Chief Program Strategy & Impact Officer

Location: Seattle, WA; Atlanta, GA

The National Court Appointed Special Advocate/Guardian ad Litem (CASA/GAL) Association for Children fulfills society’s most fundamental obligation by making sure a qualified and compassionate adult will fight for and protect the best interests of children who have experienced abuse or neglect. The mission of National CASA/GAL, together with its state and local members, is to support and promote court-appointed volunteer advocacy so that every child who has experienced abuse or neglect can be safe, establish permanence and can thrive. Today, only 45% of children in the system who have experienced abuse or neglect have access to a CASA/GAL volunteer. The National CASA/GAL organization is committed to ensuring 100% of these children have access to a CASA/GAL volunteer.

Breaking New Ground

National CASA/GAL launched a multi-year campaign, “Change a Child’s Story” starting in 2019. The campaign is an integrated campaign designed to reach out to a wide range of constituent groups and was deployed across a wide spectrum of media. In addition to this campaign, National CASA/GAL has developed a new strategic framework that is informing and guiding our efforts through the development of a new business model, and a plan for the direction of our organization, including the launching of a major capital campaign. The team that will drive these changes will be hands-on leaders, critical thinkers and problem solvers, relationship builders, collaborative decision-makers, as well as effective communicators, and entrepreneurial and change leaders.

Position Summary

The Chief Program Strategy & Impact Officer (CPSIO) is the executive leader responsible for translating National CASA/GAL’s mission and strategic direction into measurable national impact. Working closely with the Chief Executive Officer, the CPSIO leads enterprise strategy, strategic-plan execution, national network growth, research and evidence building, data and impact measurement, program innovation, and the learning strategy for the CASA/GAL network.

The CPSIO builds the systems, disciplines, partnerships, and organizational capabilities required to move National CASA/GAL from reporting activities and reach to demonstrating outcomes for children, families, volunteers, programs, and communities. The role establishes a coherent research and learning agenda; develops common outcomes and performance measures; strengthens the quality, governance, and use of data; leads the annual network survey; commissions and conducts research; and produces white papers and field-shaping publications that advance CASA/GAL’s role in child welfare.

This leader also develops and drives the national growth strategy so that more children and families have access to high-quality, permanency-focused, family-centered CASA/GAL advocacy. The CPSIO oversees CASA/GAL University and an integrated network learning strategy that equips volunteers, staff, boards, and state and local leaders with the knowledge and specialized capabilities necessary to achieve improved outcomes for children. The position combines enterprise-level leadership with hands-on execution and is accountable for converting strategy into priorities, milestones, decisions, and demonstrable results.

Executive Mandate

The Chief Program Strategy & Impact Officer will ensure that National CASA/GAL can answer four essential questions with rigor and credibility:

• Where must the organization and network focus to achieve the greatest national impact?
• How will National CASA/GAL know whether its advocacy, learning, growth, and strategic investments are improving outcomes for children and families?
• What evidence is needed to strengthen, validate, refine, and scale the CASA/GAL model?
• How will strategy be translated into coordinated execution across the national organization and the state and local network?

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

1. Enterprise Strategy and Strategic Plan Execution

• Translate the strategic plan into a disciplined enterprise implementation framework with clearly defined outcomes, annual priorities, accountable owners, milestones, dependencies, resource requirements, and performance indicators.
• Establish and manage a strategy execution cadence, including executive reviews, dashboards, risk and dependency reviews, course corrections, and regular reports to the CEO.
• Identify emerging child-welfare, demographic, policy, technology, workforce, and funding trends and assess their implications for the Association and network.
• Lead scenario planning and advise the CEO on strategic opportunities, organizational positioning, partnerships, investments, and risks.

2. Impact Strategy, Outcomes, and Evidence Building

• Develop and steward an enterprise impact framework and theory of change that connect CASA/GAL activities and advocacy practices to measurable outcomes for children, families, volunteers, programs, and communities.
• Define a practical hierarchy of outputs, near-term outcomes, longer-term outcomes, and systems-level indicators, including safety, permanency, well-being, family stability, volunteer effectiveness, advocacy quality, and equitable access to services.
• Lead the development, testing, validation, and adoption of common outcome measures and measurement protocols across national, state, and local levels.
• Create a multi-year roadmap for National CASA/GAL to become an evidence-based and evidence-generating organization, including clearly defined standards of evidence and appropriate evaluation designs.
• Partner with program, quality, accreditation, grants, technology, finance, and network leaders to embed measurement into program design, grantmaking, training, standards, quality review, and continuous improvement.
• Ensure findings are converted into decisions, program refinements, training updates, investment priorities, and clear narratives for funders, policymakers, the Board, and the public.
• Protect the integrity and responsible interpretation of impact claims; distinguish correlation, contribution, and causation and prevent overstatement of findings.

