Senior Director, Student Finance Operations

Job Description

Opportunity at a Glance

This Senior Director, Student Finance Operations owns the operational performance of centralized Student Finance Operations supporting Walden University, Chamberlain University, American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine, Ross University School of Medicine, and Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine. The Senior Director leads a multi-layered organization of financial aid and military-benefit professionals, partners with institutional leaders and student-facing teams, and ensures that high-volume, high-risk financial aid processes are executed accurately and on schedule across multiple academic calendars, payment-period models, systems, and regulatory frameworks.

The position requires a hands-on operational leader with deep Title IV expertise, broad systems fluency, strong judgment, and the ability to balance compliance, service, speed, and scale. Strategy and continuous improvement are important, but success is measured first by reliable execution: students are packaged and disbursed correctly, credit balances are released timely, reconciliations are complete, withdrawals are processed accurately, findings are prevented or remediated, and institutional partners receive responsive, transparent service.

Key Responsibilities

Operational Leadership and Service Delivery

• Provide end-to-end leadership for federal and non-federal financial aid operations across all five institutions, including FAFSA/ISIR processing, verification, eligibility review, packaging, disbursement, credit balance refunds, financial analysis, reconciliation, withdrawals, R2T4, quality assurance, and related exception management.
• Establish operating rhythms, service-level expectations, production calendars, capacity plans, quality controls, and escalation protocols appropriate to each institution’s academic calendar and aid-delivery model.
• Ensure accurate and timely processing of federal, state, institutional, private, military, veterans, employer, and third-party funding in accordance with applicable requirements and institutional policy.
• Lead directors, managers, and operational teams through clear priorities, measurable performance expectations, coaching, succession planning, and accountability for quality, productivity, timeliness, and service.
• Maintain business continuity, cross-training, and surge plans for FAFSA cycles, term starts, disbursement peaks, regulatory changes, audits, outages, staffing changes, and other high-volume or high-risk periods.

Compliance, Controls, and Regulatory Readiness

• Serve as the senior operational subject matter expert for Title IV administration, including verification, conflicting information, professional judgment, satisfactory academic progress interfaces, aggregate and annual limits, disbursement eligibility, credit-balance requirements, reconciliation, overawards/overpayments, withdrawals, and R2T4.
• Oversee operational compliance for U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense education benefits, including certification governance, required training, enrollment-change reporting, return activity, records, and readiness for VA compliance surveys or site visits.
• Ensure accurate administration of state grants, institutional aid, private education funding, and other non-federal programs, including required certifications, rosters, reconciliations, documentation, and reporting.
• Lead operational implementation of new laws, regulations, guidance, and institutional policy, including OBBBA/OB3-related changes to eligibility, loan limits, packaging, systems, communications, procedures, controls, and training.
• Partner with Regulatory Affairs, Legal, Internal Audit, Finance, and institutional compliance teams to support annual audits, federal and state program reviews, VA site visits, regulatory reporting, corrective action plans, student complaints, and responses to oversight agencies.
• Maintain complete, current policies, procedures, desk guides, control evidence, and decision documentation; identify control gaps and ensure timely remediation.

Systems, Data, and Operational Transformation

• Provide business ownership and operational oversight for financial aid processing across PowerFAIDS, ProSAM, Banner, Salesforce, and related homegrown or vendor applications, interfaces, workflows, reports, and document-management tools.
• Ensure system configuration, testing, release readiness, data integrity, security roles, exception reporting, and production support align with regulatory requirements and institutional policies.
• Use operational and student-level data to identify risk, forecast workload and disbursements, monitor cycle times and aging, assess quality, prioritize remediation, and inform institutional strategy.
• Lead the shift from manual and spreadsheet-dependent processes to standardized, controlled, automated workflows using process redesign, artificial intelligence, decision automation, and other technology while preserving human review for complex or high-risk decisions.
• Partner with IT, data engineering, analytics, product teams, vendors, and institutional stakeholders to deliver scalable improvements without disrupting critical aid delivery.

