Acquisition Onboarding Manager

ISP Acquisition Onboarding Manager (OBM)

Reporting to: Senior Acquisition Onboarding Manager

Location: Remote, Brazil with travel to acquired schools within LATAM region as required

Purpose of the role

As an Acquisition Onboarding Manager (OBM) at ISP, you play a pivotal role in the successful integration of newly acquired schools into the ISP group, from completion through to a fully onboarded, compliant and operationally ready.

This is a dynamic and hands-on role that combines PMO discipline with hands-on delivery execution. You will not only oversee the integration plan but also actively contribute to the completion of critical tasks, particularly in time-sensitive areas such as Finance. You’ll be the central point of accountability for the onboarding timeline, progress tracking, risk mitigation, and issue resolution.

The OBM does not sit behind a dashboard reporting on other people’s progress; the OBM makes things happen.

Stepping in is a judgement call, not a default. You step in to unblock delivery, protect a milestone, or build capability in a school that does not yet have it – not to permanently absorb work that belongs to a function or a region, as it covers every function involved in bringing a school into ISP.

You proactively business partner with the School Leadership team on one side, and the Regional, Divisional and Group functions on the other, facilitating both sides to work as one. You translate the group onboarding plan into something a school can deliver, and you translate the school’s reality back into decisions, escalations and support from the region and Group.

You will be structured, credible with senior level stakeholders, comfortable challenging functions and regions, and capable of holding a complex plan together across multiple countries, languages and time zones – while remaining close enough to the detail to deliver it yourself when that is what the school needs.

Key Responsibilities

Cross-Functional Coordination & Stakeholder Management:

• Act as the primary link between Group Business Development, regional leadership, and school teams, ensuring sharing of key information and objectives post-acquisition.
• Work with Group Heads of Function to ensure onboarding task lists are actionable, prioritised, and well understood by operational teams.
• Facilitate interdepartmental collaboration to align on key tasks, timelines, and deliverables, encouraging open communication and timely issue resolution.
• Support a culture of continual learning and sharing by facilitating knowledge transfer sessions and contributing to onboarding process refinement.

Regional Management & Regional Support:

• Lead the development of customised onboarding project plans in monday.com for each school, ensuring alignment with ISP’s integration framework and timelines.
• Guide regional and school teams in understanding their onboarding responsibilities and deliverables.
• Monitor progress across all functional areas, identifying delays early, assessing risks and impacts and coordinating with stakeholders to implement corrective measures.
• Provide practical assistance and support in completing assigned, time-critical tasks where there are capacity or capability challenges.
• Work closely with the Regional Managing Director & Senior Onboarding Manager to prioritise resource allocation and manage project load to ensure timely delivery of all onboarding milestones.

Integration Planning & Execution:

• Review Financial Investment Papers (FIPs), Sale & Purchase Agreements (SPAs), core M&A Due Diligences (DD’s) and other acquisition documentation to ensure critical obligations and timelines are captured in the onboarding plan.
• Tailor integration task lists across departments including HR, Finance, Learning, Marketing, Technology, Legal, and Operations to reflect each school’s structure, priorities and dependencies.
• Collaborate with other Onboarding Managers and Group Heads of Function to regularly review and improve the integration task library, embedding best practices and feedback from prior projects. International Schools Partnership - General Document
• Conduct regular status meetings to track progress, manage interdependencies, and ensure that regional and school teams are supported throughout the onboarding lifecycle.
• Proactively escalate material risks and propose mitigation actions to ensure minimal disruption to school operations and the project timeline.

PMO tool (Monday.com) Administration & Reporting:

• Maintain and update our project management tool, currently monday.com, on boards for all active projects, ensuring they reflect real-time status, deadlines, and dependencies.
• Provide guidance and training to regional and school staff on monday.com to support adoption and effective use, as well as project inclusion for all key stakeholders.
• Develop and maintain real-time dashboards and produce regular status reports and updates for regional leadership and ISP Group executives.
• Ensure consistency and transparency in reporting to support strategic decision-making and highlight areas needing additional support.

Essential skills

• Cross-functional leadership. Ability to coordinate 15+ functional teams, across multiple schools teams each with its own timelines, dependencies and regulatory requirements.
• Structured planning and dependency management. Builds and maintains the master onboarding plan, sequencing complex interdependent tasks
• Risk identification and mitigation. Proactively surfaces risks across all workstreams (regulatory filings, safer recruitment, tax liabilities, property compliance) and drives mitigation actions.
• Stakeholder communication and governance. Ensures clear, consistent communication between Group, Regional and School stakeholders; facilitates governance meetings and decision-making.
• Change management. Supports the school through transitions to new systems, policies, reporting structures and compliance expectations.
• Documentation and reporting. Maintains accurate records, meeting minutes, onboarding reports and audit ready documentation.
• Hands-on delivery. Comfortable working in the detail and completing tasks personally when a school or function is blocked, rather than only tracking and escalating.

Success measures / KPIs Including, but not limited to:

• Time to integrate (number of days from completion to final stage gate)
• Milestone adherence (%)
• Service standard adherence (% of SLA commitments met per acquisition)
• Quality of execution (number of reported issues / escalations)
• Reporting accuracy and timeliness (%)
• Stakeholder satisfaction, including Head of School and RMD feedback (NPS or score)
• Lessons learned / process improvement implementation rate (%)

Experience, qualifications and skills

• Education and experience. +3 Years Experience in project management, mergers & acquisitions and/or post merger integration, preferably within a multi-regional or international organization. A professional qualification and/or master’s degree in business administration, project management or a related field is highly desirable.
• Technical skills. Proficiency with project management and collaboration tools, especially monday.com, allied to confident, practical use of AI and large language models to accelerate document and due diligence review, drafting, analysis and reporting – applied with sound judgement on data confidentiality and verification of outputs. Advanced Microsoft Office skills, particularly Excel for analysis and tracking and PowerPoint for executive reporting.
• Technology and data. Working familiarity with the ISP system landscape (Workday, NetSuite, iSAMS, ClassLink, HubSpot) is an advantage. Comfortable working with data across systems: structuring and reconciling data sets, understanding how school data flows into group reporting, and building and maintaining dashboards from a single source of truth. Exposure to data warehouse or data lake environments, Power BI (DAX Language), and any scripting or workflow automation experience (SQL, Python, Power Automate) is desirable rather than essential. International Schools Partnership - General Document
• Commercial, legal and financial literacy. Sufficient financial literacy to run the finance workstream credibly with an RFD and a School Business Manager, understand Due Diligence technical reports and legal deal terms.
• Communication skills. Excellent verbal and written communication, with the ability to influence, present to senior audiences and build collaborative relationships at all levels.
• Change management. Demonstrated experience guiding teams through cultural and operational change in a fast-paced, acquisitive environment.
• Languages. Fluent English is essential. Additional languages are highly desirable depending on the region.
• Teamwork and independence. Able to work independently while operating effectively in cross-functional, multicultural and multi-time-zone teams.
• Adaptability. Flexibility to adapt to different working styles, organizational structures and changing project demands.

ISP commitment to safeguarding principles

ISP is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. All post holders are subject to appropriate vetting procedures, including an online due diligence search, references and satisfactory Criminal Background Checks or equivalent covering the previous 10 years’ employment history.

ISP commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging

ISP is committed to strengthening our inclusive culture by identifying, hiring, developing and retaining high-performing teammates regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender expression, age, disability status, neurodivergence, socio-economic background or other demographic characteristics. Candidates who share our vision and principles and are interested in contributing to the success of ISP through this role are strongly encouraged to apply.