Educator Engagement Specialist, Victoria BC

Educator Engagement Specialist

WITS Foundation, Esquimalt, British Columbia

Permanent, full time at 35 hours per week, in our Esquimalt office. $28.00 per hour with quarterly performance bonuses.

The person on the other end

A grade two teacher in Prince George opens her laptop at 7:40 in the morning. She has a WITS lesson to teach at nine, she cannot get into the site, and she has twenty minutes before the bell.

You are who she reaches. You sort it out, you make her morning work, and three months later when her principal asks whether the school should renew, she is the reason the answer is yes.

That is most of this job. The rest of it is picking up the phone and calling the schools who have never heard of us, or who used WITS years ago and drifted away, and giving them a reason to come back.

About WITS Foundation

WITS Foundation is a federally registered Canadian charity established in 1998. For more than 25 years we have helped children and youth build healthy relationships through inclusive, community based education that promotes empathy, respect, reconciliation, and practical strategies for preventing peer victimization.

Our programs include WITS (Walk away, Ignore, Talk it out, Seek help), WITS LEADS, Pink Shirt Day Canada, the Pink Shirt Project, WAIS to Belong, and PACTE, our new French language program launching soon. [TBC Q2] We have reached more than one million children in over 1,500 schools in every province and territory.

When Dalhousie University researchers reviewed seven national bullying prevention programs, WITS was the only one they could recommend based on its effectiveness. We are a small team working out of Esquimalt, and every person here has real ownership of their part of it.

The role, described plainly

This is an inside sales and support role. You will work from our Esquimalt office, on the phone and at a keyboard, and your job has two halves that support each other.

The support half: you are the first person an educator reaches when something is wrong or unclear. Access problems, licence questions, downloads, billing, how to use a resource, where to find a lesson. You solve what you can and stay with the person until it is genuinely fixed.

The sales half: you answer the schools and districts who come to us, and you reach out to the ones who have not. You handle quotes, licence renewals, district enquiries, and the follow up that turns interest into a school actually using WITS in September.

These two halves are one job on purpose. The person who fixed the login problem in October is the person the school trusts in May. That is not a theory here, it is how a small charity earns renewals.

What this is not: This is not a fundraising role. You will never ask anyone for a donation. It is also not a scripted call centre job with a dial quota. Schools do not respond to pressure, and the ones who do will not come back next year.

What you will do

Rough proportions. They will move with the school year, and September and February look nothing like July.

Educator support, about 25 percent

• Be the first response to every support request from an educator, school, or district, by email, phone, or web form
• Handle access, login, licence, download, and billing questions end to end
• Escalate genuine platform issues to our IT and E-Commerce Manager, and stay with the educator until it is resolved rather than handing them off
• Turn the questions you answer twice into short help articles so the third person does not need to ask

Inbound enquiries and onboarding, about 25 percent

• Respond to every incoming enquiry, quote request, and district enquiry within one business day
• Walk new schools through registration, licence activation, and getting started
• Reach schools on a free trial before it ends, find out what they need, and help them decide
• Prepare quotes and handle purchase order and invoice arrangements for district purchases
• Run short live walkthroughs of our portal and AI lesson planning assistant for teachers and school teams

Outbound outreach, about 25 percent

• Work a prioritized call list, starting with schools that used WITS in the past and drifted away
• Make first contact with schools and districts who do not know us yet, by phone and email
• Identify district level opportunities and pass warm introductions to our School Success and Partnerships Specialist
• Protect a consistent daily block for outbound work so it does not get squeezed out by the inbox

Renewals and account health, about 15 percent

• Contact schools ahead of licence expiry rather than after it
• Handle the difficult conversations well: budget cuts, staff turnover, a champion teacher who left, a new principal who has never heard of us
• Notice quiet accounts and reach out before they lapse

Records and reporting, about 10 percent

• Log every meaningful conversation in our CRM the same day
• Improve our records as you go: confirm the current principal, capture the correct school district, correct what is wrong
• Report a clear weekly picture of enquiries, conversions, renewals, and support response times

What success looks like after 12 months

• Every enquiry and support message gets a real human response within one business day, consistently, all year
• Educators describe getting help from WITS as fast, warm, and knowledgeable
• More schools renew than the year before, and we know the number because you track it
• Schools that had drifted away are back, through calls you made
• Our records are trustworthy enough that anyone on the team can pick up an account and know where it stands

Who you are

You are comfortable on the phone with someone who did not ask to hear from you, and good enough at it that they are glad you called. You can tell within two minutes whether this is a real conversation or a polite brush off, and you handle both without taking it personally.

