HAWKs — Hiking Adventures With Kids — is a primarily outdoor after-school, day camp, and enrichment program that helps children build confidence, curiosity, resilience, and connection to the natural world.
Through local trails, parks, beaches, gardens, and green spaces, HAWKs gives kids the chance to explore, move, learn, and grow outside.
About the Role
HAWKs is seeking a highly operational, profitability-minded Regional Manager to lead our Los Angeles and Studio City markets. This person will be responsible for regional execution, operational excellence, team accountability, safety standards, enrollment growth, and market-level business performance.
This is a senior field leadership role for someone who can manage through others, build strong systems, improve consistency, and ensure the region delivers both an exceptional child and family experience and strong financial results.
The Regional Manager will oversee the Field Operations Manager, who manages day-to-day parent communications, registration setup, field logistics, and daily operational coordination. The Regional Manager is responsible for ensuring the region is running well overall: the right team structure is in place, programs are profitable, staffing is efficient, safety standards are upheld, enrollment goals are met, and local outreach efforts are strategic and consistently executed.
The ideal candidate is equal parts disciplined operator, people leader, and growth-minded market manager — someone who can drive operational excellence, manage regional P&L performance, and build the systems and accountability needed for profitable growth.
Key Responsibilities
Operational Excellence & Regional Execution
- Own operational performance across HAWKs Los Angeles and Studio City programs, including after-school, day camps, seasonal camps, and specialty programs.
- Ensure programs are safely staffed, efficiently scheduled, well-prepared, and consistently delivered to HAWKs standards.
- Oversee regional systems, workflows, staffing plans, and execution rhythms to improve consistency, accountability, and scalability.
- Identify operational gaps, bottlenecks, or inefficiencies and drive practical solutions.
- Ensure the Field Operations Manager and field teams have clear priorities, tools, and support to execute day-to-day operations effectively.
- Conduct regular field visits to observe program quality, assess team performance, and ensure standards are being upheld.
- Step in as needed to troubleshoot operational issues, support urgent escalations, and remove barriers for the team.
Profitability & Business Performance
- Own regional performance across enrollment, retention, revenue, labor efficiency, staffing utilization, expenses, parent satisfaction, program quality, safety, and profitability.
- Monitor key drivers of regional P&L performance, including enrollment, program utilization, labor costs, staffing levels, discounts, refunds, and operating expenses.
- Build and oversee staffing models that support strong program quality while protecting margins.
- Partner with leadership to set regional goals, review performance, identify gaps, and execute plans to improve profitability.
- Use data and field insights to make informed decisions about scheduling, staffing, program mix, outreach priorities, and market growth.
- Identify opportunities to improve revenue, reduce inefficiencies, increase utilization, and strengthen the financial performance of the region.
Team Leadership & Management
- Manage, coach, and hold accountable the Field Operations Manager
- Ensure educators and field leads are supported, well-trained, and consistently delivering HAWKs standards.
- Partner with the Field Operations Manager on hiring needs, onboarding, scheduling, team development, and performance management.
- Create a positive, accountable team culture rooted in safety, professionalism, warmth, and operational discipline.
- Provide regular feedback, coaching, and performance direction to ensure the region has the right people in the right roles.
- Escalate and address performance issues when standards are not being met.
Safety, Quality & Compliance
- Uphold HAWKs safety protocols across trail, van, weather, supervision, bathroom, water, incident, and emergency procedures.
- Ensure staff are trained on and consistently following HAWKs safety standards.
- Oversee incident trends, parent escalations, near-misses, and field observations to identify patterns and prevent future issues.
- Ensure proper documentation, communication, escalation, and follow-up when incidents occur.
- Monitor field conditions including heat, air quality, trail closures, weather, and other environmental factors that may affect programming.
- Maintain a safety-first culture while preserving the joy, exploration, and independence that make HAWKs special.
Parent Escalations & Family Experience Oversight
- Serve as the regional escalation point for parent concerns that require leadership involvement.
- Ensure the Field Operations Manager is managing day-to-day parent communications, registration coordination, and operational follow-up effectively.
- Monitor parent feedback and recurring issues to identify opportunities to improve the family experience.
- Ensure parent-facing communication remains timely, clear, professional, and aligned with HAWKs standards.
- Partner with leadership on high-sensitivity parent situations, safety concerns, or service recovery needs.
Community Outreach, Partnerships & Local Growth Strategy
- Own the regional outreach and community growth strategy for Los Angeles and Studio City.
- Build and maintain strategic relationships with schools, PTAs, Friends of organizations, parent groups, neighborhood partners, and community organizations.
- Identify high-value outreach opportunities that support enrollment growth, brand awareness, school relationships, and market expansion.
- Create the local outreach plan and ensure it is executed consistently by the appropriate team members
- Direct tactical outreach efforts such as school events, community fairs, parent meetings, local activations, referral campaigns, and neighborhood partnerships.
- Ensure HAWKs is showing up in the right places, with the right message, and with the right follow-through.
- Track outreach activity, relationship-building efforts, and local growth opportunities to ensure accountability and measurable impact.
- Share local market insights with HAWKs leadership to inform programming, pricing, scheduling, outreach, and growth strategy.
Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience in operations, education, camps, childcare, youth programming, recreation, hospitality, retail, service, multi-unit operations, or a related field.
- 2+ years of experience managing teams, managers, schedules, field operations, or multi-site execution.
- Experience owning or influencing business performance, including enrollment, revenue, labor efficiency, budgets, expenses, or profitability.
- Strong operational instincts with the ability to improve systems, manage through others, solve problems quickly, and drive consistent execution.
- Experience managing or leading through a layered team structure preferred.
- Experience with community outreach, school partnerships, local marketing, business development, or enrollment growth strongly preferred.
- Strong understanding of how staffing, scheduling, utilization, and service quality affect profitability.
- Excellent communication skills with managers, educators, parents, school partners, and community stakeholders.
- Strong judgment, calm under pressure, and safety-minded.
- Highly organized, detail-oriented, and comfortable using data to make decisions.
- Passion for kids, nature, outdoor education, operational excellence, and community-building.
- Valid driver’s license and ability to travel locally across Los Angeles and Studio City required.
Benefits + Compensation
- Base Salary - $100,000 - $130,000
- Benefits - Benefit package includes medical, dental, vision, 401K, paid time off, and holidays.
Our Commitment
HAWKs is committed to creating an inclusive, safe, and welcoming environment for children, families, and employees. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected status under applicable law.