Chief of Staff to CEO

Our client is one of the largest credit unions in the United States, a roughly $30 billion, not-for-profit, member‑owned financial cooperative serving more than two million members nationwide. Recently formed through a merger of equals, the combined organization employs approximately 3,500 people and ranks among the top 75 of the country’s ~8,000 credit unions and banks. It operates from two national offices, on the East and West Coasts.

The Chief of Staff serves as the trusted right hand and strategic operator for the Chief Executive Officer, acting as a force multiplier who extends the CEO’s reach across a newly merged executive team. The role drives alignment and decision velocity at the top of the organization, keeping priorities focused across leadership and ensuring the most important work moves forward with speed, clarity, and accountability.

As the connective tissue across the executive team, the Chief of Staff converts the CEO’s direction into coordinated action, anticipates where ambiguity or competing priorities could slow progress, and resolves them before they become friction.

This is a high‑impact building role. The successful candidate will stand up a mature Chief of Staff and Office of the CEO function for a national organization that is now significantly larger and more complex, designing the operating rhythms, governance, and communication systems that allow the executive team and the broader organization to run with intention and transparency.

The Chief of Staff is the CEO’s connective tissue into enterprise program management, providing executive‑level oversight, visibility, and alignment across the organization’s most important priorities. The role does not duplicate ownership of delivery and integration, which sits with the enterprise program management function; instead, it keeps that work aligned to the CEO’s priorities and makes sure decisions move ay the partnership centers on integration, and as that body of work matures it continues as the engine for strategic execution.

More than a strategist, the Chief of Staff is a governance architect, shaping how decisions get made, sequenced, and communicated across the executive team. Success in the first six to twelve months is observable: priorities are clear and shared, an operating cadence is in place that the leadership team relies on, decisions are faster and better informed, the executive team is aligned, and there is visible progress against integration milestones.

This is a full‑time, VP‑level position based in one of the organization’s two national offices (Hillsboro, OR or Chelmsford, MA), on a hybrid basis with several days each week on site. The role includes periodic travel between the two offices.

Establish and maintain the foundational operating systems: planning frameworks, communication cadences, accountability structures, and meeting rhythms for the executive team and the leadership team beneath it.

Drive alignment and decision velocity at the top, keeping priorities focused across a newly merged leadership team, and lead prioritization and realignment as goals evolve.

Support the CEO in setting, tracking, and following through on enterprise priorities.

Own and drive special projects end to end, making things happen in a complex, multi‑site environment.

Act as the CEO’s connective tissue into enterprise program management, providing executive oversight, visibility, and alignment without taking ownership of delivery and integration away from that function.

Serve as a steady force for change across the organization, helping the executive team build a shared understanding of major transitions and converting them into a clear, organized body of work.

Help leadership align on priorities and sequencing as the organization continues to integrate and grow, anticipating what complex transformation can miss and getting ahead of it.

Bring a proven, disciplined toolkit to organizational change, while embedding and scaling the leadership and operating model the executive team has been building since the merger.

Partner with the executive team to make change durable, so new…