Community Support & Placement Associate Director

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Position

Type

Full-time

Organization

Cincinnati Animal CARE

Location

Cincinnati, Ohio

Date Submitted

2023-09-12

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 Community Support and Placement Department with strong 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 a deep understanding of community needs and socioeconomic factors contributing to poverty and scarcity in our local neighborhoods. This person has strong logistical skills, 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.

Organizational Highlights

Cincinnati Animal CARE offers a robust array of programming that supports animals and people in our community. In 2022, our Dog Wardens responded to over 10,000 calls from the public and won multiple cruelty case convictions. Our medical team hospitalized over 1,000 animals in need of emergency or critical medical treatment. 450 families were assisted through our community support program offering boarding, veterinary assistance, training assistance, or spay/neuter. Nearly 1,000 stray animals were reunited with their families, 5,700 animals were placed into foster care, and more than 5,000 animals were adopted into new ones. We are able to achieve unprecedented results and deliver a robust offering of new services to our community despite working out of an outdated, 60-year-old facility. Hamilton County has been a great partner and the county has committed to building a new facility that we expect to be built and operational in the next few years.

About Cincinnati

Cincinnati has lots to offer for anyone looking to relocate here, being recognized as the highest-ranked and best city to live in Ohio, according to a recent list released by U.S. News and World Report. In May 2023, Cincinnati was ranked 50th overall in the “150 Best Places to Live in the U.S”. The city is nestled along the banks of the Ohio River, and the entire metropolitan area spans portions of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Positive rankings are based on the diverse economy, plenty of jobs, affordability, strong school districts and nationally recognized colleges and universities, fun recreational options and excellent family-friendly neighborhoods. Whether you want hip uptown living, suburban neighborhoods or rural living, we have it all within reach of our shelter in Northside, a hotbed of creativity and a popular destination for entertainment and nightlife. Just five miles northwest of downtown Cincinnati, Northside is known for its fun, eclectic and diverse vibe. To learn more about Cincinnati and our home in Northside, visit www.visitcincy.com and www.welcometonorthside.com

Position Summary

The Community Support and Placement Associate Director will lead the Community Support and Placement departments, 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 Community Support and Placement Associate Director will be responsible for setting the short- and long-term strategy and identifying key performance measures of the collective Community Support and Placement Department. This person must be able to “build the plane while flying it”. Program oversight will include community support and Pets for Life programming, as well as outcome programs such as adoptions and rescue. Key responsibilities include:

Develop, prioritize and align strategic initiatives with executive leadership
Create a strategy for delivering exceptional service and support to community members experiencing hardships that impact their ability to care for their pets
Create a strategy to minimize the length of stay for animals in our care
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 community support and placement programming
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 Skills and Mastery:

Understanding of the impact of socioeconomic status on pet ownership
Understanding of the logistics of animal housing and flow from intake to outcome
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 population management and logistics and/or social work or other community support 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: