Senior Director – Research, Evaluation, and Program Development

Senior Director – Research, Evaluation, and Program Development

The Senior Director of Research, Evaluation, and Program Development is a strategic executive leader. This position serves as an inspiring thought partner, supporting YW programs to integrate research and evaluation into practice, and supporting the sector to benefit from the YW’s findings.

Department: Advancement
Supervisor: Vice President of Advancement
Compensation: $105,000 (with PhD)
FLSA Status: Exempt, Full-Time
Hours of Work: Monday – Friday; Typical Business Hours. Occasional evening or weekend work.

Job Responsibilities

1. Centers anti-racism, feminism, and trauma-responsive leadership in all activities, including in leadership, partnership, and research.
2. Consults on research design and implementation, including development and direct facilitation of groups, interviews, and surveys when necessary.
3. Collaboratively develops, manages, and forecasts departmental budget.
4. Serves as the principal writer for research funding opportunities.
5. Manages funded research projects in accordance with contractual requirements.
6. Collaboratively creates and executes agency-wide research, evaluation, and program development protocols.
7. Ensures all programs agency-wide are supported with a collaboratively created, rigorous, measurable logic model.
8. Ensures all tools and interventions used agency-wide are vetted and either a) evidence-based or b) if no appropriate tool/intervention exists, have an actionable plan to develop the evidence-base.
9. Maintains a comprehensive roster of the tools and interventions used across the agency, including confirmation (and citations) for whether the tools/interventions have been evaluated with like-populations to the communities served by YWCA Kalamazoo.
10. Ensures research methods deployed are an effective, rigorous blend of qualitative and quantitative methods, and that the analysis and discussion around results uses best practices.
11. Leads the organization’s research-to-practice strategy, including identifying what needs assessments, evaluations, and research studies would be strategic in furthering the agency’s mission.
12. Identifies research/practice gaps, and ways the organization can bridge the research-practice divide internally and externally.
13. Develops the strategy for organizational studies to be shared publicly for maximum impact.
14. Secures, facilitates, and monitors research partnerships, including developing the agency IRB process.
15. Directs the development and issuance of data for monthly KPI reports, annual reports, advocacy reports, and funder data reports.
16. Honors and uplifts the expertise held by others.
17. Develops and provides senior oversight for research partnerships, including subaward management, contract performance review, and fiscal oversight.
18. Demonstrates consistent visibility and on-site engagement across the agency, developing the critical relationships necessary for mutual information sharing and collaborative action.
19. Intentionally builds partnership and relationship with personnel at all levels.
20. Participates in public information sharing with partners, legislators, media, conferences, and other opportunities.
21. Engages in weekly 1:1 supervision, committed to personal growth and coaching others in accordance with agency leadership requirements.
22. Develops and supports a team of specialists and principal investigators to identify relevant data trends in their pillars of service, effectively manage research subawards and partnerships, facilitate collaborative discussions regarding data observations, develop and implement needs assessments, evaluations, and research studies, support programs to translate findings into recommendations and actionable steps, engage routinely in pillar operations, produce sound research reports, conduct impact evaluations, ensure ethical practice in all research activities, share results publicly, and grow professionally.

Education requirements, certifications, work experience

Masters in social work or related field required, including applied research, OR PhD strongly preferred in social work, early childhood, public health or related field.

Experience bridging the research-practice divide through implementation science and practice.

10+ years of developing and executing social service programs.

Personal or professional experience related to at least one of the agency’s service pillars.

Demonstrated experience in designing and executing impact evaluations; strategic planning; personnel supervision and growth; conducting needs assessments; facilitating research partnerships; leading direct service teams.

KEY SKILLS:

• Expertise in implementation science and practice.
• Strategic planning and innovation.
• Curiosity, humility, boldness, creativity, connectedness.
• Strong group facilitation, including personnel and community members.
• Tool, research, and EBP/best practice identification and development.
• Strengths-based personnel development, including for highly credentialed teams.
• Commitment to anti-racist, feminist perspectives in social work.
• Bilingual Spanish/English candidates encouraged to apply.

TRAINING REQUIREMENTS:

1. Orientation to YWCA Personnel Policies, Mission, Purpose and One Imperative.
2. Racial Justice Training.
3. Orientation to all agency service pillars (victim services, maternal/child health, and early childhood education).
4. Appropriate training and in-service which will occur during employment.