3. Research Agenda and Field Leadership

• Develop and lead a multi-year national research and evaluation agenda aligned with the strategic plan, theory of change, child-welfare priorities, and knowledge gaps in the CASA/GAL model.
• Design, conduct, commission, or oversee research studies, evaluations, demonstration projects, and implementation studies using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods.
• Establish research partnerships with universities, public agencies, national child-welfare organizations, evaluation firms, and experts with lived experience.
• Develop protocols for research governance, human-subject protections, data use, informed consent, privacy, publication review, and ethical engagement of children, families, volunteers, and programs.
• Author and oversee white papers, policy and practice briefs, research reports, trend analyses, conference presentations, and peer-reviewed or field-facing publications.
• Serve as a senior child-welfare strategist and national thought leader, helping shape conversations about best-interest advocacy, permanency, family support, prevention of removal and re-entry, kinship, older youth, and specialized advocacy.
• Build a research dissemination and knowledge-translation strategy so evidence reaches practitioners, network leaders, policymakers, courts, partners, and funders in usable forms.

4. Data Strategy, Governance, and the Annual Survey

• Own the enterprise data and impact-measurement strategy in partnership with technology, program, grants, finance, membership, and network leaders.
• Lead the design, administration, quality assurance, analysis, and reporting of the national annual survey and related network data collections; reduce unnecessary reporting burden while increasing data quality and usefulness.
• Develop common definitions, data standards, a data dictionary, governance roles, validation rules, and procedures for data access, security, privacy, retention, and appropriate use.
• Create integrated dashboards and reporting tools that provide timely insight into reach, service gaps, growth, volunteer capacity, training, program quality, strategic execution, and child and family outcomes.
• Assess data-system capabilities and guide the roadmap for interoperable and scalable data collection across national platforms and state and local case-management systems.
• Build data literacy across the organization and network so leaders can interpret results, identify disparities and opportunities, and use evidence for decision-making and improvement.
• Oversee external benchmarking and comparative analysis and ensure that internal and external reporting uses consistent, defensible data.

5. CASA/GAL University and Network Learning Strategy

• Provide executive leadership for CASA/GAL University as the Association’s integrated learning and professional-development system for volunteers, staff, board members, facilitators, and state and local leaders.
• Develop a role-based, competency-driven learning strategy that connects training directly to advocacy practice, strategic priorities, standards, quality, and outcomes for children and families.
• Establish learning pathways for pre-service and in-service volunteer development, specialized advocacy, leadership and governance, program management, volunteer management, facilitator development, and organizational excellence.
• Ensure volunteers are prepared to provide permanency-focused, family-centered, individualized advocacy, including specialized capabilities for younger children, older youth, children with disabilities or complex needs, educational and health advocacy, and youth approaching adulthood.
• Oversee curriculum governance, instructional design standards, content review, learning technology, facilitator quality, credentialing, accessibility, and the lifecycle for updating or retiring learning products.
• Establish measures for participation, completion, competency, transfer of learning to practice, and contribution to child and family outcomes—not merely course volume or satisfaction.
• Use data, evaluation findings, adult-learning science, network feedback, and emerging practice to continually improve the learning portfolio and delivery model.
• Build scalable blended-learning approaches across in-person, virtual, digital, cohort-based, and learning-management-system formats.

6. Program Design, Innovation, and Special Strategic Initiatives

• Lead the design, incubation, testing, evaluation, and responsible scaling of strategic initiatives that advance the Association’s mission and strategic plan.
• Establish an innovation discipline with defined problem statements, design criteria, pilot plans, learning questions, evidence thresholds, decision gates, and scale or sunset recommendations.
• Ensure new initiatives have a clear theory of change, target population, implementation model, cost assumptions, measures, sustainability plan, and alignment with the CASA/GAL mission and standards.
• Serve as executive sponsor for selected cross-functional initiatives and remove barriers to implementation.
• Develop strategic cases, concept papers, funder materials, and partnership proposals in collaboration with resource development and communications leaders.
• Maintain a portfolio view of special initiatives so resources are concentrated on efforts with the strongest strategic fit and potential impact.

Leadership Scope

• The CPSIO leads the Strategy and Impact function and is responsible for building an integrated, high-performing team. The portfolio may include the following roles and functions, subject to final organizational design:
• Program Design and Innovation Officer
• Strategic Planning and Implementation Officer
• Research, Evaluation, Data, and Impact staff or contracted partners
• CASA/GAL University and organizational-development functions, including training and development, professional development, facilitator development, and volunteer learning

Key First-Year Priorities

• Translate the approved strategic plan into an enterprise implementation roadmap and executive/Board dashboard with clear accountabilities and milestones.
• Complete a baseline assessment of National CASA/GAL’s data, research, evaluation, learning, innovation, and growth capabilities and establish a sequenced improvement roadmap.
• Develop an organization-wide theory of change and impact-measurement framework with a concise set of priority outcomes and indicators.
• Establish the multi-year research agenda and identify initial studies, external partners, funding needs, publication opportunities, and ethical/data-governance requirements.
• Redesign or strengthen the annual survey and network reporting cycle to improve data quality, relevance, timeliness, and usability.
• Develop the national growth strategy, baseline the current reach and unmet need, establish priority markets and growth pathways, and implement a growth pipeline dashboard.
• Establish the CASA/GAL University learning architecture, competency framework, curriculum-governance process, and learning-effectiveness measures.
• Create an innovation and special-initiatives portfolio process with stage gates and explicit criteria for investment, scaling, continuation, or sunset.

