI reshapes the education value chain. Those decisions, and the relationships that carry them out, need a single accountable owner whose vantage point can inform company strategy.

Innovation is the output, not the activity. This function produces it across product, go-to-market, and customer engagement by guiding ecosystem decisions, building co-innovation capability with customers, and contributing to a tested point of view on where education is going.

The role.

This role establishes a company-wide function that sits above account management, services, and feature delivery, where a clear read of the future, combined with direct work with customers and partners, shapes the company's direction. It owns partner ecosystem strategy, builds co-innovation capability, and convenes the point of view that connects both to how Instructure builds and positions itself.

The point of view is synthesized from inputs across the leadership team and stays collective. This role is accountable for making sure the company has a coherent point of view and for connecting it to what gets built.

Focus areas.

1. Ecosystem strategy (45%).

The build, partner, or stay-out decision, and accountability for the relationships that execute it.

• Segment the education value chain and recommend where Instructure builds, where it partners, and where it stays out.

• Own the structure of the partner ecosystem across its tiers, big tech strategics, co-sell and channel relationships, and the vendor network, each mapped to a deliberate role in the value chain.

• Set partner strategy and priorities for the teams running day-to-day operations, which stay in their home functions.

• Structure new partnership categories as they emerge, including enablement vendors, with operating relationships living in the functions that work with them.

• Synthesize customer signal and partnership opportunities into recommendations, the case for product direction, balancing near-term returns against medium- and long-term bets.

• Develop the strategic argument that ecosystem market positioning builds on.

2. Co-innovation (30%).

The institutional extension of the ecosystem, partnering with customers to shape what gets built.

• Co-design partnerships with a focused set of flagship institutions, producing pilots and proof points that visibly inform the roadmap.

• Support development of an enablement function as it builds consultative AI adoption capability, including through partnerships where needed.

• Feed customer signal directly into ecosystem strategy and product strategy alike.

3. Thought leadership (25%)

Convene and sponsor research with partner organizations, giving Instructure a hand in shaping the questions the sector asks.

1. Produce original work in areas of strength, including the future of the LMS, the AI-native tech stack, and the Learning 2.0 ecosystem, and support the wider team to do the same.

2. Synthesize across that body of work into a coherent, testable point of view.

3. Translate the point of view into language and framing internal teams can use.

Why this allocation:

Ecosystem strategy is the source of the other two areas, co-innovation extends that work toward institutions, and thought leadership draws on external collaboration to articulate the point of view externally. The balance will shift as the partner portfolio and the enablement model mature.

Boundaries.

• Day-to-day partner operations stay with the teams that run them today, in sales, customer success, and elsewhere. This function owns the ecosystem strategy those teams execute.

• Marketing owns messaging, campaigns, and brand. This function supplies the strategic argument those express.

• Product decisions stay with Product. This function is a critical input, developed alongside go-to-market, customer success, and the academic organization.

• Enablement scales through the function that owns it. This role contributes design and method.