Director of Data and Performance

DIRECTOR OF DATA AND PERFORMANCE:

CHRISTINA DOBSON

 

Background

Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) is a collaborative effort to build a connected, innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families. Our focus is ensuring all children in Guilford County and their families get the resources they need for healthy development. We want every child born in Guilford County from 2022 and beyond to enter kindergarten developmentally on track in five key areas:

  • Physical
  • Language and communication
  • Social-emotional
  • Cognitive
  • Approaches to play and learning

Family voice informs our work, and we share our learning with residents and community stakeholders. We also work with more than 100 community partners in Guilford County and North Carolina to create this system of care. As a backbone organization, our goal is population-level change.

The Director of Data and Performance will play a key role in communicating the evaluation of the prenatal through age eight strategy for Ready Ready. This person will report to the Vice President of Strategic Impact and will manage key relationships, including those with research and evaluation partners and the Evaluation Advisory Board.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Support The Duke Endowment’s management of and accountability for the evaluation.
  • Plan Ready Ready’s evaluation approach in partnership with Ready Ready’s leadership, The Duke Endowment, and evaluation consultants.
  • Serve as the primary day-to-day Ready Ready liaison to evaluation partners to ensure milestones are met, coordination with programs and services is smooth and efficient, and issues in need of further attention are surfaced.
  • Assure that data from all Ready Ready workstreams is considered through the lens of Ready Ready’s Equity statement.
  • Ensure workstreams are supported with data, and recommend and arrange technical assistance as needed.
  • Support coordination between evaluation partners and all Ready Ready workstreams involved in evaluation to assure required information for all levels of evaluation is available and to identify any needed support for Ready Ready staff.
  • Collaborate with the Senior Director of Technology within Ready Ready to ensure priorities and strategies around data, technology, research, and evaluation support and inform one another.
  • Directly support the Ready Ready Vice President of Strategic Impact and CEO with presentations, analyses, reports, and convenings for a wide range of stakeholders by synthesizing the evaluation findings, the evaluation agenda, and other research-related projects (including framing the syntheses for appropriate audiences and contexts and making data actionable).
  • Represent Ready Ready at meetings and conferences to advance Ready Ready’s priorities around evaluating for learning and impact and support the scaling and replication of Ready Ready in other communities.
  • Oversee evaluators’ interactions with local community partners.
  • Support community partners with meeting evaluators’ needs.
  • Participate on System-Building Committee, IDS Data Governance Council and other groups as designated by the CEO and the Vice President of Strategic Impact.
  • Actively contribute to ongoing Ready Ready team meetings and engage in ongoing collaboration with fellow team members within Ready Ready.
  • Commit to Ready for School, Ready for Life’s Values and Principles.
  • Support the Ready ReadyEquity Statement and commit to implementation of the Ready Ready Equity Action Plan.
  • Commit to implementation of the Ready Ready Equity Action Plan and ensure our Values and Principles are considered in the evaluation agenda.

POSITION QUALIFICATIONS

Education and Experience

  • Bachelor’s degree in early childhood development, public policy, or a related field such as social work, public health, public administration, business, communication. Master’s degree preferred.
  • At least two years of experience involving program implementation, advisement or application of research and evaluation to policy in education, healthcare, or other social services area preferred.
  • At least two years of experience managing partnerships and processes inside of government, a social services agency, other nonprofits or a philanthropic foundation preferred.
  • Experience with the intersection of applied research, evaluation, and community-based providers.
  • Must have a valid driver’s license, reliable transportation and pass a criminal and driving background check.

Characteristics, Knowledge & Skills

  • Commitment to taking on bold and ambitious initiatives in order to address structural inequities and significantly expand opportunities for children and families in Guilford County.
  • Ability to perform and adapt in a fast-paced, start-up environment with ongoing refinements to processes and scope of wok based on the mission of Reay Ready and lessons learned during implementation.
  • Commitment to personal and professional growth and development and the ability to incorporate feedback from a wide range of sources into continuous improvement efforts.
  • Interest in supporting a wide range of stakeholders in making connections among research, policy, and practice.
  • Ability to develop and manage processes to support decision making involving multiple factors and stakeholders with diverse perspectives.
  • Sound judgment and ability to handle confidential information with discretion and professionalism.
  • Strong organizational, communication, and relationship-building skills.
  • Ability to work autonomously.
  • Intermediate to advanced skills with Microsoft desktop programs, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Teams, and others.