Skip to Main Content

"Publishing the news you need and the jobs you want."

Animal Care Associate Director

 Back To Listings
Position
Animal Care Associate Director
Type
Full-time
Organization
Cincinnati Animal CARE
Location
Cincinnati, Ohio
Job Summary

This critical leadership position is a pivotal opportunity for a results-driven, intellectually-curious, growth-minded leader. We are looking for a seasoned professional to become part of a vibrant team and lead the Dog and Cat Programs with strategic thinking and executional excellence - one who has the internal discipline to work effectively within the freedom and autonomy of a start-up entity to achieve extraordinary results. The successful candidate is a bold visionary who can rise above the day-to-day demands of the job to take a holistic approach to program development, using data to make decisions, forecast trends, anticipate challenges and execute a strategic response. This person has deep animal care knowledge, strong leadership skills, and a successful track record of project development and management. The ideal candidate is unsatisfied with the status quo and actively seeks and accepts feedback and opportunities for improvement. 

Job Description

Join the young, ambitious, pioneering leadership team at Cincinnati Animal CARE in this rapidly-growing, nationally-recognized animal services organization serving one of the Midwest’s most vibrant cities in Ohio’s third largest county of 825,000 residents. 

Cincinnati Animal CARE Humane Society

Cincinnati Animal Care (CAC) is a progressive, no-kill animal services organization. CAC assumed operations of the Hamilton County Animal Shelter and Dog Warden operations on August 1st, 2020. We have maintained a combined dog and cat 95% Live Release Rate ever since. Our mission is to meet the immediate needs of animals in our community through individualized care, lifesaving solutions, and temporary shelter en route to a safe, compatible home. Nearly 8,000 animals arrive at our shelter every year and we have nearly 500 animals in care at any given time. The animals are housed in two facilities in the Northside neighborhood of Cincinnati. We believe that lifesaving is a community ethic and are committed to an exceptional level of animal services, implementing a collaborative, holistic approach to animal sheltering and Dog Warden operations. 

We value our talented team of nearly 90 compassionate, open-minded and resilient staff and hundreds of volunteers and fosters who help us strive toward our vision of a community where all animals are valued, protected and have a safe place to call home. 

Position Summary

This critical leadership position is a pivotal opportunity for a results-driven, intellectually-curious, growth-minded leader. We are looking for a seasoned professional to become part of a vibrant team and lead the Dog and Cat Programs with strategic thinking and executional excellence - one who has the internal discipline to work effectively within the freedom and autonomy of a start-up entity to achieve extraordinary results. The successful candidate is a bold visionary who can rise above the day-to-day demands of the job to take a holistic approach to program development, using data to make decisions, forecast trends, anticipate challenges and execute a strategic response. This person has deep animal care knowledge, strong leadership skills, and a successful track record of project development and management. The ideal candidate is unsatisfied with the status quo and actively seeks and accepts feedback and opportunities for improvement. 

The Animal Care Associate Director will lead the Dog Care Manager and team, Cat Care Manager and team, Behavior & Training Manager and team, comprised of approximately 40 staff, and interface with the community as a leader of CAC. We have high expectations and are committed to hiring a performance-minded individual who has a track record of growing and developing people, and producing remarkable results. This successful candidate demonstrates critical thinking skills through the disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered or generated from observation, experience, reflection as a guide to belief and action.

Ours is a fast-paced, stressful, high-stakes industry. The successful candidate will thrive in an environment of uncertainty and ambiguity, rising to the challenges inherent in a start-up entity. This is a unique opportunity for an entrepreneurial-minded self-starter to make a significant impact and build a legacy through innovative program development in a professionally supportive, intellectually-stimulating environment.

Primary Responsibilities

The Animal Care Associate Director will be responsible for setting the short- and long-term strategy and identifying key performance measures of the collective Animal Care program. This person must be able to “build the plane while flying it”. Program oversight will include the logistics related to animal population, standards of care, length of stay, lifesaving and public safety. Key responsibilities include:

  • Develop, prioritize and align strategic initiatives with executive leadership
  • Create a strategy for delivering exceptional on-site care that supports the physical and mental health of each animal and expedites their outcome
  • Critical contributor to the pathway planning and outcome decisions for all animals, including foundational and courageous leadership in lifesaving meetings
  • Analyze data and turn insights from data into action to drive better results
  • Define key performance measures and metrics for animal care and behavior & training
  • Form and leverage strong internal and external relationships to facilitate a community approach to lifesaving; effectively collaborate up, down and across the organization to executional excellence and operational efficiency
  • Ownership of department staff development - hiring, training, performance management, retention and career pathways
  • Enable program managers through coaching, development and resourcing
  • Ability to make tough decisions and gain consensus through decisiveness, transparency, humility and respectful communications
  • Contribute to the development of a financial budget for department and manage to budget

Required Mastery and Skills:

  • Mastery of animal housing, care, and enrichment to enable animals to thrive
  • Understanding of the 4 quadrants of learning and the LIMA behavior intervention approach
  • Experienced cross-functional project manager and business planner who uses KPIs, forecasting and budgeting to deliver and execute a robust action-oriented plan that is aligned with organizational goals and objectives
  • Anticipates and identifies problems, and proactively seeks solutions in the absence of perfect data; practices excellent and creative problem-solving skills
  • Practices dynamic, holistic and critical thinking that consistently delivers exceptional results while maintaining alignment on timelines and targets
  • Demonstrates decisive decision-making
  • Highly-effective communicator up, down, across and outside the organization
  • Strong leadership skills to support organizational transition in times of uncertainty
  • Ability to engage, empower, enable, energize and lead others within department and cross-functionally
  • Effective cross-functional collaborator who works cooperatively with other leaders to find new and better approaches
  • Experience successfully working for either a start-up or high-growth organization is a real plus

Professional Attributes:

  • Unwavering composure, integrity, and professional maturity
  • Passionate for animal care and welfare
  • Authentic leader and partner - ability to lead by forming productive cross-functional teams, showing respect for what the team has accomplished while bringing break-through thinking and solutions to improve the performance of the business
  • Superior inspirational qualities - one who creates an atmosphere where people work together enthusiastically and cooperatively to produce outstanding results; one who attracts top talent from outside the organization while developing strong teams within
  • Operates with a sense of urgency driven by a recognition that we are in a lifesaving business
  • Innovative mindset- inspired and unafraid to bring something new to this space
  • Results-oriented - ability to drive results to plan with full accountability
  • Nimble - demonstrates learning agility, proactively shifting efforts as trends and business variables change
  • Growth-minded - self-reflective, humble and open; seeks, welcomes and incorporates, professional feedback with an authentic commitment to improve and grow
  • Inquisitive- has a history of seeking out best practices and successfully assimilating them into their organization
  • Embodies unwavering commitment to CAC’s values and positive workplace culture

Qualifications/Educational Background:

  • 5+ years of animal shelter or animal care experience.  
  • 5+ years of leadership experience managing a variance of teams, including entry level and management
  • Bachelor’s Degree preferred

Schedule and Availability:

  • This is a 40+ hour, exempt position
  • Must have availability after-hours and on off-days for emergencies, consultation, and advisement to managers and Executive Leadership Team as needed

Salary and Benefits:

  • Range $70,000-$80,000 dependent on experience and skill-level
  • Benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, 403b, PTO, EAP, Professional Development

 

Thank you to our sponsors and partners

Copied!
^TOP
close
ModalContent
loading gif