Cognita is a global K-12 schools Group with over 80 schools across five continents, employing more than 25,000 staff in the care and education of 100,000 pupils.
Across Asia, our Singapore and Southeast Asia & India clusters encompass 11 schools in five countries, serving more than 16,000 students. While our schools are part of a Group, they are unique in many ways.
The Group now has an exciting opportunity for a Head of Transformation Office, based in the Singapore office, to join our fantastic team.
The Head of Transformation Office has a global remit spanning all Value Creation Plan (VCP) workstreams. The role provides the programme infrastructure that enables executive sponsors and workstream leads to operate effectively and make timely decisions and provides targeted strategy-delivery support to Centre of Excellence (CoE) and workstream leads where specialist educational and business expertise adds value.
The role sits within the Programme Leadership structure led by the COO, working closely with the CPO, CFO, Chief Schools Officers and Cog MDs. It covers the full transformation portfolio including operating model restructuring, school performance turnaround, portfolio rationalisation, the Cognita Performance System and platform enabler workstreams. Collectively, these workstreams underpin Cognita's longer-term value creation and its readiness for a future value-realisation event.
Key Responsibilities:
- End-to-End Orchestration: Partner with the designated owner for each initiative to shape a clear delivery plan, defining milestones, workstreams and resource requirements. Monitor progress across all workstreams, unblocking issues and facilitating cross-functional coordination as needed. Ensure each initiative stays focused on its intended outcomes rather than just completing tasks.
- Thought-partnership and project support: Act as a thought-partner and agile, time-boxed delivery contributor to CoE Leads on selected Global Strategic Priorities, harnessing educational and business expertise where it adds value. Where the role takes on hands-on delivery within a workstream, its independent reporting and challenge on that workstream is ring-fenced to protect programme assurance.
- Research and Evaluation: Offer research and evaluation capacity to initiative owners, appraising options and evidence to help achieve strategic priorities and meet key milestones.
- Governance and Reporting: Steer initiatives through the programme governance process, preparing executive reviews, stage gates, decision papers and inputs to Board and Committee reporting, and representing the programme at relevant governance committees where required. Produce timely, high-quality status reports with full transparency on progress, risks and dependencies. Where a workstream slips or a decision is required, escalate promptly through established channels so leadership can act.
- Pace and Accountability: Drive execution discipline by holding workstream leads and initiative owners to agreed timelines and deliverables. Act as both coach and challenger, supporting owners with planning, risk mitigation and stakeholder engagement while maintaining clear accountability for delivery. Balance support with scrutiny to keep teams honest on execution.
- Stakeholder Coordination: Serve as the central coordination point across the transformation programme, ensuring workstream leads, sponsors and delivery owners are aligned and informed. Build trusted relationships across Group functions, Cogs and school leadership to enable effective cross-functional working and timely decision-making.
- Risk and Issue Management: Maintain the programme risk and issue log, proactively identifying blockers and ensuring they are owned and resolved. Surface interdependencies across workstreams and manage them before they become critical path issues. Provide the COO with a clear, consolidated view of the programme's risk profile.
- Benefits and Performance Tracking: Partner with the CFO to develop, track, validate and report the financial and operational benefits of the transformation programme, including business-case development and value-case validation. Ensure savings, KPIs and success measures are clearly defined at the outset of each initiative and monitored consistently through delivery. Challenge workstream leads where benefits are at risk.
Person Specification:
Skills & Expertise
- Exceptional programme and project management capability, with experience managing multiple complex workstreams simultaneously
- Strong analytical skills, able to design milestones trackers, dashboards and reporting tools that give clear programme visibility
- Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to produce concise executive briefings and Board-level papers
- Strong stakeholder management, able to build trusted relationships with senior leaders across Group, Cogs and schools
- Commercial and financial literacy, able to engage credibly with financial savings tracking, FTE analysis, business-case development and value-case validation
- High attention to detail, personal organisation and follow-through
- Comfortable working with performance data and tools, including Power BI, Excel and project management platforms
- Strategic thinking and subject-matter credibility, able to act as a thought-partner to CoE Leads and contribute to the design and delivery of strategic priorities
Experience
- Experience in a programme management, transformation office or strategy execution role in a complex, multi-site organisation
- Track record of managing or supporting large-scale transformation, restructuring or operational change programmes
- Experience coordinating across multiple senior stakeholders, functions and geographies
- Experience designing and maintaining programme governance, reporting and tracking mechanisms
- Experience in an international organisation, ideally with exposure to education, professional services or a similarly site-based business
How to Apply
Interested applicants please submit your application on MyCareersFuture by 13 August 2026.
Cognita Schools are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff, volunteers and other third parties to share this commitment. Safer recruitment practice and pre-employment background checks will be undertaken before any appointment is confirmed.
We are an equal opportunities employer committed to diversity and treating all employees with dignity and respect regardless of background.