You are the person who sends the follow up the same day. You do not need a reminder system to be reliable, but you keep one anyway.

You can hold a support queue and a call list in the same day without one collapsing into the other. When three things land at once you know which to answer first.

And you care about the work. Nobody joins a small charity for the pay. You are here because teaching a seven year old how to handle a hard moment is worth doing well.

What you need to have

• Based in Greater Victoria and able to work from our Esquimalt office
• Three or more years in inside sales, customer success, client services, membership, or a comparable role where you were responsible both for helping people and for keeping or growing accounts
• Demonstrated comfort with outbound contact by phone and email, and the judgment to know when to stop
• Excellent written communication: clear, warm, correct, and brief
• Experience working in a CRM and the discipline to keep it current
• Strong organization across many accounts and moving timelines, with reliable follow through
• Canadian work authorization

What would help you stand out

• Direct experience in Canadian K to 12 education: teaching, school administration, district work, or an education focused organization. Former educators are strongly encouraged to apply
• Experience with subscription, membership, or licence renewals where retention was your responsibility
• Familiarity with how school budgets and purchase orders actually work
• Experience on a support or help desk
• Professional French. PACTE, our French language program launching soon, will serve francophone and immersion classrooms across Canada. This is an asset, not a requirement [TBC Q2]
• Experience working respectfully with Indigenous communities, newcomer communities, and equity deserving communities
• Comfort using AI assisted tools in your daily work

The details

About the bonus: It is measured on a small scorecard: renewals, trial conversions, and how quickly educators get a first response. It is not commission, it is capped, and it is never tied to donations or grants. We built it that way deliberately so that nobody here is ever incentivized to push a school that has no budget.

• Type: Permanent, full time
• Hours: 35 hours per week, standard business hours
• Rate: $28.00 per hour, approximately $50,960 annually
• Bonus: Quarterly performance bonus, capped, up to $4,000 per year
• Location: In our Esquimalt office. This is a desk based role, not remote
• Travel: Minimal. Pink Shirt Day Canada in February plus two or three local events per year
• Vacation: Three weeks paid
• Benefits: Extended health and dental through Green Shield Canada after six months
• Reports to: Executive Director, working closely with our IT and E-Commerce Manager
• Start: As soon as we find the right person

What else we offer

• Professional development budget, including conference attendance
• A small, mission driven team where what you learn on the phone changes what we do next
• Real ownership. This role has never existed at WITS before, and you will shape how it works
• Work that is measurably good for children, in an office you can walk or bike to

How to apply

Apply through CharityVillage with your resume, a cover letter of one page maximum telling us why this work and this organization, and your answers to the two screening scenarios. Keep both brief. We are looking at how you write to real people under real time pressure. [TBC Q4: if external email route instead: Send your application to hiring@wits.foundation with the subject line Educator Engagement Specialist, followed by your name.]

On using AI: You are welcome to use AI tools in preparing your application. We use them here too. If you do, be ready to talk about how you used them and what you changed. We care about your judgment, not your typing.

Scenario 1: An educator emails at 4pm: her school paid for its licence last week, she cannot access anything, and she is teaching the lesson tomorrow morning. Write your reply. 100 words maximum.

Scenario 2: A school used WITS for six years and stopped three years ago. You have their current principal's email and nothing else. Write the email you would send. 150 words maximum.

Our hiring process

Applications received by [TBC Q3: priority deadline] will receive priority consideration. The position will remain open until filled.

1. Written application: resume, cover letter, and the two written scenarios. Reviewed within 5 business days

2. Phone screen: a 20 minute call, partly a conversation, partly a short live scenario, because this is a phone job

3. Interview: in person at our Esquimalt office with the Executive Director and our IT and E-Commerce Manager, 60 minutes. Includes a support triage exercise and a live call role play

4. Final conversation: with the Executive Director, plus two professional references. Decision within 5 business days

Equity and inclusion

WITS Foundation is committed to equity and inclusion in hiring. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates, including Indigenous peoples, members of visible minorities, persons with disabilities, and members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community.

If you need any accommodation during the application or interview process, tell us at any point and we will make it work. It will not count against you.

If you are close but not perfect: Research consistently shows that some strong candidates do not apply unless they meet every listed qualification. If you meet most of what is above and you can do the core of this job well, we would rather read your application than wonder about it.

Learn more: wits.foundation | witsprogram.ca | pinkshirtdaycanada.ca