Career Center

Share Our Strength
Managing Director, Early Childhood Nutrition and Health

Position: Managing Director, Early Childhood Nutrition and Health
Company: Share Our Strength
Location: Washington, DC (preferred) or Remote
Reporting Relationship: Executive Vice President
Website: https://www.shareourstrength.org

About Share Our Strength
Since 1984, Share Our Strength® has led the fight against hunger and poverty by inspiring and organizing individuals and businesses to share their strengths. Today, through the No Kid Hungry and Cooking Matters campaigns, Share Our Strength is ending childhood hunger in America by ensuring all children get the healthy food they need. No child should go hungry in America – we’re on our way to making that a reality and we want you to join us. We’re bold, creative, always open to new ideas and 100% dedicated to our mission. If that sounds like you, we’d like you to consider becoming part of our team. In our work, the team at Share Our Strength believes in some specific values. We strive to be bold; we have a clear mission and ambitious goals. We believe everyone has a strength to share and we try to mobilize people. We demand a diversity of ideas, people and communities, which leads to stronger solutions. We believe in always being inventive – trying new things and challenging the status quo. Last but not least, we value doing good work and have a good time while we’re at it.

Position Overview
The Managing Director of Early Childhood Nutrition and Health is responsible for advancing Share Our Strength’s work to end childhood hunger in America by leading our strategies to strengthen nutrition assistance and healthy food access through safety net programs that help families with young children. The Managing Director will center the department’s efforts in advancing equity and reducing disparities that limit access to healthy food and ensure young children and families are at the center of our work.

The Managing Director will oversee three distinct bodies of work under one team – maximizing efficiencies with shared focus on the intersection of health care related access to nutritious meals as well as nutrition skills needed to stretch and sustain three meals a day.

• Health Strategies – Leverages health care system to ensure all children are being fed, with a particular focus on early childhood and engaging key partners such as the American Academy of Pediatrics.
• Early Childhood – Helping parents and caregivers of young children ensure their kids have the food they need before they’re old enough for school. By 2032, we are working to connect 300,000 families with food and nutrition programs as part of the Medicaid Managed Care Models; ensure every pediatrician screens and refers for food insecurity at every wellness visit; and make certain that every childcare center in the United States screens for food insecurity twice a year and provides referrals to those in need.
• Food Skills Education (FSE) – Building on our flagship Cooking Matters program to grow reach to caregivers of children 0-5 with targeted distribution of digital and in-person FSE resources to improve parents and caregivers’ ability feed their kids healthy and affordable meals, while addressing their feeding challenges and maximizing their food resources (including federal benefits)

The Managing Director is responsible for unifying the team’s efforts to effectively collaborate toward measurable outcomes designed to increase our learnings and ultimately scale our efforts across health and early childcare systems. The current long-term goals related to this body of work include: Ensure 75% of eligible women are enrolled in WIC; increase pediatricians screening for food insecurity from 33% to 75%; and ensure 25% of parents and caregivers of children living in low-income are better able to feed their kids healthy and affordable meals.

The Managing Director will lead the team to strengthen the Venn diagram of these three strategies while recognizing each distinct impact area’s opportunity for growth

• Early Childhood expands beyond health to childcare and our health strategies work is broader than 0-5 to include reaching families with older children as well
• Health Strategies and Early Childhood focus on leveraging health systems and payers to connect families and children with meals/meal programs (3 meals per day) and Cooking Matters is focused on reaching families with nutrition skills info both directly and through systems

Key Responsibilities
STRATEGIC VISION AND PROGRAMMATIC OVERSIGHT

• Effectively blend and align the Health, Nutrition (Cooking Matters) and Early Childhood teams into one department with shared strategies and impact measures.
• Transition our Early Childhood and Health Strategies work from single pilots to multi-point interventions.
• Manage with the team to leverage Medicaid to connect families to nutrition programs and healthy food access.
• Integrate food access by deepening the role of childcare centers as food access points by encouraging food security screening, referrals and food support
• Provide resources for professionals & caregivers by scaling caregivers’ access to food skills education and integrating nutrition into preventative school-based health services.
• Serve as a program leader to influence and shape our strategy to end childhood hunger.
• Collaborate with program leaders to ensure lessons learned and impact of this team’s efforts are connected to other program strategies ranging from advocacy, best practices, and Family Economic Opportunity.
• Provide executive consultation services to senior policy officials at the state and local level.

