Chief Creative Officer (CCO) — Volunteer

Location: Remote with NYC-based collaboration and productions as needed. Type: Executive Volunteer Leadership Role. Commitment: Approximately 5–10 hours per week. Minimum Commitment: 6 months required. Reports to: Executive Director (CEO). Leads: PromiseStudios — Creative Directors, Creative Development, Creative Production, Post-Production, Studio Operations, and other senior PromiseStudios leaders. Works closely with: Executive Team and leadership across PromisePages, PromiseBrands, PromiseVoice, PromiseStack, PromiseRise, PromisePrograms, PromiseBridge, and other MAP divisions.

About Mentor A Promise

Mentor A Promise (MAP) is a New York City–based nonprofit serving children and youth (ages 5–18) experiencing housing instability, grounded in the belief that every child is a Promise—full of potential, dignity, and possibility. We deliver consistent, high-quality programming across mentorship, literacy, social-emotional learning, and creative expression in shelters, schools, and community spaces, creating structured environments where students can grow, be seen, and build lasting skills. Through signature experiences like The Imagination Studio, The Kitchen Table, The Sound Lab, and The Story Space, we nurture academic development, emotional well-being, and creative voice, all within a trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and accessibility-centered framework. Our work prioritizes dignity-protective storytelling, consent-driven engagement, and deep community partnership, ensuring that how we serve is as intentional as whom we serve. We are not only addressing immediate needs — we are building pathways to confidence, belonging, and long-term opportunity, so every child has the support and foundation to carry their promise forward.

About PromiseStudios

PromiseStudios is MAP's creative production studio and home for disciplines including film and original cinema, animation, photography and visual storytelling, motion design, visual effects, music and scoring, sound and audio, post-production, creative development, and original media and emerging creative formats. PromiseStudios exists to create work worth experiencing — not simply content to fill channels. The studio develops original stories, characters, worlds, films, animation, images, music, and intellectual property capable of reaching audiences while remaining grounded in MAP's mission and values.

Role Overview

Mentor A Promise is seeking an exceptional Chief Creative Officer (CCO) to lead PromiseStudios and shape its long-term creative identity. The CCO is the senior creative executive responsible for answering: What should PromiseStudios create — and what should distinguish our work from everything else competing for people's attention? This leader will establish the studio-wide creative vision, develop its senior creative leadership, oversee the portfolio of original projects, protect quality, strengthen creative culture, and help build PromiseStudios into a disciplined and ambitious multidisciplinary studio. The CCO is not expected to personally direct every film, animation, photograph, score, or production. PromiseStudios is intentionally structured around specialized creative leadership: the Creative Director of Animation leads animation; the Creative Director of Photography & Visual Storytelling leads photography; film leadership leads cinema; music and sound leadership leads its discipline; other Creative Directors lead their respective areas. The CCO's responsibility is larger: build the studio in which exceptional Creative Directors — and the artists they lead — can do exceptional work.

Key Responsibilities

Studio-Wide Creative Vision

• Establish the overall creative vision and artistic identity of PromiseStudios.
• Define studio-wide principles for storytelling, originality, quality, experimentation, and audience experience.
• Set an ambitious creative standard across disciplines without forcing every discipline into the same aesthetic.
• Determine, with appropriate leadership, which creative opportunities best support the studio's long-term direction.
• Protect PromiseStudios from becoming driven solely by volume, trends, or disconnected projects.
• Continually ask whether the studio's work is distinctive, meaningful, and worthy of the audiences we hope to reach.

Lead the Creative Leadership Team

Directly develop and support senior PromiseStudios leaders, including:

• Creative Director of Animation
• Creative Director of Film & Original Cinema
• Creative Director of Photography & Visual Storytelling
• Creative Director of Motion Design & VFX
• Creative Director of Music & Sound
• Director of Creative Development
• Senior Director of Creative Production
• Director of Post-Production
• Director of Studio Operations
• Additional discipline leaders as PromiseStudios evolves

The CCO should establish a PromiseStudios Creative Leadership Council where senior creative and production leaders review projects, surface challenges, coordinate resources, and strengthen the studio together.

