Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

POSITION OVERVIEW

The Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (VP DEI) is responsible for the design and leadership of America’s Promise Alliance’s equity work, both within the organization and across the hundreds of youth-supporting member organizations in our Alliance. In the leadership of our Alliance programming, the VP DEI will create a strategy and design program offerings for Alliance member organizations, bringing leaders and organizations together to interrogate and advance their equity practice in all facets of their work (this work also includes supporting APA’s existing Anti-Racist Alliance initiative). In this capacity, the VP DEI will help support the equity work and DEI practice of hundreds of organizations nationally. In addition to the work with the Alliance, the VP DEI will also design and lead APA’s internal diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging strategy. This includes the creation and leadership of a multi-year strategy to advance and operationalize our DEI values and commitments in our organizational culture, leadership, programming, and external communications. Reporting to the CEO and serving as a member of the Leadership Team, the VP DEI is ultimately responsible for helping the youth-supporting field become more equitable, inclusive, and grounded in anti-racist practice, in service of creating more affirming spaces for young people, improving outcomes for organizations, and solidifying more equitable and just practices in the field. The work of the VP DEI is essential to ensuring America’s Promise Alliance achieves the goals of its 2022-2026 strategic plan.

About America’s Promise Alliance

America’s Promise Alliance was founded in 1997 by five U.S. Presidents and General Colin Powell. Over the last 24 years, our Alliance has grown into a community of 450+ of the top youth-supporting non-profits in the country, working together to advance equity, increase opportunity, and improve outcomes for young people in America. Collectively, our member organizations serve millions of young people each year across every state in the country.

America’s Promise Alliance is an independent entity that exists to serve the field[1], to build the community, establish the infrastructure, and secure the resources necessary for collective improvement and action at a national scale. Our job is to make collaboration among our member organizations effective, efficient, continuous, informed by communities, and joyful. We believe that if you want to foster coordination and collaboration, you start by building relationships. We believe that if you want to build a field, you first create an authentic community dedicated to helping each other. We believe a sustained and continuous effort to bring the best organizations into deep and trusting working relationships with one another will ultimately translate into more effective and more connected support for young people across the country.

About Our Next Chapter

America’s Promise Alliance is in the process of completing a new 5-year strategic plan and a comprehensive “next chapter” for the organization. The work of the VP DEI is essential to the successful implementation of this five-year strategy. An overview of that strategy is here.

RESPONSIBILITIES

The VP DEI leads the strategy and execution of the equity work in our Alliance, develops and leads the strategy of APA’s internal DEI work, and serves as a member of the senior leadership team at APA. Core responsibilities for this position include:

Work With Our Alliance

In 2022, America’s Promise Alliance will launch its redesigned Alliance. Working to advance the DEI work and anti-racism practice of our member organizations will be one of the founding priorities of our community. VP DEI responsibilities in this work include:

• Understand the needs, aspirations and capabilities of our Alliance community.
• Utilize this understanding of our community to create a multi-year strategy for advancing the equity work of the organizations we serve.
• Translate that strategy into program offerings and initiatives we offer to Alliance members.
• Support APA’s existing Anti-Racist Alliance initiative, working with 13 national organizations to define concrete commitments to anti-racist practice in their organizational practice, programs, research, and advocacy.
• Develop external partnerships to bring new resources and opportunities to our Alliance members.
• Identifying examples of excellence within our Alliance community and ensuring others learn from those examples.
• Measure the efficacy of our work with the Alliance and utilize findings to evolve programming over time.
• Codify learnings from our community and share them with the broader field to drive further conversation, understanding, and investment in this critical work.

APA’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Strategy

In alignment with APA’s new 5-year strategic plan, the VP DEI will create a multi-year strategy to advance the equity work at APA. This strategy will be essential to sustaining a culture of inclusion and belonging at APA, to ensuring APA fosters a culture that celebrates diversity and benefits from diverse perspectives, and ensuring APA is an affirming and supportive environment for all employees. The VP DEI will:

• Create a multi-year DEI and belonging strategy for the organization, including a focus on recruitment & hiring, performance management, leadership development, culture, decision making, employee engagement and retention, and the use of our external voice.
• Translate this multi-year strategy into annual roadmaps and ensure successful implementation of our initiatives.
• Develop a methodology and metrics for measuring our progress against our DEI goals and utilize this information to evolve our work over time.
• Lead APA’s DEI Task Force to enhance understanding of organizational issues, to operationalize the DEI roadmap, and foster dialogue up, down, and across APA.
• Collaborate with the Leadership Team to deepen the equity practice within individuals and the team, ensuring equity is at the center of both the policy and practice of how we lead at APA.
• Establishing equity and inclusion excellence as core values throughout all aspects of APA's policies, practices, and design, including internal workplace practices and external work of Alliance members and the broader sector.

Organizational Leadership

• Serve as a member of the Senior Leadership Team
• Ensure all leaders at APA operationalize APA’s commitment to centering racial equity in our work, and to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging within teams, in APA’s organizational culture, and in our Alliance.
• Represent the organization externally to funders, partners, policy makers, and community members
• Maintain strong collaborative working relationships among cross functional teams.
• Work with Human Resources to ensure compliance with applicable federal/state laws, policies, and procedures (e.g. Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity, Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, etc.).

QUALIFICATIONS

• 10+ years of senior leadership experience, preferably in the non-profit and youth-supporting sector.
• Experience leading the development and implementation of a comprehensive DEI strategy in a non-profit organization.
• Prior experience with bringing diverse leaders and organizations together to achieve common goals. This includes membership in, and leadership of, coalitions, communities, and networks. Experience shaping and designing culturally competent processes to support collaborative efforts involving multiple organizations.
• Ability to go beyond introductory level concepts with a focus on strategies and application of concepts in the practice of individual organizations and across multiple organizations.
• An adept facilitator, creating inclusive, inviting environments that can encourage participation from a diversity of perspectives. Ability to create a culture of healthy communication and iterative reflection.
• Ability to focus on organizational change while holding space for individual change.
• Demonstrated commitment to racial justice; strong grasp of anti-racism and how to move organizations toward a transformed society; understanding of how racism and white supremacy have been perpetuated in the youth-supporting sector.
• Familiarity with youth development concepts and the youth-supporting field.
• Experience working in one or more of APA’s outcome areas: education & youth development; racial & social justice; workforce development & economic mobility; mental health and wellbeing.
• Efficacy and comfort leading in both startup and high scale environments. Efficacy and comfort leading through high-change and high-growth periods in an organization’s trajectory.
• Ability to understand and diagnose trends in the field and to synthesize the work of diverse stakeholders and identify the biggest opportunities for impact.
• A believer in the power of youth leadership and the wisdom that can only be found in lived experience. An ability to share voice, space, and power with youth and community leaders.

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

Salary and benefits will be competitive and commensurate with experience with a range of $140,000 - $160,000. America’s Promise Alliance offers a generous benefits package that extends beyond health care coverage to help provide team members with a work-life balance that includes childcare, wellness initiatives, professional development, retirement savings, and more.

[1] We define the “field” as organizations working in the outcome areas at the intersection of young people’s lived experiences: (1) education & youth development, (2) racial & social justice, (3) workforce development & economic mobility, and (4) mental health and wellbeing.

To Apply

Please submit a resume and cover letter detailing your interest in this position to careers@americaspromise.org. Please include the position title in the subject line of your e-mail.

America’s Promise Alliance is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  We actively seek and welcome diversity of all types on the America’s Promise team. America’s Promise is committed to an inclusive environment that allows all team members to thrive. While we sincerely appreciate all applications, only those candidates selected for interview will be contacted.