Institutional Partnership and Student Experience

• Act as the primary SFO client-services leader for institutional executives and functional partners, providing clear status, risk, performance, and issue-resolution updates.
• Partner closely with Enrollment, Student Finance Advising, Registrar, Academic Advising, Student Accounts, Finance, Regulatory Affairs, and institutional leadership to establish seamless handoffs and resolve barriers across the student journey.
• Ensure downstream operations support clear, accurate, and timely student communications and equip student-facing teams to explain requirements, status, and next steps.
• Balance enterprise standardization with legitimate institutional differences in program design, academic calendars, student populations, systems, and regulatory obligations.
• Lead service recovery for material processing issues, systemic defects, complex student cases, complaints, or breakdowns affecting aid delivery.

Performance and Accountability

• Define and monitor key performance and risk indicators such as verification and packaging completion, first-pass accuracy, disbursement timeliness, credit-balance timeliness, reconciliation status, R2T4 timeliness and accuracy, aged exceptions, rework, complaints, audit findings, and institutional service levels.
• Provide concise executive reporting that connects operational performance, compliance risk, student impact, staffing/capacity, and improvement priorities.
• Own root-cause analysis and sustainable corrective action for missed service levels, control failures, audit findings, system defects, and recurring student or institutional pain points.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in higher education administration, business, finance, accounting, public administration, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
• 10+ years of progressively responsible experience in financial aid administration or student finance operations, including 5+ years leading managers and complex, high-volume teams.
• Demonstrated leadership across core aid-processing functions such as verification, packaging, disbursement, reconciliation, credit balances/refunds, withdrawals, and R2T4.
• Deep working knowledge of Title IV statutes, regulations, Federal Student Aid guidance, audit and program-review expectations, and institutional administrative-capability requirements.
• Experience supporting multiple institutions, campuses, brands, academic-calendar models, or similarly complex operating environments.
• Working experience with at least two major financial aid or student information platforms, with ability to lead across PowerFAIDS, ProSAM, Banner, Salesforce, and integrated/homegrown systems.
• Experience preparing for or responding to federal, state, institutional, VA, or other regulatory audits, reviews, and site visits.
• Strong analytical, operational, change-leadership, and client-service skills; ability to translate complex regulation into clear processes, controls, training, and measurable execution.
• Demonstrated ability to influence across organizational boundaries and communicate effectively with executives, institutional leaders, technical teams, auditors, regulators, and student-facing colleagues.

Preferred

• Master’s degree in higher education, business administration, finance, accounting, public administration, or a related field.
• Experience with Veterans Affairs education benefits, Department of Defense Tuition Assistance, state grant administration, and School Certifying Official governance.
• Experience implementing major federal regulatory changes, including FAFSA simplification and OBBBA/OB3-related financial aid changes.
• Experience leading process automation, AI-enabled operations, robotic process automation, workflow redesign, or large-scale financial aid systems implementation.
• NASFAA credentials, Certified Financial Aid Administrator (CFAA), or comparable professional development.

Additional Information

In support of the pay transparency laws enacted across the country, the expected salary range for this position is between $137,846.78 and $241,870.90. Actual pay will be adjusted based on job-related factors permitted by law, such as experience and training; geographic location; licensure and certifications; market factors; departmental budgets; and responsibility. Our Talent Acquisition Team will be happy to answer any questions you may have, and we look forward to learning more about your salary requirements. The position qualifies for the below benefits.

Covista offers a robust suite of benefits including:

• Health, dental, vision, life and disability insurance
• 401k Retirement Program + 6% employer match
• Participation in Covista’s Flexible Time Off (FTO) Policy
• 12 Paid Holidays

For more information related to our benefits please visit:  https://careers.covista.com/benefits

Equal Opportunity – Minority / Female / Disability / V / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation