Senior Director, Health Equity - 140921

UC San Diego values and welcomes people from all backgrounds. If you are interested in being part of our team, possess the needed licensure and certifications, and feel that you have most of the qualifications and/or transferable skills for this role, we strongly encourage you to apply.

About the Role

The Senior Director of Health Equity will provide strategic leadership and operational direction to advance health equity across the academic health system. As a subject matter expert, the Senior Director will play a pivotal role in leading the integration of health equity into all aspects of the health system’s mission, including patient care, research, education, and community engagement. This role independently applies wide-ranging experience in organizational development, effectiveness, business process analysis, and strategic planning to projects with organization-wide impact. The Senior Director understands business needs and how systems—both technical and non-technical—can support those needs, resolving complex issues with sensitivity and in-depth analysis.

Responsibilities

• Performs complex and advanced situational analyses, determining present and future performance and resource allocations.
• Exercises wide judgment in selecting and developing methods, interventions, and evaluation criteria to resolve organizational effectiveness issues related to advancing quality and closing disparity gaps in patient outcomes.
• Assesses highly complex situations and prepares briefings and presentations for senior leadership.
• Works with senior leadership and their staff to identify and implement evidence-based or best-practice solutions in quality of care, health equity, community engagement, and culture transformation aligned with strategic goals.
• Provides collaborative leadership, strategic planning, design, facilitation, and high-level project management for complex, multi-faceted problems to achieve strategically aligned solutions.
• Maintains fiscal and budgetary responsibility, including oversight of external grants, gifts, awards, and contracts.
• Oversees day-to-day operations of health equity programs and initiatives, ensuring effective execution of workplans, timelines, staffing, and budgets across multiple concurrent projects.
• Ensures organizational readiness and compliance with health equity-related regulatory and accreditation requirements (e.g., Joint Commission, state reporting mandates), including oversight of data and reporting infrastructure.
• Leads cross-functional teams to solve highly complex organizational issues.
• Supervises and manages multiple team members, including less experienced organizational consultants.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in a related field and seven or more years of relevant experience in healthcare or a health-related field (e.g., public health), including at least three years of professional work focused on health equity in a large, highly matrixed health system or similar setting, or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.
• Relevant experience includes leading clinical initiatives focused on improving patient outcomes, organizational transformation or culture-change initiatives, or leading large clinical, health services, or public health research project teams.
• Demonstrated knowledge of and ability to apply theories, methods, and frameworks to design, implement, and evaluate organizational interventions to advance health equity.
• Experience developing, implementing, and evaluating interventions or strategies to address health and healthcare inequities or community-based health initiatives with demonstrated impact and results.

Skills & Competencies

• Superior analytical, problem-solving, project planning, and implementation skills, including the ability to interpret and use data and analytics to drive quality improvement and organizational change.
• Knowledge of the organizational environment and culture of academic health systems and large research universities to understand patient and partner priorities, issues, motivations, and constraints.
• Superior written, verbal, and presentation skills, with the ability to facilitate, influence, and persuade people at all levels of the organization to drive and sustain change.
• Superior relationship-building skills, with a track record of successful collaboration with internal and external partners, including community organizations.
• Superior strategic-thinking and consulting skills, including the ability to lead significant engagements from inception to conclusion and integrate health equity principles across the enterprise.
• Ability to navigate organizational complexity, handle multiple constituencies, agendas, and competing priorities, and deal productively with ambiguity and conflict to find common ground.
• Excellent skills in change management.
• Strong leadership skills with a proven ability to manage diverse teams and build consensus across stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Health Administration, Public Health, Business, or a health-adjacent field, or Doctorate degree in a health-related field.
• Seven or more years of progressive leadership experience in an academic health system or highly matrixed healthcare organization.
• Leadership experience at the director level or above, with direct oversight of budget, staff, and programs within a health system, academic medical center, or public health organization.
• Completion of a formal leadership development program (e.g., fellowship, executive education program, or certificate in healthcare leadership).
• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and expertise using the DMAIC process for data-driven improvement.
• PMP certification.
• Experience with health system data or analytics tools used for equity reporting (e.g., Tableau, EHR-based dashboards).
• Bilingual or multilingual proficiency.
• Experience designing or implementing equity-focused programs and trainings.
• Experience working in a clinical operations role.
• Experience with grant writing or managing externally funded research or implementation projects.
• Experience writing and publishing peer-reviewed publications or reports and presenting at regional or national meetings.
• Experience developing community-academic partnerships or memoranda of understanding (MOUs).

Special Conditions

• Must be able to work various hours and locations based on business needs.
• Employment is subject to a criminal background check and pre-employment physical.

Pay

Hiring Pay Scale: $166,600 - $215,200 per year.

Annual Full Pay Range: $136,600 - $267,600 (prorated if the appointment percentage is less than 100%). Hourly Equivalent: $65.42 - $128.16.

Factors determining compensation include experience, skills, knowledge, abilities, education, licensure, certifications, and other business and organizational needs.

Schedule

• Days, 8 hours per day, Monday through Friday.
• 100% appointment.