FINANCE

• Manage the team’s overall budget (~$8M) to provide support to programs for staff to achieve goals, specifically its high-level initiatives, departmental goals and provide insight into the department’s fiscal needs to the finance and operational teams.
• Expand revenue generating activities to support existing program operations and planned program and audience expansion.

EXTERNAL ENGAGEMENT

• Strengthen alignment with external partners and manage integration with other program impact areas internally.
• Increase access to childcare meals and consumption of healthy meals and snacks by working with external partners and providing additional resources to partners.
• Work alongside the team to ensure the voices of parents and caregivers are centered using methodologies and practices such as user-centered design and research and learning cohorts.
• Represent Share Our Strength at high level meetings, conferences, and other venues.
• Manage the internal and external training of key stakeholders including lead partners.

LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT

• Develop and recommend plans, timelines and resources needed to achieve the Early Childhood Nutrition and Health strategic goals;
• Lead the team to achieve goals for the fiscal year and develop milestones on path to scale
• Assess the team’s capacity and develop long term staffing plans for scale
• Adhere to core standards and ethical principles of the American Society of Association Executives.

Required Qualifications and Experience
The Managing Director must be a passionate advocate for Share Our Strength’s mission and have a deep dedication to the non-profit sector and alleviation of poverty, domestic and international healthcare issues, and access to food. The organization seeks a highly credible, proven, proactive, dynamic, and dedicated leader with a minimum of six to eight years of leadership experience in the non-profit, healthcare, or academic sectors, with a total of at least 10-15 years of relevant work experience. They should have the ability to provide innovative leadership to a renowned non-profit organization.

Specific Qualifications Include:

• A minimum of 10-15 years of relevant experience related to the intersection of health and nutrition programs or an equivalent combination of experience and substantial technical knowledge of public health, nutrition, and/or early childhood; including 6-8 years in a management role.
• Experience working to change and influence systems for social impact, particularly those that impact federal and state safety net programs (such as Medicaid, WIC, early education)
• Ability to manage multi-faceted projects and a capacity to perform well independently in a fluid, dynamic environment.
• Experience in program design and implementation
• Ability to articulate a vision and key strategies and develop buy in from Executive Team, colleagues in other departments and team members
• Significant experience crafting integrated strategies and leading implementation, including setting measurable goals and managing execution to achieve results
• Ability to “connect the dots” between strategies and tactics in this body of work to other programmatic strategies and broader organizational goals
• Experience supervising and coaching high-performing staff and project teams, leading them to achieve established goals, encouraging professional growth and development, and promoting a productive environment of engagement and collaboration.
• Demonstrated commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion
• Commitment to centering people who use nutrition and anti-hunger programs and their needs in the work
• Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills (both verbal and written), including presentation skills. Ability to serve as an effective internal and external spokesperson, clearly communicating vision, key strategies and goals to media, senior leaders and experts in the field.
• Strong analytical, budget /financial management planning, strategic planning, time management, and organizational skills required.

Key Relationships

• Staff Direct Reports:
  • Director, Cooking Matters
  • Director, Early Childhood
  • Director, Health Strategies
  • Indirect reports under oversight (30)
• External Stakeholders:
  • Healthcare Systems
  • National and Local Partners
  • Government Agencies
  • Funders/Donors

Education
A bachelor’s degree in a nutrition from a relevant field from an accredited institution is required. A master’s or advanced degree preferred.

Compensation
The anticipated salary range for this position is $150,000 – $160,000. Share Our Strength offers its employees excellent benefits including paid time off, health and dental insurance.

Apply
Please apply or direct any nominations/inquiries directly to the Korn Ferry search team via https://kfopportunities.loop.jobs/go/ext/AXHFNJ/242

At Share Our Strength, we value an individual’s diversity of backgrounds, experiences, ideas and perspectives. A hallmark of our history, culture and values has been the organization’s desire to bring together motivated, intelligent, and talented people to work together to find and implement solutions to end hunger and poverty in the U.S. and abroad. We each come to Share Our Strength with a unique background, but together we form a team that yields amazing results. This shared value of encouraging and embracing diversity in our organization fosters a workplace and culture that is highlighted for its innovation, open expression of ideas, and collaboration. With a strong shared commitment to the organization’s mission, and a unique blend of individual strengths, we are all working toward ensuring that every individual can live a healthy and productive life.