Develop Creative Directors

A major measure of the CCO's effectiveness will be the quality of leadership beneath them. The CCO will:

• Recruit exceptional Creative Directors and senior creative talent.
• Mentor Creative Directors.
• Help leaders strengthen their artistic judgment and leadership capabilities.
• Establish clear decision rights between disciplines.
• Give senior creatives meaningful autonomy.
• Challenge teams when work does not meet PromiseStudios standards.
• Resolve significant cross-disciplinary creative disagreements.
• Identify emerging creative leaders.
• Build succession and leadership depth throughout the studio.

The strongest CCO will not become the person through whom every creative decision must pass. They will build leaders capable of making extraordinary decisions themselves.

Original Content & Intellectual Property

• Lead the development of a long-term portfolio of PromiseStudios Originals.
• Work with Creative Development and discipline leaders to identify opportunities for original short films, animated films, documentary storytelling, original characters, original worlds, series concepts, experimental media, music and sound projects, visual storytelling projects, cross-media storytelling, adaptations developed with PromisePages, and emerging creative formats.
• Help determine which ideas should be explored → developed → tested → produced → expanded. Not every good idea should become a production; the CCO must have the judgment to determine which ideas deserve MAP's limited creative resources.

Creative Development & Greenlighting

• Partner with Creative Development, Production, Executive Leadership, and relevant stakeholders to establish a disciplined development process.
• Evaluate projects based on story, originality, artistic potential, audience, mission alignment, production feasibility, required resources, risk, intellectual-property potential, and strategic value.
• Help create meaningful development checkpoints so weak concepts can be improved, reworked, paused, or discontinued before consuming substantial production resources.
• Creative ambition should be encouraged; undisciplined production should not be.

Creative Quality

• Establish appropriate review processes for major PromiseStudios productions.
• The CCO should know when executive creative involvement is necessary — and when to trust the Creative Director responsible for the project.
• Provide high-level feedback concerning story, character, emotional impact, visual language, originality, audience, tone, creative coherence, artistic quality, and studio standards.
• Feedback should make the work stronger without stripping the project leader of creative ownership.

Build the PromiseStudios Culture

• Create an environment where talented people want to contribute their best work.
• Build a culture that values imagination, craft, curiosity, preparation, experimentation, candor, collaboration, respect, accountability, and dignity.
• Creative critique should be rigorous without becoming destructive.
• Artists should be able to disagree; leaders should be able to change their minds; junior creatives should be able to contribute excellent ideas.
• Failure during experimentation should produce learning.
• High standards should coexist with humanity.

Production & Operational Partnership

• Work closely with the Senior Director of Creative Production and Director of Studio Operations.
• Maintain clear distinctions: CCO owns studio-wide creative vision and portfolio; Creative Directors own discipline-specific artistic direction; Creative Production owns execution of productions; Studio Operations owns shared studio infrastructure, systems, assets, resources, and operational support.
• Respect production realities while ensuring logistical limitations do not automatically become creative limitations.
• When resources are constrained, the question becomes: How can we make the idea stronger within the reality we have?

Cross-Division Creative Collaboration

• PromiseStudios should serve as MAP's center of excellence for professional creative-media production while collaborating across the organization.
• Partner with PromisePages on adaptations and story development; PromiseBrands on campaigns requiring professional creative production; PromiseVoice on high-level storytelling and media initiatives; PromiseRise on creative career exposure and talent development; PromisePrograms on appropriate youth-centered storytelling; PromiseStack on technology-enabled creative experiences; PromiseBridge on creative partnerships and external opportunities.
• Cross-divisional collaboration should create alignment without blurring ownership or decision rights.

Audience & Creative Impact

• Partner with appropriate MAP leaders to consider who the work is for, why they should care, where they will encounter it, and how projects can reach appropriate audiences.
• Explore festivals and screenings, digital distribution, publishing and adaptation opportunities, partnerships, audience development, and long-term creative value.
• The CCO should understand audience without allowing algorithms or trends to become the studio's creative director.

Youth-Centered & Ethical Storytelling

• Champion a creative culture that recognizes a person's hardship is not their entire