Senior Director, Operations

About The Center:

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Community Center (The Center) has been a comprehensive resource and refuge for LGBTQ individuals and communities in New York City since 1983. With their doors open 365 days a year, they welcome 6,000 unique visitors weekly, providing: health and wellness programs; career development; family and parenthood support services; and arts and cultural events.

With a long history of advocacy and advancing the rights of LGBTQ New Yorkers, The Center is deeply connected to the community and held as a premier, historically significant institution. They continue to evolve their program offerings and impact in the community, having doubled their budget over the past six years. They are also a leader in developing cutting-edge, community-responsive programming that is widely replicable. Learn more about their history and work at gaycenter.org.

The Opportunity:

The Center operates from its 35,000 sq. ft. landmarked building in the heart of the West Village. It provides space to over 400 community groups each year and houses a wide variety of cultural activities, in addition to a library, bookstore, outpatient treatment clinic, coffee shop, offices, and meeting and event spaces. This dynamic building draws a diverse array of visitors while also housing a full time program-focused staff. Every year, The Center hosts thousands of activities—from their own weekly programing or annual fundraisers, to performance and celebrations hosted by external individuals and organizations.

As a member of the senior leadership team, the mission of the Senior Director of Operations (SDO) is to ensure The Center’s physical space remains a welcoming, clean, and safe place for all staff and visitors. Emphasizing collaboration, relationship building, and communication, the SDO will manage and set the strategic vision for three departments of approximately 25 people, including Events, Production and Reservations, Facilities, and Information and Referral. The SDO will manage the visitor experience by ensuring The Center’s operational systems and policies are well codified, implemented, and communicated. Finally, the SDO will be a people-centered leader who understands and appreciates the complex identities and experiences of the people entering the space and ensures that everyone is celebrated for who they are.

How The SDO Will Be Measured:

• People-Centered Leadership & Strategy: Create an operations vision with strategies that balance operational objectives with The Center’s mission, and balances tensions across community needs while centering equity in their operations.
• Team Management: Lead, inspire, and develop a cohesive and high functioning team with diverse identities to effectively deliver outcomes while centering The Center’s mission.
• Building Operations: Maximize people, systems, and tools to ensure the building is a clean, safe, and welcoming experience for all staff and visitors.
• Budgeting: Strategically manage spending and make recommendations to enhance the effectiveness of the team and operational expenses while maximizing The Center’s earned income model and ensuring client satisfaction and mission fulfilment is at the forefront.
• Systems and Policies: Ensure operational systems and policies are followed, ensuring information is properly tracked and communicated, while refining systems and policies utilizing both an equity lens and feedback loops in pursuit of continuous improvement.
• Metrics and Outcomes: Translate goals into strategies and tactics with measurable outcomes; hold the team accountable for achieving determined service levels and accountability measures.
• Relationships: Build trusting, collaborative, empathetic relationships with all of The Center’s stakeholders including staff, clients, user groups, visitors, and external community partners.

Key Qualifications:

• Demonstrated commitment to The Center’s mission to support and empower historically oppressed communities, with specific track record working in service of the LGBTQ community
• Experience leading the culture, systems, and strategies to improve an organization’s ability to deliver its mission
• At least five years of experience leading large, multi-layered teams with ability to motivate, develop, and empower people to collaborate, plan, and achieve outcomes
• Deep experience leading operations in a high demand, community, clinical health center, university, house of worship, or similar setting
• Significant understanding of and ability to respond to the diverse needs and interests of high traffic, highly diverse community setting
• Practiced in equity and inclusivity centered leadership that recognizes and balances diverse needs, experiences, and identities
• Experience supporting a capital project execution in an office or community space preferred

The Center’s Commitment to Equity & Inclusivity:

The Center was born of community activism in response to the AIDS epidemic, ensuring a place for LGBTQ people to access information, care, and support that they were not receiving elsewhere. We opened in 1983 to help people who had doors constantly closed in their faces, ostracized by family, friends, and shunned by the general society. Since that time, we have continually provided a wide array of services and programs to serve our community, with an intentional focus on providing support to those who are most vulnerable. We have always taken great care to be a space that responds to community need; engaging in diversity, equity and inclusion work is another outgrowth of those ongoing efforts. We recognize that in order to help LGBTQ individuals and our diverse community achieve parity in health, justice, opportunity and success outcomes, our organization must hold a strong foundation and competency in, as well as invest organizational focus on, equity and inclusion frameworks, practices and policies. This is also true in our hiring and retention of staff.

To submit your resume and cover letter, please click here.