VICE PRESIDENT OF STRATEGIC IMPACT:
JACQUELINE MCCRACKEN
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 Vice President of Strategic Impact reports to the CEO and manages five of Ready for School, Ready for Life’s six priority areas: Navigation, Expanding Proven Programs, Data Systems, Quality, and Evaluation. The Vice President of Strategic Impact works collaboratively with the executive leadership team and has internal contact with the entire staff and external contact with funders, community stakeholders, and board and community leaders.
This position will play a key role as a strategic thought partner to the CEO and in fulfillment of the mission they will bring a combination of strategic vision, adaptive management, effective project management, and tactical implementation capabilities to the organization. They will oversee a significant portfolio of programs and related services, evaluate the effectiveness of these programs to provide ongoing feedback and will work closely with the Vice President of Public Will Building and the Vice President of Operations to ensure collaboration between departments.
PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES
Collaborative Leadership
The Vice President of Strategic Impact plays an essential organizational leadership role and works in close collaboration with the CEO and leadership team to successfully synthesize and operationalize and evaluate Ready Ready’s priority areas. In concert with CEO and leadership team, they will report to donors on results of funded programs. The Vice President will set priorities, make data-driven decisions, and assess risks in a timely manner while keeping the best interests of the organization in mind. This leader will be a natural collaborator with an ability to work in partnership and motivate others across functions and levels of the organization. They will identify opportunities to educate board members and other Ready Ready volunteers and donors on program and collaboration impact.
Project Management
The Vice President of Strategic Impact will have excellent organizational skills, with the ability to set and juggle multiple priorities, manage cross-functional organization-wide projects or initiatives, support team members, and track complex tasks across multiple stakeholders. This leader will have strong facilitation skills to bring together multiple stakeholders and help drive decisions and outcomes. This individual will have the ability to execute on deadlines and deliverables, creating systems and processes to streamline operations. They will provide direction and guidance on priority evaluation plans to make sure systems are in place to appropriately evaluate priorities; they will view results of evaluations with program and organizational leadership and CEO, identify areas of success, opportunities for improvement and strategies to address them
Communication Skills
The Vice President of Strategic Impact will bring their exceptional communication skills to this critical role. The VP will solicit feedback and be able to synthesize and clearly, concisely, and accurately relay information to appropriate audiences. Moreover, the VP will ensure frequent, transparent, and effective dissemination of information, including the latest information on programs and organizational initiatives.
Data-Driven Decision-Making
The Vice President of Strategic Impact will be a process thinker, with the ability to leverage data management and analytics to evaluate impact, while being flexible enough to respond to new opportunities as they arise. This leader will establish clear metrics for success across programs and initiatives and will apply a rigorous approach to evaluating the strength and impact of all programs and services. They will be able to clearly communicate these metrics to the Ready Ready staff and will motivate their team with clearly defined goals.
Community Involvement
The Vice President of Strategic Impact will serve as a liaison to community organizations or individuals who contact Ready Ready about the possibility of working in partnership with them on an idea, a program, or a funding opportunity. They will evaluate such opportunities given available organization resources, using established criteria for assessing opportunities. They will identify opportunities to educate board members and other Ready Ready volunteers and donors on program and collaboration impact and they will seek input from program leadership and organization leadership as needed. They will initiate collaborations or new programs in community when appropriate to help Ready Ready achieve its mission and participate in community forums related to early care and education and family services. They will represent Ready Ready on community coalitions, meetings and events as needed as an organizational representative and external partner.
POSITION QUALIFICATIONS
- Strategic thinker and planner
- Experience in executive leadership capacity managing senior level management team who ensure execution of programs through high quality teams
- Experience working in organizations relating to families and young children
- Knowledge of early childhood system components and funding
- Knowledge of human service organizations and resources for families
- Experience in budget development and oversight
- Experience interacting with non-profit organization boards and committees, government officials, and external stakeholders, such as, funders and other non- profit organization leaders, highly desirable
- Effective interpersonal and management skills, including diplomacy, influencing and consensus building skills
- Champion of diversity, equity and inclusion
- Commitment to our Values and Principles
- Demonstrated ability to handle multiple tasks at one time
- Strong initiative, expert planning, organization, and execution for program delivery and adaptability
- Master’s Degree preferred, with a preference for early childhood education, public or social service administration, MBA or related field