About Us:
The Women’s Prison Association (WPA) is a New York City based not-for-profit that prioritizes trauma informed care to support vulnerable women and their children navigating incarceration and homelessness, providing them stability, security, support and hope that opens the door to their limitless future. Our mission is to support systems involved women as they navigate their journey towards freedom, safety, and independence, and we strive to create a diverse team that delivers outstanding services.
We’re proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. All hires to our team are based on qualifications, merit, and organizational needs. We recruit, employ, train, and promote regardless of systems involvement, race, color, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, veteran status, genetic characteristic, or any other protected status. Faithful to our mission, all our employees share in these commitments as a guide to engage one another with dignity and respect.
Position Description:
The Senior Director provides departmental oversight and is responsible for developing positive long-term relationships with business and industry leaders and representatives. The ideal candidate will create, support and strengthen relationships with business and industry partners to identify sustainable employment opportunities for WPA clients. The ideal candidate has documented experience successfully cultivating and maintaining strategic partnerships with business and industry leaders to develop employment opportunities and career pathways for populations navigating educational and employment barriers.
The ideal candidate will be organized and enjoy collaborating on the construction of tactical practices that define optimal organization policies, structures, systems, and collateral. The ideal candidate motivates and leads a high-performing team and effectively manages a variety of administrative and operational duties. S/he has superior leadership and decision-making skills and business acumen, excels at strategic thinking, is results driven and strong management skills. The Chief Program Officer relies heavily on the Senior Director, who will be expected to lead specific strategic imperatives that will require a degree of unquestioned authority. The Director will complement the Chief Program Officer’s experience and/or management style and supports program leadership in executing organizational goals and strategies developed by the Executive Leadership Team and Board of Directors.
Responsibilities:
- Provide overall supervision support and guidance to the community-based program and workforce development teams.
- Coordinate existing programming and develop new gender specific programming based on best practices, trends, and organizational data, where appropriate.
- Promote collaborative relationships across programs that best meet the needs of our clients and the expectations of funders, partners, and key stakeholders.
- Ensure the successful execution of qualitative and quantitative programmatic goals and outcomes.
- With the Chief Program Officer and Director of Program Operations, ensure staffing plans reflect the current and future needs of WPA constituents.
- Source, screen, interview, hire and onboard top candidates that align with the company mission and position expectations.
- Review current and develop new performance and outcome measures and identify opportunities for improvement across programming.
- Coordinates, generates, and submits monthly, quarterly, and annual electronic data reports to program funders.
- Ensure team members have the knowledge and skills requires to perform tasks, assess team needs and identify knowledge gaps, and provide relevant, skill-based trainings to ensure teams are successfully meeting job expectations.
- Implement and enforce systems, procedures and policies.
- Assures data quality by identifying incomplete or inaccurate data collection and following up with staff for completion or correction.
- Develop systems and tools to regularly monitor the feasibility and sustainability of programs.
- Support strategic partnerships with key community partners and stakeholders, including but not limited to, community-based organizations, direct service providers, workforce training providers, employers, funders, academia, and government agencies.
- Provide performance management to teams, including setting expectations, providing ongoing feedback, evaluating goals on a consistent basis, and measuring performance.
- Implement and enforce systems, procedures, and policies.
- Partner with local business and industry leaders and representatives to determine workforce and or talent needs.
- Engage and cultivate new and existing employer partnerships to provide support to WPA’s programs.
- Build and maintain productive relationships with public-sector, private-sector and non-profit employers to create career pathways for future talent.
- Generate leads and support the WPA team in assessing, referring, and tracking employment placements.
- Develop and maintain relationships with training providers to develop necessary and responsive workforce solutions.
- Develop and/or collaborate with existing stakeholder’s effective workforce development curriculum relevant to the population served.
- Provide opportunities for business and industry to assist with the development of training programs to include apprenticeships, internships, job shadowing and work-based learning.
