Executive Director

Full-Time, Exempt
• Remote / Statewide
• Reports to the Board of Directors

Compensation commensurate with experience; anticipated range $70,000–$90,000

New Mexico’s children in foster care deserve a skilled, committed adult in their corner. CASA volunteers — trained community members appointed by courts — provide exactly that: sustained, fact-based advocacy that cuts through the noise of an overburdened child welfare system. The New Mexico CASA Association exists to make that advocacy available to every child who needs it, across every corner of this state.

This is an early moment for NM CASA — and an interesting one. The organization was purpose-built in 2018 by the New Mexico local CASA programs to serve as the statewide network steward for New Mexico’s thirteen judicial districts, and after seven years of foundational work, the pieces for something larger are being assembled.

New Mexico’s child welfare system faces well-documented challenges, and the case for expanding CASA’s reach has never been stronger. None of this is finished. The next Executive Director will help finish it — and in doing so, will have shaped what NM CASA becomes. That is a different proposition than stepping into a mature organization, and it will appeal to a different kind of person.

The work will take you across New Mexico. From the high desert communities of San Miguel and Mora Counties to the Mesilla Valley, from the Four Corners region to the eastern plains, New Mexico’s cultural and geographic diversity is not a complication — it is the texture of the job. Local CASA programs are community organizations, rooted in their places and their relationships with local courts.

The ED must show up credibly in all of them. Fluency with New Mexico — its people, its politics, its judicial culture, its many distinct communities — matters in ways that cannot be fully taught.

Santa Fe is where the legislature meets and where the Administrative Office of the Courts is headquartered. Albuquerque is home to the largest concentration of children in foster care in the state. Courthouses and program offices are everywhere else. There is no single base that makes sense for this role. The right person will not only accept that — they will find it appealing.

The New Mexico CASA Association is the statewide organization for the National CASA/GAL network in New Mexico, incorporated in 2018. It holds the statewide contract with the Administrative Office of the Courts for program quality assurance, training, technical assistance, and data reporting — and beyond that contract, it is the organizational home and advocate for thirteen local CASA programs operating across eleven of New Mexico’s thirteen judicial districts.

NM CASA is a small, early-stage organization: two staff, a working board drawn from across the state, and an annual budget at its current contracted level of approximately $238,000. It is not a bureaucracy. The ED will do real work, not manage people who do it — and will build the organizational infrastructure that eventually allows greater delegation. That arc, from founder-stage to mature statewide organization, is part of what makes this role interesting.

The Executive Director is NM CASA’s primary leader, external voice, and chief relationship holder. The AOC contract defines a significant portion of current workload — quality assurance, training systems, data reporting, technical assistance to local programs — but it does not define the role. The ED’s job is to build NM CASA into the effective statewide organization that New Mexico’s children need.

The AOC contract is the platform from which that work begins, not its ceiling.

• Lead NM CASA’s multi-year legislative funding strategy, including advancing the recurring appropriation needed to fund CASA advocacy at meaningful scale across the state.
• Maintain year-round relationships with key legislators, Legislative Finance Committee staff, and allied child welfare advocates.
• Represent NM CASA’s interests in state budget processes and champion funding formula design that rewards programs for serving children.
• Identify…