YWCA Lower Cape Fear, President & CEO

Core Responsibilities

• Provides executive leadership, in collaboration with the Board, in strategic and organizational planning, with vision and innovation to strengthen YWCA Lower Cape Fear’s core competencies and ensure financial sustainability.
• Manages YWCA Lower Cape Fear, ensuring high-level strategic thinking is engendered with Board and staff; operational and fiscal management is executed appropriately by staff; and governance is executed appropriately by the Board.
• Strategically leads the Board and staff in establishing goals and developing policies, procedures, budgets, and programs that fulfill the mission.
• Supports and engenders participation of and feedback from clients. Ensures accountability by reporting back on what YWCA Lower Cape Fear heard and what will be done next as a result.
• Supports and partners with the Board for ongoing board recruitment and development with a focus on increasing the diversity of board members.
• Maintains and enhances YWCA Lower Cape Fear’s reputation as an expert in racial justice and women’s empowerment, amplifying opportunities and outcomes from YWCA Lower Cape Fear’s programs and connecting YWCA Lower Cape Fear’s work to leading best thinking in the field.
• Models collaborative leadership with internal Board, staff, and clients as well as external partners, stakeholders, funders, and donors.

Organizational Culture

• Prioritizes, values, resources, and celebrates actions and activities that lead to high morale, collaborative efforts, and shared purpose.
• Recruits and develops (via coaching, mentoring, guidance, and feedback), and retains mission-focused professionals at every level of the organization. Understands the nuances and complexities of leading and motivating a diverse staff with different personalities and work styles, working at the intersections of racism, sexism, and trauma.
• Nurtures elevated levels of Board and staff engagement that lead to a culture of empowerment, integrity, and inclusion.
• Establishes a trust-based relationship with staff, ensuring the ability and safety of staff to bring their authentic selves to work; this includes the CEO modeling with courageous vulnerability, authenticity, connection, and whole-heartedness in leadership.

Community Programs and Services

• Understands the deep roots of systemic inequity and elevates equity as a focus throughout YWCA; activates diversity through a process of recognizing and engaging differences, while leading with inclusion of all of YWCA Lower Cape Fear’s stakeholders.
• Leads strategic thinking, in partnership with the Board and staff, on YWCA Lower Cape Fear’s continued and expanding programs. Ensures ongoing local programmatic excellence, rigorous program evaluation, and consistent quality; recommends timelines and resources needed to achieve the strategic program goals.
• Bridges knowledge and understanding of racial and social justice fields to the work of risk assessment, decision making, people management, and business planning.
• Centers YWCA Lower Cape Fear on client needs with an eye towards harnessing the power of its staff, volunteers, and clients to lead in the community.

Fundraising and Communications

• Strengthens YWCA Lower Cape Fear’s fundraising capability, working in partnership with the Marketing & Community Engagement staff and Development committee to diversify and grow its revenue channels in a way that supports capacity, infrastructure, and programs.
• Builds on YWCA Lower Cape Fear’s robust growth in programmatic funding; understands the complexity and nuance of securing programmatic funding, in particular with government funders.
• Works in partnership with YWCA Lower Cape Fear’s CFO and Marketing & Community Engagement Director to design and achieve a responsive revenue model that meets the needs of the organization.
• Individually cultivates relationships and secures financial support from government agencies, foundations, businesses, and individual donors through a combination of grant writing and individual solicitations.
• Engages philanthropic leadership in supporting the priorities of underserved and underrepresented communities.

External Relations and Advocacy

• Serves as the lead spokesperson for YWCA Lower Cape Fear, representing YWCA and its work to various government, philanthropic, policy, stakeholder groups, and broadly to the community.
• Builds and manages relationships with elected officials, local and state agencies, business and community partners, community, and nonprofit leaders.
• Builds strategic alliances and partnerships with like-minded organizations and a broad array of stakeholders to overcome challenges and advance shared policy and advocacy goals.
• Builds on and furthers the YWCA’s brand and reputation, locally and nationally.
• Identifies strategic opportunities to advance YWCA’s mission and agenda.
• Collaborates with YWCA USA and other YWCAs across North Carolina and the country on mutually beneficial activities and initiatives.