Head of Operations – Wellness Education Platform Full Time

About The Embody Lab

The Embody Lab is one of the largest online continuing education institutions in the somatic, trauma-informed, and body-based fields. We bring together leading faculty to deliver rigorous, accessible learning for the practitioners who carry it forward. Our learners include therapists, psychologists, social workers, bodyworkers, somatic coaches, yoga teachers, and allied practitioners around the world.

About the Role

We are hiring a Head of Operations to lead the operating company alongside the founder as we scale from a founder-led organization into a mature, multi-program learning business.

This is a builder’s role. You will inherit a talented, mission-driven team, an active search supporting you, and the budget and authority to build the structure beneath you.

You will own the full operating surface of the company — programming delivery, continuing education, production, faculty operations, finance, people operations, live events, and tech. Short form education, our central growth lever, sits directly under you, supported by a CE Program Manager.

You will be a peer to the Head of Marketing & Growth. You will report directly to the founder.

A Note on Scale

We are intentionally a small organization — roughly 20 people, predominantly engaged as contractors. We run a wide programming portfolio with a lean operating team, and that is by design. We are hiring a Head of Operations at a stage where many companies our size would still be founder-led, because the operating complexity, the CE accreditation work, the breadth of programming, and the need to free up the founder warrant a senior operations leader.

You should be excited by, not surprised by, running a high-leverage, contractor-heavy operation rather than a large corporate org. The right candidate finds this scope energizing: real authority, clear visibility into impact, and the chance to build a finance, people, and operations stack from a deliberate small base rather than inheriting institutional bloat.

About the Engagement

This is a full-time engagement structured as an annual independent contractor relationship, not an employment role. The engagement runs on a 12-month term, renewable by mutual agreement, with a 60–90 day notice period on both sides after the initial term.

We are open to engaging you directly as an independent contractor or through your personal services corporation. Compensation is paid as a monthly retainer, in CAD, against an agreed scope of work. The contractor is responsible for their own income tax (CRA), CPP, and any benefits. We provide standard expense reimbursement and the working tools you need (cloud accounts, software, etc.); you provide your own hardware.

This is not a full-time position – not fractional engagement.

Compensation is a monthly retainer in the directional range of CAD $15,000–$18,000 per month depending on experience and CE expertise. Specific terms discussed with finalists.

Who Reports To You

• Program Operations Manager
• Fractional Finance Lead — owning faculty payments, contracts, vendor relationships, affiliate reporting.
• Continuing Education Program Manager (new role, search to be opened) — partnering with faculty on curriculum design, learning objectives, and content quality, and owning CE accreditation execution end-to-end.
• Operations Team: Zoom assistants, video editors, etc.

What You’ll Own

Operating strategy & execution

• Translate company strategy into an operating plan, a roadmap, and a quarterly delivery rhythm.
• Own company-wide operating KPIs: on-time launch rate, program completion, CE issuance, NPS, gross margin by program, and team throughput.
• Run the weekly and quarterly operating reviews with the founder and leadership team.

Continuing Education — directly owned

• Set and hold the strategy for scaling our CE library as a growth engine.
• Own accreditation posture across the relevant bodies, including renewals, policy changes, and risk management.
• Provide the editorial and instructional bar for CE-eligible content: learning objectives, disclosures, curriculum structure, and faculty feedback.
• Manage the CE Program Manager, who partners with faculty on curriculum and instructional design, executes SCA applications, and owns attendance tracking, certificate issuance, and CE reporting.
• Build the SOPs, templates, and tooling that let CE run on rails inside the first 90 days.

Finance

• Own the programming P&L — production budgets, faculty economics, and margin targets across the portfolio. Approve invoices and faculty contracts above an agreed threshold.
• Partner with the Finance Lead on annual budgeting, cash flow, faculty payment cadence, affiliate accounting, end-of-year close, and vendor/contracts hygiene.
• Steward our external relationships with bookkeeping, tax, and legal counsel.