Measures of Success

• Strategic priorities are translated into owned, funded, time-bound plans; executives and the Board receive timely, decision-useful performance information.
• Leadership can demonstrate measurable progress against strategic-plan outcomes and respond quickly to risks, gaps, and dependencies.
• The organization has an adopted theory of change, common outcome framework, and credible evidence-building roadmap.
• Annual survey and other network data are accurate, timely, trusted, and routinely used for decisions, improvement, advocacy, and investment.
• Research studies and publications increase knowledge of the CASA/GAL model, influence child-welfare practice, and strengthen the credibility of impact claims.
• Growth occurs in priority communities, expands the number and proportion of eligible children served, strengthens volunteer capacity, and is sustained without compromising quality.
• CASA/GAL University delivers coherent learning pathways and demonstrates gains in competency, practice, and outcomes—not only participation. Strategic initiatives are evaluated consistently, and decisions to scale, refine, or stop are based on evidence, feasibility, cost, and strategic fit.
• Teams and network partners report increased clarity about priorities, roles, measures, decisions, and the connection between their work and national impact.

Required Leadership Competencies

• Enterprise strategy: Converts mission and complex external conditions into focused choices, executable plans, and measurable results.
• Impact and evidence orientation: Understands theory of change, performance measurement, evaluation, research methods, and standards of evidence.
• Child-welfare expertise: Brings strong knowledge of child welfare, courts, permanency, family strengthening, prevention, kinship, and the experiences of children and families.
• Data leadership: Can establish data governance, improve data quality, interpret complex findings, and make evidence understandable and actionable.
• Learning-system leadership: Understands adult learning, competency-based development, curriculum systems, learning technology, and evaluation of training effectiveness.
• Growth and scale: Can assess unmet need, develop sustainable scaling models, build cross-functional growth pipelines, and balance reach with quality.
• Executive influence: Aligns diverse stakeholders, navigates ambiguity, facilitates consequential decisions, and communicates candidly and constructively.
• Execution: Moves comfortably between strategic design and tactical implementation; creates operating discipline and follows through on commitments.
• Writing and thought leadership: Produces clear, persuasive, analytically rigorous white papers, reports, strategies, presentations, and executive communications.
• People leadership: Builds strong teams, develops talent, establishes accountability, and fosters an inclusive, learning-centered culture.

Education and Experience

• Advanced degree in public policy, social work, child welfare, education, organizational strategy, public administration, research, evaluation, data science, or a related field; equivalent advanced experience may be considered.
• At least 12 years of progressively responsible leadership experience, including significant responsibility for enterprise strategy, impact measurement, research or evaluation, organizational learning, program innovation, growth, or large-scale implementation.
• Demonstrated success leading strategy through execution in a complex, multi-stakeholder, federated, networked, nonprofit, public-sector, or mission-driven environment.
• Substantial experience developing theories of change, outcomes frameworks, performance measures, research agendas, evaluations, dashboards, or evidence-building strategies.
• Experience designing or overseeing quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method research and translating findings into organizational and field-level decisions.
• Experience leading large-scale professional learning, curriculum, leadership-development, or workforce-development systems is strongly preferred.
• Experience in child welfare, juvenile or family courts, family strengthening, youth development, permanency, or a closely related field is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to develop high-quality written products and communicate effectively with boards, executives, funders, practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and the public.
• Experience securing or supporting funding for research, innovation, growth, evaluation, or strategic initiatives is preferred.

Working Relationships

The CPSIO works closely with the Chief Executive Officer; Executive Leadership Team; Board of Trustees and Board committees; leaders responsible for network development, quality and accreditation, grants, resource development, government relations, communications, technology, finance, legal and compliance, and operations; state and local CASA/GAL organizations; volunteers; youth and families with lived experience; researchers; funders; courts; public agencies; and national child-welfare partners.

Additional Expectations

• Demonstrates commitment to National CASA/GAL’s mission and to the safety, permanency, well-being, and opportunity of children and youth.
• Exercises sound judgment and protect confidential, sensitive, and personally identifiable information.
• Supports responsible, ethical, and inclusive research and data practices.
• Travels nationally and participates in meetings and events outside standard business hours as needed.
• Performs other executive-level duties and strategic assignments as directed by the Chief Executive Officer.

Organizational Values
Adaptability ◦ Collaboration ◦ Integrity ◦ Respect ◦ Quality ◦ Service ◦ Stewardship

To Apply
Please send resume and cover letter to employment@nationalcasagal.org.

National Court Appointed Special Advocate/Guardian ad Litem (CASA/GAL) Association
100 WEST HARRISON NORTH TOWER SUITE 140, SEATTLE, WA 98119
https://nationalcasagal.org

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