Senior Director of Nursing Excellence

The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium is a non-profit Tribal health organization designed to meet the unique health needs of Alaska Native and American Indian people living in Alaska. In partnership with the more than 171,000 Alaska Native and American Indian people that we serve and the Tribal health organizations of the Alaska Tribal Health System, ANTHC provides world-class health services, which include comprehensive medical services at the Alaska Native Medical Center, wellness programs, disease research and prevention, rural provider training and rural water and sanitation systems construction. ANTHC is the largest, most comprehensive Tribal health organization in the United States, and Alaska’s second-largest health employer with more than 3,100 employees offering an array of health services to people around the nation’s largest state. Our vision: Alaska Native people are the healthiest people in the world.

About the role

The Senior Director of Nursing Excellence, Professional Practice, and Innovation is responsible for establishing and advancing the organization's nursing excellence strategy through leadership of professional practice, nursing professional development, evidence-based practice, research and clinical inquiry, innovation, quality analytics, and continuous improvement programs. This role provides enterprise oversight and operational responsibility of the Magnet Recognition Program and/or Pathway to Excellence journey, aligning nursing practice, workforce development, quality outcomes, regulatory readiness, and strategic priorities across inpatient, ambulatory, perioperative, procedural, and other care settings where nurses practice. The Senior Director partners with nursing and interdisciplinary leaders to drive clinical excellence, lead system-level improvement initiatives, strengthen professional governance, advance nursing research and innovation, and build a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and nursing excellence.

Responsibilities

• Assists the ACNO/CNO in strategic planning, resource allocation, policy development, and operational decision-making to advance nursing priorities, quality outcomes, and performance.
• Participates in emergency management, incident command, surge response, and business continuity planning as assigned to support organizational readiness and continuity of operations during urgent or evolving events.
• Supports academic partnerships, clinical education, professional development, and nursing research or quality dissemination activities that strengthen recruitment, retention, practice advancement, and organizational learning.
• Fosters a just culture and psychologically safe work environment by supporting leader visibility, structured communication, staff well-being, resilience strategies, learning from events, and open reporting of risks, near misses, and improvement opportunities.
• Promotes a professional practice environment grounded in shared governance, evidence-based practice, ethical nursing standards, and leadership development, and supports nursing excellence through specialty certification, succession planning, and workforce capability building.
• Champions an exceptional patient and family experience by partnering with leaders and teams to strengthen communication, responsiveness, service recovery, and culturally respectful, patient-centered care.
• Leads organizational Magnet Recognition Program and/or Pathway to Excellence designation efforts, including enterprise program leadership, documentation strategy, gap analysis, readiness activities, and appraisal or site visit preparation.
• Develops and executes the enterprise strategic roadmap for nursing excellence, professional practice, and innovation, ensuring alignment of nursing initiatives with Magnet and/or Pathway to Excellence standards and organizational priorities.
• Facilitates Magnet and/or Pathway steering committees, councils, and workgroups; educates leaders and frontline staff on nursing excellence principles and expectations; and monitors organizational readiness for designation efforts.
• In collaboration with Quality, oversees performance improvement related to nursing-sensitive indicators through monitoring, trend analysis, reporting, dashboards, accountability structures, action planning, and partnership with unit leaders to sustain outcome improvements.
• Leads implementation and sustainment of the Professional Practice Model and shared governance structures, ensuring frontline nurse participation in practice decisions and promoting nurse autonomy, empowerment, accountability, and a sustained professional practice environment.
• Provides executive oversight for a nursing professional development strategy that supports onboarding, role transition, competency development, certification, lifelong learning, career advancement, preceptor development, mentoring, clinical advancement, and succession planning across nursing services.
• Develops infrastructure supporting evidence-based practice, research, clinical inquiry, innovation, and scholarship, and leads translation of evidence into clinical practice across care settings.
• Advances dissemination of nursing research and evidence-based practice through presentations, publications, abstracts, manuscripts, journal clubs, and internal and external learning forums.
• Partners with clinical nurse specialists, educators, academic institutions, and interdisciplinary leaders to advance professional practice, research, evidence-based practice, and clinical excellence.
• Leads nursing process improvement initiatives using Lean, Six Sigma, PDSA, and High Reliability Organization methodologies to improve clinical quality, patient safety, throughput, patient experience, clinical standardization, sustainability of improvement, and data-informed decision-making across care settings.
• Coaches nursing directors and leaders in quality improvement, strategic execution, data interpretation, outcomes management, nursing excellence principles, innovation, change leadership, onboarding, mentoring, and leadership development.
• Ensures compliance with nursing-related accreditation and regulatory standards; coordinates nursing quality audits and tracers; and leads corrective action plans when deficiencies are identified.
• Develops and strengthens the infrastructure, resources, and accountability needed to sustain a professional practice environment and support nurse growth, innovation, and leadership pipeline development.
• Collaborates with executive, operational, medical, analytics, accreditation, regulatory, and academic partners to align nursing excellence work with enterprise priorities.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in Nursing from an accredited program.
• Current Alaska Registered Nurse (RN) license.
• Basic Life Support (BLS) per organizational policy.
• 7+ years of progressive healthcare leadership experience.
• 5+ years of clinical nursing experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Doctoral degree (DNP or PhD).
• Experience conducting organizational gap analyses and leading large-scale quality, safety, or performance improvement initiatives.
• Experience developing or sustaining shared governance, evidence-based practice, or professional development infrastructures across multiple units or service lines.
• Experience preparing teams for accreditation or regulatory surveys, including readiness rounding, corrective action planning, and compliance monitoring.
• Experience developing or overseeing nursing quality dashboards, analytics platforms, or data-driven decision-making tools.
• Experience supporting evidence-based practice with scholarly dissemination, coaching leaders and frontline nurses in Magnet principles, evidence-based practice, professional governance, and outcomes management, and experience with nurse residency, preceptor, mentoring.

