Location: Oakland, CA (Hybrid: in-office Tuesdays, Wednesdays, & Thursdays)
Position: Full-time, reporting to the CEO

About ICA Fund—Not Business as Usual
ICA accelerates great businesses through mentorship and mission-aligned investments to catalyze value in missed markets to transform communities. With a deep commitment to identifying, supporting and helping to grow small businesses run by underrepresented entrepreneurs, ICA is innovating ways to leverage coaching, capital and connections to amplify our impact. By offering targeted acceleration workshops and operating tools, alongside hands-on advising from a network of highly experienced business operators, ICA is democratizing access to resources that catalyze value and growth in small businesses. As the Senior Manager, Business Operating Network, you play a pivotal role in identifying, helping to vet and matching these critically important resources to small businesses that have the potential to make an even greater impact through their growth.

The Role

The Operating Partner will be a senior leader at ICA, responsible for designing and executing how ICA helps founders grow and create measurable value. This person will oversee the Sr. Manager of Acceleration, Network Resource Manager, and Sr. Manager of Portfolio Management, bringing these functions together into an integrated approach to supporting founders.

 The Operating Partner will:

• Build a deep understanding of company performance and needs.
• Design and execute strategies that connect founders to the right people, services, capital, and opportunities.
• Lead ICA’s market access efforts, opening doors to buyers, partners, investors, and exit opportunities.
• Advance ICA’s role as a results-driven, founder-centered organization, deepening its ability to help founders create wealth, jobs, and lasting businesses.

This role requires a proven operator - someone who has scaled a business, preferably through an exit - who can think big and then make it happen. The Operating Partner must translate vision into clear action plans, motivating a team to deliver disciplined, measurable results.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic & Operational Leadership

• Serve as a member of ICA’s senior leadership team, reporting directly to the CEO.
• Manage and mentor the Sr. Manager,Acceleration, Sr. Manager, Network Operations, and Sr. Manager, PortfolioManagement.
• Translate strategy into actionable plans with milestones, accountability, and measurable outcomes.

Founder Value Creation

• Identify and address growth opportunities and risks, ensuring founders receive tailored support across financial management, operations, growth strategy, legal, and capital access.
• Incorporate exit readiness into founder support, helping businesses prepare for liquidity, succession, and long-term wealth-building.
• Work directly 1:1 with high-value portfolio companies, building trusted relationships, providing direct advice and guidance drawn from operating experience, and ensuring they are connected to the right advisors, partners, and opportunities.
• In partnership with the Sr.Manager of Acceleration, strengthen ICA’s accelerator by shifting to a modular, targeted model that delivers pre- and post-investment education, preparing founders for growth, capital raising, and scaling.

Market & Capital Access

• Build and scale ICA’s market access platform, which will include:
• Revenue growth: Introductions to buyers, distributors, and B2B partnerships.
• Capital access: Connections to banks, CDFIs, venture firms, and other investors across debt and equity.
• Exit opportunities: Support forM&A readiness and strategic partnerships.
• Partnerships & visibility:Showcase opportunities, events, and speaking engagements to raise founder profiles.
• Corporate engagement: Pathways into procurement and supplier diversity programs.
• Policy & ecosystem leverage:Unlock government contracting and ecosystem opportunities.
• Differentiate ICA by creating a structured, outcomes-driven market and capital access strategy that helps founders grow revenue and prepare for exits.
  

Execution & Feedback Loops

• Build systems to capture performance insights from portfolio companies and use them to refine ICA’s programming and investment approach.
• Partner with the Sr. Manager,Acceleration to design and deliver training, education, and founder preparation for growth, capital raising, and exit.
• Lead pilots with external service providers (e.g., CFO services, operational consultants) and scale those that demonstrate measurable value.

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Qualifications

• 12+ years of leadership experience in high-growth companies, investment, or portfolio management.
• Proven operator with experience scaling and exiting a company (preferred).
• Strong track record of execution -able to move from vision to disciplined delivery.
• Experience leading and motivating teams against action plans with accountability and measurable outcomes.
• Strong network in business, investment, and advisory ecosystems.
• Expertise in one or more of:financial strategy, operations, market growth, capital access.
• Deep commitment to ICA’s mission of supporting overlooked and underestimated founders.\

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Reporting & Structure

• Reports to: Chief Executive Officer
• Direct reports: Sr. Manager of Acceleration, Sr. Manager of Network Operations, Sr. Manager of Portfolio Management

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What Success Looks Like

• Founders achieve measurable gains in revenue, profitability, capital raised, and jobs created.
• Companies supported by ICA are positioned for long-term success—including capital raising and exits that create wealth for founders and their communities.
• ICA becomes recognized for its market and capital access platform
• ICA’s accelerator is recognized as a targeted, modular program that prepares founders both pre- and post-investment for capital raising, scaling, and exits.

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Compensation & Benefits

Salary: The annual base salary range for this full time position is $200,000-259,000, dependent upon background and experience. Compensation also includes a discretionary bonus paid annually based on organization and individual performance.  

Benefits: ICA’s full benefits package includes: 13 paid holidays per year; 3 weeks of annual paid vacation;10 days of annual paid sick leave; at least 3 employer-identified mental health days; employer-paid health, dental, vision, life insurance and disability benefits; 50% employer-paid dependent health, dental, vision; employer-paid mental health counseling; 24-hour online virtual healthcare; 401(k) plan with matching; and mobile phone / Internet reimbursement.

Equal Opportunity Employer: ICAFund evaluates qualified candidates without regard to protected characteristics and is fully committed to fostering equity and inclusion.

Hiring Process & How to Apply

People are key to our success, and we’d like to get to know you. Depending on your progress through our hiring process, you may go through the following steps: A round or two of panel interviews; review of work samples; completion of an exercise or case study; and reference-checking of previous supervisors and colleagues.

Please submit both a resume and a very brief cover letter (combined into one PDFor Word document) by October 15, 2025. Applications received after that date will be considered on a rolling basis. Apply Here.

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