People Operations & HR

• Own hiring and contractor engagement across the company: workforce planning, the 12–24 month hiring roadmap, comp bands and contractor rate bands and recruiter relationships.
• Run our contractor model well. Most of the team is engaged as contractors rather than full-time employees. That changes the texture of people work — clearer scope and deliverables, careful contractor hygiene, defined contract terms and renewal cadence.
• Own performance management for contractors: clarity of scope, review cadence, growth conversations, and, when needed, performance improvement, role changes, contract non-renewals, and exits.
• Run the People Operations function as a small, intentional discipline: contractor agreement templates, handbook, policies, onboarding and off-boarding workflows, employee/contractor relations, and basic HR compliance — with external counsel for anything that warrants it.
• Own culture stewardship across a fully remote, globally distributed, contractor-heavy team. Set the norms for focus time, communication, and how we treat each other.

Team build-out

• Close the two active searches in your first 90 days: Program Operations Manager and CE Program Manager.
• Coach the Program Operations Manager and CE Program Manager once hired; raise the bar on decision-making, delegation, and management craft across operations.
• Develop the senior bench beneath you so the company can scale without breaking.

Founder leverage

• Be the senior operating partner the founder can hand decisions to, so the founder is freed to focus on faculty, product, and community — not approvals and staffing.
• Hold the line between the founder’s ideas and the team’s capacity.

Systems, SOPs, and tech

• Design the operating backbone: intake, scoping, development, review, launch, and post-launch — with shared SOPs, dashboards, and rituals across every program format.
• Formalize tech security, platform access, and data hygiene. Move these from tribal knowledge to documented practice.

You’re a Strong Fit If You Have

• 8+ years of operations leadership, including at least 3 years as a Head of Operations, Director of Operations, VP Operations, or equivalent senior operations seat at a multi-function organization.
• Direct, hands-on experience scaling a continuing education, certification, or adult-learning business — including building or overseeing a CE library, running accreditation processes, and setting the editorial bar for faculty-led content. This is a heavy weight in our hiring decision.
• Real ownership of a finance function: you have managed a finance lead or finance team, owned a P&L, and partnered with external bookkeeping/tax/legal.
• Real ownership of a people/HR function: hiring, performance management, performance improvement and exits, basic HR compliance, and culture stewardship across a distributed team. You can do the hard people conversations — with care and clarity.
• Comfort running a primarily contractor-engaged organization. You know how to set scope, manage performance, and build culture in a contractor-heavy operating model — and how to make a clear-eyed call about when a role should convert to an employment hire. Operating a small, complex team (~20 people) at senior scope feels right-sized to you, not a step down.
• Substantial experience leading a fully remote organization. You have led teams in a fully distributed environment — not hybrid, not “remote-friendly” — and you know how the work changes when there is no office to fall back on. You have set the norms for asynchronous communication, built rituals that hold a team together across time zones, and managed performance, onboarding, and culture without ever being in a room with most of your team.
• Comfort working as an independent contractor / contract operator yourself. You operate cleanly under a Canadian independent-contractor structure, manage your own tax and compliance posture, and treat a 12-month renewable engagement as the right level of commitment for this stage of company.
• Canada-based. You are eligible to work as an independent contractor in Canada and are based here. We expect meaningful overlap with Eastern and Pacific time zones for live programs.
• The judgment and emotional range to partner closely with a high-conviction founder while leading a team of sensitive, mission-driven practitioners.
• Deep care for the subject matter.

Bonus Points For

• Experience in somatic, trauma-informed, mental health, or embodiment-adjacent fields.
• Experience scaling a CE library from dozens to hundreds of offerings.
• Instructional design or adult-learning training.
• Experience running a 7-day, globally distributed operation.
• Experience operating a small, contractor-heavy team (~25 people or fewer) with disproportionate operational complexity.
• Prior senior contract / fractional engagements, especially with a portfolio of education, mental health, or wellness clients.

What You Can Expect From Us

• A senior operating seat at a mission-driven, fully remote company
• A clean slate at the senior level — you architect the org you’ll lead.
• Real decision authority — hiring, contractor engagement, budget, org design — with a founder ready to share the load.
• A founder who is direct, mission-driven, and ready to invest in a real partnership at this seat.