Skills

• Experience leading successful teams and managing diverse workforce.
• Demonstrated leadership in Magnet or Pathway to Excellence frameworks, including experience with documentation, shared governance, professional practice models, empirical outcomes, evidence-based practice, or readiness activities.
• Experience leading quality improvement, nursing-sensitive indicator improvement, interdisciplinary work across complex matrixed healthcare environments, and large-scale organizational change across multiple care settings.

Benefits

• Medical Insurance provided through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program as a Tribal Employee, with over 20 plans and tiers.
• Cost-Share Dental and Vision Insurances.
• Discounted Pet Insurance.
• Retirement Contributions with Pre-Tax or Roth options into a 403(b).
• 401(a) ANTHC Retirement Plan: After one year of employment, ANTHC will begin making matching contributions of up to 5% of your eligible pay, based on your own contributions. In addition, you may be eligible for an annual discretionary contribution of up to 3% from the employer.
• Paid Time Off starts immediately, earning up to 6 hours per pay period, with paid time off accruals increasing based on years of service.
• Eleven Paid Holidays.
• Paid Parental Leave or miscarriage/stillbirth eligibility after six months of employment.
• Basic Short/Long Term Disability premiums, Accidental Death and Dismemberment (AD&D) Insurance, and Basic Life Insurance are covered 100% by ANTHC, with additional options for Short-Term Disability Buy-Up Coverage and Voluntary Life for yourself and your family members.
• Flexible Spending Accounts for Healthcare and Dependent Care.
• Ancillary Cash Benefits for accident, hospital indemnity, and critical illness.
• On-Site Child Care Facility with expert-designed classrooms for early child development and preschool.
• Employee Assistance Program with support for grief, financial counseling, mental/emotional health, and discounted legal advice.
• Tuition Discounts for you and your eligible dependents at Alaska Pacific University.
• On-Site Training Courses and Professional Development Opportunities.
• License and certification reimbursements and occupational insurance for medical staff.
• Emergency Travel Assistance.
• Education Assistance or Education leave eligibility.
• Discount program for travel, gym memberships, amusement parks, and more.