- Work closely with leadership and program teams to identify employer driven training, internships, apprenticeships, job placement and retention.
- Identifies funding opportunities to support workforce solutions and programming.
- Monitors labor market trends, industry specific talent demands and skill requirements, and translating data into meaningful information to create workforce development strategies.
- Develop and manage a database of employers and/or industry representatives and maintain regular communication through appropriate channels.
- Develop participant and employer facing feedback mechanisms (I.e., satisfaction and other surveys, focus groups, advisory councils) to ensure training, programming, placement, and retention services are high quality and responsive to stakeholder needs.
- Other duties as assigned by the Executive Team.
Qualifications:
- Master’s degree preferred
- At least five (5) years’ experience managing social service programs and/or teams serving women who have been directly impacted by the criminal legal system and other systems. Mental health and/or trauma informed training a plus.
- At least three (3) years of documented success cultivating employer partnerships and in recruitment and retention of prospective employees with employment barriers.
- Must be organized, detail oriented and can work in both a team setting and individually - A self-starter with the ability to work autonomously and must possess an entrepreneurial drive, but also flexible enough to work within a team.
- Experience with the New York City Workforce Development system is a plus.
- Excellent conflict resolutions abilities to improve organizational productivity and culture.
- Strong leadership, performance management, and supervisory skills to create a supportive and motiving work environment.
- Excellent conflict resolution and employee relations abilities to improve organizational productivity and culture.
- Strong leadership, performance management and supervisory skills to effectively create a supportive, productive, and motivating work environment.
- Superior interpersonal skills including ability to listen sensitively, to respond appropriately, and to establish a purposeful team culture.
- Demonstrated ability to handle multiple priorities simultanously.
Experience with reporting and reporting programs.
- A keen perception of the racial and socioeconomic dynamics of underserved communities and familiarity with issues facing women impacted by incarceration and punitive systems.
- Excellent communication skills, including writing - technical and narrative style - and pays attention to detail. Experience in Microsoft Office is required.
- Is clear on organizational priorities and provides guidance and support to program staff to ensure high- quality work and meeting deadlines.
- Must be able to travel to both Manhattan and Brooklyn location when needed.
- Demonstrates a positive attitude, self-motivation, organization, and resourcefulness while maintaining a reputation through proven action of being client oriented.
- Demonstrated proficiency in using Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and other applications.
- The nature of this work is also somewhat unpredictable, and the successful candidate must have the flexibility to work some evenings and weekends.
- Must be able to travel to all boroughs/ WPA sites when needed.
- Must have professional maturity and maintain confidentiality around all employee records.
Position Details:
This is a full-time position. The Senior Director of Community Based Programs and Workforce Development reports to the Chief Program Officer. Until otherwise noted, work is performed in a hybrid structure, but 75% of the work week must be spent on site at our Manhattan or Brooklyn locations. The ideal candidate will be able to provide his/her own transportation for travel. Reimbursement for business travel is included.
Compensation:
Salary for this position is $125,000, commensurate with education and experience. WPA offers a competitive benefits package including health insurance, employer paid dental insurance, generous paid time off along with 11 paid holidays, including paid holiday week between Christmas & New Year’s Day, 403(b) and paid leave, as well as:
- Employee Assistance Program
- Credit Union Membership Options
- Direct Deposit Money Paycard
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- Tax Deferred Commuting Benefits
- 529 College Savings Plan
- “Alcott HR Marketplace” Employee Discount Program
- “Aspiring Professionals” Scholarship Program
WPA strongly values diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. WPA is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate based on race, creed, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, marital status, religious or political affiliation or any other classification considered discriminatory under applicable law. New York City residents and individuals with criminal justice involvement are strongly encouraged to apply.
For background information about the Women’s Prison Association (WPA), see our website at www.wpaonline.org.
Please email your resume, cover letter, and salary requirements to jobs@wpaonline.org. You must include “Senior Director, Community Based Programs and Workforce Development" in the subject line of your email.