The Role
As a Customer Success Manager at Newsela, you will own and grow a large portfolio of customers, driving measurable outcomes across retention, adoption, and expansion.
You will operate like the CEO of your book of business - managing 150–300 accounts with urgency, focus, and accountability. This is a high-volume, outcomes-driven role that blends Customer Success with an account management mindset. Success is defined by impact: helping more teachers and students succeed while meaningfully growing the business.
You will prioritize the highest-impact work, proactively engage customers through calls and meetings, and use data and systems to identify risks and opportunities early. You will proactively anticipate issues and take direct ownership to solve root causes, influence outcomes, and consistently raise the bar on results.
This role requires strong judgment, autonomy, and execution discipline. You’ll be trusted to make decisions, adapt quickly, and drive measurable business results across your portfolio.
What You’ll Do
- Own a portfolio of 150–300 customers with clear accountability for retention, adoption, and expansion outcomes
- Proactively engage customers through calls, meetings, and scaled campaigns to drive value and momentum
- Monitor health signals, usage data, and renewal indicators to prioritize the highest-impact actions
- Lead renewal strategy and execution, reducing risk and securing long-term partnerships
- Identify and drive expansion opportunities in partnership with Sales
- Run efficient, scalable motions (segmentation, automation, 1:many engagement) to maximize reach and impact
- Conduct discovery to understand goals, align on outcomes, and position Newsela as a strategic partner
- Solve root causes of customer challenges rather than addressing surface-level symptoms
- Maintain accurate forecasting, planning, and execution tracking in our systems
- Leverage core tools (ex. Salesforce, Gainsight, Gong, Salesloft) to manage your book of business with consistency, operational rigor, and clear process adherence
- Continuously seek feedback and improve your approach to raise the bar on performance and outcomes
How You’ll Work (Our Norms in Action)
At Newsela, Customer Success Managers create impact and execute like owners. In this role, you will:
Drive Impact
- Focus on outcomes that matter most for customers and the business
- Measure success through adoption, retention, and growth - not activity alone
- Push yourself to continually improve results and expand your impact
- Build strong cross-functional relationships to unlock opportunities for more teachers and students
Execute Like an Owner
- Act with direct ownership of your portfolio and results
- Communicate clearly, directly, and follow through on commitments
- Prioritize with urgency and adapt quickly as needs change
- Solve problems at the root cause
- Hold yourself accountable for outcomes and continuously raise the bar for yourself and others
Why You’ll Love This Role
You’ll have real ownership and autonomy - not just tasks, but outcomes. Your work will directly influence how educators and students experience Newsela while contributing meaningfully to company growth.
This role offers the opportunity to:
- Run your own business within your book of accounts
- Develop strong commercial and operational skills
- Influence strategy and customer outcomes at scale
- See the tangible impact of your work on both learning and revenue
If you thrive in fast paced environments, enjoy pairing strong customer relationships with a clear focus on retention and growth, and take pride in delivering measurable results, you’ll excel here
Why You’re a Great Fit
- 2+ years of experience managing a large or high-volume portfolio of accounts
- Proven success owning renewals, retention, or expansion targets
- Comfortable making frequent proactive calls and running many customer conversations weekly
- Strong prioritization skills and ability to manage 150–300 accounts effectively
- Data-driven and outcomes-focused; you measure success and adjust quickly
- Experience with scalable or tech-touch customer motions
- Direct, clear communicator who builds trust quickly
- Naturally takes ownership and follows through on commitments
- Proactively seeks feedback and continuously improves
- Skilled at diagnosing root causes and solving problems independently
- Track record of meeting or exceeding goals/OKRs
- Experience with Gong, Salesloft, Salesforce, or similar tools is a plus
- Background in education is a plus but not required
Compensation
Base salary: $65,000 – $75,000
On-Target Commission (OTC): $12,500
On-Target Earnings (OTE): $77,500-$87,500
Total compensation also includes incentive stock options and benefits.
Why you’ll love working at Newsela:
- Health & Wellness: Comprehensive medical benefits with employer contribution to premiums and to HSA accounts. Additional benefits such as pet insurance, free access to the Calm app, and more to help you stay healthy: mind, body, and soul.
- Work From Home: We are a fully remote company. We provide a monthly tech stipend to support your WFH needs!
- Supporting ALL Families: Inclusive benefits to support you and your family, including parental leave, fertility support, adoption, and more!
- Financial Wellbeing: Invest in your future with our 401(k) plan, which includes a employer match to help you build long-term financial security.
- Time Off: Flexible PTO plus 10 company holidays plus winter break (Dec 24th - Jan 1st).
- Professional Development: Newsela offers an annual learning and development allowance to employees to attend external training sessions, classes, workshops, conferences, and educational materials to foster professional growth within their current role and career aspirations at Newsela.
- Make A Difference: No matter your role or department, the work you do each day helps share the future of education and improves the lives of students and teachers.
About Newsela:
Newsela takes authentic, real world content from trusted sources and makes it instruction ready for K-12 classrooms. Each text is published at five reading levels, so content is accessible to every learner. Today, over 3.3 million teachers and 40 million students have registered with Newsela for content that's personalized to student interests, accessible to everyone, aligned to instructional standards, and attached to activities and reporting that hold teachers accountable for instruction and students accountable for their work. With over 15,000 texts on our platform and multiple new texts published every day across 20+ genres, Newsela enables educators to go deep on any subject they choose.
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