Ascension is seeking an accomplished Senior Change Manager to lead organizational change management activities supporting Montgomery County Public Schools’ technology modernization, enterprise application, process-improvement, and workforce transformation initiatives.

The ideal candidate will bring senior-level expertise in organizational development, stakeholder engagement, communications, training, readiness assessment, adoption planning, and organizational transition. This individual must be capable of helping MCPS employees, leaders, technical teams, and other stakeholders understand, prepare for, adopt, and sustain changes resulting from new systems, redesigned processes, updated policies, organizational realignments, or technology-enabled ways of working.

The Change Manager will be expected to operate as both a strategic advisor and a hands-on practitioner. The successful candidate will know how to translate technical or programmatic changes into clear impacts on people, roles, processes, and day-to-day activities. This role is especially important because MCPS may use the contract to support enterprise cloud platforms, custom application modernization, intelligent automation, business intelligence, data initiatives, information security, electronic document management, and workforce training across a large and diverse school system.

Ascension is looking for a professional who is:

• Self-directed and comfortable working in evolving or ambiguous environments.
• Skilled at building trust with executives, managers, technical teams, educators, administrative personnel, and end users.
• Able to anticipate adoption barriers and develop practical solutions before those barriers affect implementation.
• Organized, responsive, and capable of managing multiple stakeholder groups, deliverables, and deadlines.
• An effective facilitator who can navigate differing viewpoints and build consensus.
• Comfortable presenting sensitive findings, resistance risks, and recommendations to senior leadership.
• Committed to accessibility, confidentiality, equity, and user-centered implementation.

Summary of the Contractor Role

The Senior Change Manager will plan, lead, coordinate, and evaluate organizational change activities associated with MCPS technology and business transformation efforts. The individual will conduct stakeholder and change-impact analyses, assess organizational readiness, develop change-management and communication strategies, coordinate training and knowledge-transfer activities, support leadership engagement, and measure adoption after implementation.

This professional will work closely with project managers, business analysts, system developers, trainers, communications personnel, technical leads, and MCPS process owners. The Change Manager will help ensure that project success is not measured solely by whether a system or process was deployed, but also by whether the affected workforce understands the change, possesses the necessary skills, uses the solution as intended, and sustains the new operating practices.

Assignments may involve:

• Enterprise system implementations or upgrades.
• Business-process reengineering and workflow automation.
• Microsoft Power Platform, SharePoint, Power BI, or Microsoft Copilot adoption.
• Oracle Fusion Cloud or other enterprise application initiatives.
• Data governance and reporting transformations.
• Cybersecurity, privacy, or access-control changes.
• Policy and procedural changes.
• Organizational restructuring or workforce transitions.
• Training, communications, and user-adoption programs.

Position Responsibilities and Anticipated Activities

The Senior Change Manager will:

• Develop comprehensive organizational change-management strategies aligned with project objectives, implementation schedules, risks, and MCPS priorities.
• Conduct stakeholder analyses to identify impacted groups, decision-makers, influencers, champions, potential detractors, and communication needs.
• Assess the organizational, procedural, technological, cultural, and workforce impacts of proposed changes.
• Evaluate organizational readiness through interviews, surveys, focus groups, workshops, document reviews, and operational observations.
• Create change-impact assessments identifying how systems, processes, policies, roles, responsibilities, skills, and performance expectations will change.
• Identify adoption barriers, resistance risks, stakeholder concerns, knowledge gaps, and dependencies that could affect implementation.
• Design stakeholder engagement plans appropriate to executives, managers, technical teams, administrative offices, school-based personnel, and end users.
• Develop targeted communication plans, key messages, executive briefings, frequently asked questions, talking points, newsletters, announcements, presentations, and implementation updates.
• Translate technical information into clear, audience-appropriate language that explains what is changing, why the change is necessary, when it will occur, and how users will be affected.
• Coordinate communication activities with project leadership, MCPS communications personnel, business owners, technical teams, and training specialists.
• Facilitate stakeholder interviews, leadership sessions, readiness workshops, focus groups, working groups, town halls, and change-champion meetings.
• Establish change-champion or super-user networks to strengthen peer communication, issue identification, and local adoption.
• Develop adoption plans that define expected behaviors, implementation milestones, user responsibilities, support mechanisms, and success measures.
• Coordinate training needs assessments and align training content, timing, delivery methods, and audience segmentation with identified change impacts.
• Collaborate with instructional designers and trainers to ensure training addresses actual job responsibilities and system-use scenarios.
• Prepare managers and supervisors to communicate changes, answer employee questions, reinforce expectations, and support their teams during transition.
• Integrate change-management milestones into project plans, integrated master schedules, risk registers, issue logs, and implementation roadmaps.
• Track change-management risks, assumptions, dependencies, decisions, action items, stakeholder concerns, and mitigation activities.
• Measure communication reach, training participation, readiness, user sentiment, system adoption, process compliance, and post-implementation performance.
• Analyze quantitative and qualitative feedback to determine whether the change is achieving intended results.
• Recommend corrective actions when adoption, readiness, communications, training, or stakeholder engagement results fall below expectations.
• Support pilot implementations, phased deployments, go-live activities, transition periods, and post-implementation stabilization.
• Document lessons learned, implementation findings, sustainment requirements, and recommendations for future initiatives.
• Develop standard operating procedures, job aids, transition guides, change playbooks, governance materials, and knowledge-transfer documentation.
• Ensure communications, training materials, and other public-facing deliverables comply with applicable accessibility requirements.
• Protect confidential employee, student, operational, and project information in accordance with MCPS privacy and security requirements.
• Prepare weekly productivity and status reports describing activities completed, deliverables, risks, decisions, upcoming milestones, and hours worked.
• Advise MCPS leadership on organizational readiness, stakeholder alignment, adoption risks, workforce impacts, and change-sustainment strategies.

Anticipated Deliverables

Depending on the task order, deliverables may include:

• Organizational Change Management Plan.
• Stakeholder Analysis and Engagement Plan.
• Change-Impact Assessment.
• Organizational Readiness Assessment.
• Communication Strategy and Communication Calendar.
• Training Needs Assessment.
• Adoption and Transition Plan.
• Resistance-Management Plan.
• Change Champion Network Plan.
• Leadership Briefing Materials.
• Frequently Asked Questions and User Communications.
• Change Risk and Issue Register.
• Adoption Metrics and Performance Dashboard.
• Go-Live Readiness Assessment.
• Post-Implementation Adoption Report.
• Lessons-Learned Report.
• Sustainment and Knowledge-Transfer Plan.
• Standard operating procedures, job aids, and user guidance.

Tools, Processes, and Methodologies

Candidates should be comfortable working with tools and methods such as:

• Microsoft 365, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and Forms.
• SharePoint for communications, knowledge management, document control, and stakeholder resources.
• Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, or comparable scheduling and work-management tools.
• Power BI or Excel for adoption metrics, readiness reporting, survey analysis, and dashboards.
• Power Automate for communication, approval, notification, and tracking workflows.
• Survey and feedback tools, such as Microsoft Forms or SurveyMonkey.
• Project-management practices aligned with PMBOK.
• Agile, Scrum, hybrid, or traditional implementation environments.
• Prosci ADKAR, Kotter, Lewin, Bridges, or comparable change-management frameworks.
• Stakeholder mapping, change-impact analysis, readiness assessment, resistance management, and benefits realization.
• Risk, issue, action-item, and decision tracking.
• Process mapping using Visio, Lucidchart, or comparable tools.
• Accessibility review using Microsoft Accessibility Checker and applicable Section 508 or Non-Visual Access practices.