Job Description
PHEAA is a nonprofit student aid organization that holds a mission of providing affordable access to higher education.
Give back tomorrow by joining us today!
Salary: $141,675.00 – $165,000.00
Shift: Monday through Friday 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Location: Harrisburg, PA. Hybrid work schedule 3 days in office/2 days WFH.
Department: Legal Services
This position functions as an experienced attorney who is skilled in multiple disciplines of the legal practice, including contracts, litigation and regulatory matters. This position is accountable for results and for providing legal and business advice on issues of the utmost complexity, sensitivity and importance to the Agency. This advice is usually provided independently. Issues are timely and appropriately raised to the Deputy Chief Counsel or Chief Legal Officer for awareness, and as necessary, for approval. This position functions nearly autonomously and works closely with senior leaders in the Agency. The focus will be on complex areas of litigation, contracts, compliance, regulatory issues, and associated projects, or a combination thereof, as well as the intersection between and among those areas and the business units.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Leadership
- Lead by positive example and from the position best able to positively influence the outcome.
- Build and foster a professional and collaborative team of peers across the Agency.
- Positively influence decisions regarding contracts, compliance, litigation, and regulatory matters throughout the Agency at the most senior levels.
- Advise executives and senior level managers on matters regarding legal and regulatory requirements, best practices, interpretation of laws, and strategies for managing risk in order to avoid or mitigate claims, liability, litigation, and regulatory enforcement actions.
- Build relationships with internal clients, external clients, and outside parties as well as openly communicate with them and educate them, when necessary.
- Demonstrate professionalism, composure, operational relevance, and focus on what is best for the Agency at all times.
Legal Counsel
- Accountable for the drafting, negotiation, and interpretation of contracts between PHEAA and vendors, third party serviced clients, remote clients, lending partners, guarantors, other Commonwealth agencies, and other parties with whom PHEAA engages in business. Must be knowledgeable of and keep abreast of current commercial industry standards for technology, servicing and other complex agreements.
- Must be knowledgeable of the Commonwealth contracting procedures.
- Collaborate extensively with business unit to understand their processes and business practices and divisional goals and participate in business unit meetings, as needed, in order to draft appropriate language for the Agency’s contracts and guidelines.
- Employ a practical and pragmatic, solution-focused approach to legal and business guidance.
- Provide value-add to all interactions and become a trusted advisor.
- Independently build consensus, buy-in, and support for legal, compliance and risk issues from the internal clients.
- Clearly define and communicate expectations of business process owners.
- Represent Agency in discussions with external clients regarding sensitive and moderately difficult to complex legal/compliance issues.
- Provide complex legal advice to business units related to the Agency’s business activities.
- Provide recommended courses of action and legal advice involving complex legal issues.
- Participate in business development meetings and assist with structuring of new products/services.
- Coordinate with internal teams such as Exam Team, Enterprise Risk Committee subcommittees, External Audit team, regulatory agencies and outside parties, as required.
Other Duties and Responsibilities
- Serve as a member or invited guest to certain internal committees and workgroups, as designated.
- Comply with the Agency’s enterprise security and privacy policies and departmental procedures.
- Other duties as assigned.
Additional Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
- Ability to advocate for PHEAA and manage outside counsel.
- Ability to manage, develop and mentor others to their highest potential, provide constructive feedback and address performance issues in a timely manner.
- Ability to define and set parameters, exercise disciplined initiative and encourage disciplined initiative in subordinates.
- Ability to build, mentor and motivate a highly effective team.
- Ability to multi-task and work independently.
- Politically savvy.
- Ability to influence and persuade those who are not direct reports and those who are not in the legal office.
- Ability to provide leadership, establish and maintain working relationships with staff, internal clients, external clients, and regulators.
- Ability to communicate effectively, both verbally and in writing, with Agency Executives, internal clients, external clients and regulators.
- Excellent analytical, critical thinking, organizational, and project management skills.
Required Skills
J.D. degree from an ABA accredited law school and admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Six to Ten plus years of progressively responsible legal experience, including four to six years of experience in at least two or more of the following areas:
- Complex, commercial contracts, including technology and intellectual property
- Litigation
- Experience as in-house counsel/legal advisor to large organizations, and
- Experience managing complex legal and compliance projects.
- At least five years of demonstrated leadership and management experience with responsibilities for legal and non-legal personnel. This includes demonstrated personal and team accountability, as well as a track record of success and positive results.
- Working knowledge of federal laws and regulations applicable to the Agency including FACTA, FDCPA, FCRA, TCPA, GLBA, Dodd-Frank, SCRA, TILA, ECOA, UDAAP, and associated regulations, as well as state law equivalent statutes and regulations.
- Proven ability to analyze, understand and interpret statutes, regulations, sub-regulatory guidance, contracts, precedents, evidence and facts in order to arrive at logical and well-supported conclusions and then present those conclusions in a clear, concise and persuasive manner.
- Proven ability to build and maintain relationships with internal and external clients and other relevant parties.
- Proven resiliency and ability to recover from setbacks.
- This position will support a federal government contract. Applicants must be able to obtain Public Trust security clearance as required of federal government contractors to include a background check conducted by the U.S. Government to determine eligibility and suitability for federal contract employment for public trust or sensitive positions. For this level of clearance, the federal government requires applicants to possess U.S. citizenship. In light of this federal government requirement, PHEAA will be unable to hire applicants without United States citizenship for such positions.
Preferred Qualifications: Advanced certifications, specialization or degrees (LLM, MBA, etc.), demonstrated project management experience, prior experience in financial services industry, demonstrated leadership in a rapidly changing environment.
PHEAA’s environment welcomes and supports our employees, customers, and stakeholders; we seek out and value differing perspectives and contributions. Our organizational culture promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion at all levels of the organization.
Required Experience
J.D. degree from an ABA accredited law school and admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.