Director of Compliance

Director of Compliance

The Director of Compliance provides organization-wide leadership for compliance systems, monitoring readiness, documentation standards, corrective action tracking, and regulatory accountability across Next Door's Head Start, Early Head Start, and related early childhood programs.

This role ensures that compliance is not treated as a last-minute response, but as an ongoing operating system embedded into daily practice. The Director of Compliance works closely with program leadership, ERSEA, health, family engagement, education, HR, finance, facilities, and executive leadership to ensure Next Door is prepared, organized, and consistently meeting expectations tied to Head Start Program Performance Standards, licensing, grant requirements, internal policies, and other applicable regulations.

The ideal candidate is highly organized, detail-oriented, collaborative, and able to translate complex requirements into clear systems, timelines, tools, and accountability structures. This person should be comfortable working across departments, following up with leaders, identifying gaps, and helping teams correct issues before they become larger risks.

• Develop and maintain an organization-wide compliance calendar covering Head Start, Early Head Start, licensing, grant, governance, monitoring, reporting, and internal review requirements.
• Build ongoing monitoring systems that help departments understand what is required, who owns it, when it is due, and how completion is documented.
• Support the COO and executive leadership in identifying organizational compliance risks and recommending practical solutions.
• Translate regulatory and grant requirements into usable tools, checklists, workflows, and staff-facing guidance.
• Monitor compliance trends and help departments address recurring issues through process improvement.

• Lead planning and preparation for federal monitoring reviews, licensing visits, audits, and other external reviews.
• Maintain monitoring readiness systems, including evidence collection, documentation tracking, file review tools, and corrective action follow-up.
• Coordinate mock reviews, internal compliance checks, and readiness assessments across departments and sites.
• Work with department leaders to ensure required documentation is accurate, complete, timely, and accessible.
• Prepare summary reports for executive leadership regarding readiness, gaps, corrective actions, and areas requiring attention.

• Create and manage a centralized corrective action tracking process.
• Assign owners, timelines, documentation expectations, and follow-up steps to identify compliance issues.
• Monitor progress and escalate unresolved or high-risk items to the COO and President as appropriate.
• Partner with department leaders to ensure corrective actions are realistic, completed, and sustained.
• Help teams move from one-time fixes to stronger ongoing systems.
• Collaborates with other departments to direct compliance issues to appropriate existing channels for investigation and resolution.
• Responds to alleged violations of rules, regulations, policies, procedures, and Standards of Conduct by evaluating or recommending the initiation of investigative procedures.
• Develops and oversees a system for uniform handling of such violations.
• Acts as an independent review and evaluation body to ensure that compliance issues/concerns within the organization are being appropriately evaluated, investigated, and resolved.
• Monitors and coordinates compliance activities of the organization to remain abreast of the status of all compliance activities and to identify trends.
• Identifies potential areas of compliance vulnerability and risk; develops/implements corrective action plans for resolution of problematic issues and provides general guidance on how to avoid or deal with similar situations in the future.

• Partner with program, ERSEA, education, family engagement, health, mental health, disabilities, HR, finance, facilities, and IT leaders to support compliance across all service areas.
• Serve as a central resource for questions related to compliance expectations, documentation standards, procedures, and monitoring preparation.
• Support alignment between written policies and actual practice.
• Help departments prepare for recurring compliance needs such as child files, attendance documentation, eligibility records, staff qualifications, training records, facilities/safety checks, health requirements, and governance documentation.
• Ensure compliance processes are coordinated rather than siloed across departments.

• Support documentation and process compliance related to Board and Policy Council approvals, timelines, agendas, minutes, and required governance actions.
• Partner with executive leadership, and family engagement staff to ensure governance-related…