Portfolio Director

Overview

The Portfolio Director serves as a primary relationship manager for Digital Harbor Foundation's portfolio of projects, partnering closely with Project Directors to help them successfully launch, grow, and transition their initiatives. Reporting to the Chief Program Officer and working closely with the Chief Impact Officer, this role is responsible for ensuring Project Directors receive proactive, coordinated support throughout the entire project lifecycle—from onboarding and advisory committee formation through ongoing portfolio management, and, when appropriate, project spin-out or spin down. The Portfolio Director acts as the central point of contact for assigned Project Directors, helping them navigate Digital Harbor's people, processes, and resources while ensuring they receive a seamless experience across Finance, Operations, Development, Communications, Technology, Legal, and other shared services.

About the role

By maintaining strong relationships with Project Directors and coordinating across internal teams, the Portfolio Director helps remove barriers, surface risks early, and ensure projects have the support needed to achieve their goals. Beyond supporting individual projects, the Portfolio Director plays a key role in strengthening Digital Harbor's portfolio management practices. This includes identifying trends across projects, improving organizational processes, establishing consistent rituals and communications, and helping build systems that enable the organization to scale while maintaining a high level of service.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary point of contact for an assigned portfolio of projects

• Build trusted relationships with Project Directors, serving as a strategic thought partner throughout the project lifecycle

• Conduct regular project check-ins to understand priorities, identify risks, celebrate successes, and coordinate organizational support

• Maintain overall portfolio health and proactively surface opportunities and challenges to organizational leadership

• Escalate strategic issues and recommendations to the Chief Program Officer and Chief Impact Officer as appropriate

• Lead the development and execution of partnership strategies that align with organizational goals and programmatic priorities to recruit new projects

• Manage a pipeline of partnership opportunities, tracking outreach, negotiations, and partnership outcomes to ensure growth targets are met

• Lead the onboarding experience for newly approved projects, ensuring a smooth transition into Digital Harbor's systems and processes

• Cover all aspects of project lifecycle, including periods of growth, leadership transitions, funding changes, and organizational evolution

• Partner with Project Directors to develop and execute project transition and spin-out plans, coordinating timelines, documentation, and cross-functional support

• Lead the establishment and ongoing management of project Advisory Committees

• Support Project Directors in recruiting, onboarding, and engaging advisory committee members

• Maintain advisory committee documentation, governance processes, and organizational records

• Attend or support advisory committee meetings as appropriate and surface strategic risks, opportunities, or follow-up actions to organizational leadership

• Coordinate closely with Finance, Operations, Development, Communications, Technology, Legal, HR, and other internal teams to ensure projects receive timely and coordinated support

• Serve as the liaison between Project Directors and shared service teams, helping prioritize requests, resolve issues, and improve the overall project experience

• Identify recurring operational challenges and work collaboratively with internal teams to streamline processes and improve service delivery

• Maintain accurate portfolio documentation, project records, and key lifecycle milestones

• Coordinate recurring portfolio reviews and leadership updates

• Analyze trends across Project Director requests and project needs to identify opportunities for organizational improvement

• Develop and refine portfolio management processes, templates, communications, and operating rhythms that improve consistency and scalability

• Support strategic initiatives led by the Chief Program Officer and Chief Impact Officer to strengthen Digital Harbor's project portfolio

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in nonprofit management, public administration, education, social sciences, or a related field required; Master's degree preferred

• Demonstrated experience building or managing standardized data collection processes across multiple teams or programs (e.g., shared reporting templates, KPI trackers, dashboards)

• At least 2 years of experience in a supervisory, team leadership, or cross-functional coordination role

• Demonstrated experience with AmeriCorps, national service programs, or similar highly regulated grant-funded initiatives strongly preferred

• Experience working in or with community-based organizations and diverse populations

• Experience supporting program budgets, grant reporting, and compliance processes

Qualifications

• Excellent written and verbal communication, with strong interpersonal and presentation skills — including translating raw numbers into clear narratives for leadership and funders

• Strong data literacy: comfortable building and maintaining spreadsheets/dashboards that pull together metrics from multiple sources into one consistent view

• Ability to design and enforce simple, repeatable reporting processes that Project Directors can follow without excessive burden

• Ability to work independently, including managing multiple reporting cycles and deadlines across three programs simultaneously

• Ability to effectively collaborate with Project Directors and various departments, with a positive, low-friction approach to chasing down data

• Detail oriented, with a strong eye for data inconsistencies, outliers, or gaps

• Proficient with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel) and Google Suite (Sheets, Docs, Slides); comfortable building pivot tables, dashboards, or lightweight BI views

• Analytical thinking, problem-solving, organizational, and multitasking skills

• Strong coaching skills — specifically around helping Project Directors report data accurately and on time

• Commitment to racial equity and community empowerment practices

Benefits

Compensation for this full-time position is $95,000-110,000 annually, commensurate with experience. Digital Harbor provides a best-in-class comprehensive set of benefits to support the team. All regular, full-time employees are eligible to receive:

• Health Benefits & Insurance

• Carefirst Blue Cross Blue Shield - Health, Dental, and Vision Insurance (100% of the premium paid for employees and 85% of dependents)

• Pre-Tax Health Savings Account (HSA) (with $365 monthly employer contributions)

• Pre-Tax Flexible Savings Account (FSA)

• Paid Accidental Death & Dismemberment (AD&D) Insurance

• Paid Short-Term & Long-Term Disability Insurance

• Paid Basic Life Insurance

• Supplemental Voluntary Life Insurance (Employee, Spouse & Dependent Children)

• Total Pet Plan and Supplemental Wishbone Pet Insurance

• EAP - Health and Wellness

• Wellness Reimbursement Program

• Retirement 401k Retirement Plan (with 6% matching)

• Paid Time Off