Chief Program Officer, Exoneration Strategy & Support

ABOUT THE INNOCENCE PROJECT

The Innocence Project works to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone. Our work is guided by science and grounded in anti-racism. Since our inception, the Innocence Project has used DNA and other scientific advancements to prove wrongful conviction. To date, we have helped to free or exonerate more than 250 people who, collectively, spent more than 3,600 years behind bars.

Our efforts have led to the passage of more than 200 transformative state laws and federal reforms. Today, the Innocence Project continues to fight for freedom, drive structural change, and advance the innocence movement. To learn more, please visit (Use the "Apply for this Job" box below)..

The Chief Program Officer, Exoneration Strategy & Support is responsible for oversight, management, and supervision of the following program areas:
Post-conviction Litigation, which provides pro-bono legal representation to approximately 200 innocent people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit;
Special Litigation, which provides pro-bono legal representation in some of the Innocence Project’s most high profile and complex post-conviction cases, including but not limited to people sentenced to death and caregivers wrongly convicted of the deaths of harming children;
Social Work, which provides trauma-informed support to formerly incarcerated Innocence Project clients as they transition from prison to community; and Intake & Case Evaluation which is responsible for reviewing and analyzing the 2000 requests for representation that the Innocence Project receives every year and identifying those that present a legally viable way to prove innocence. The Chief Program Officer, Exoneration Strategy & Support serves as a primary thought partner to the talented, creative, and hardworking team of experienced professionals that they lead.

They are responsible for keeping the teams under their supervision aligned, focused, motivated, and high performing to ensure the effectiveness and quality of work in each area.

This role is a member of the Senior Leadership Team, serving as an essential organizational leader with responsibilities that extend beyond their department. In this capacity, the Chief Program Officer, Exoneration Strategy & Support is responsible for contributing to the overall direction, strategy, and health of the organization.

Specifically, they are responsible for:

• effectively managing department staff to encourage alignment, motivation and high-performance,
• contributing to organization wide strategic planning, decision making, and resource allocation,
• achieving departmental objectives and regularly reporting on the department’s progress and outcomes to the Board, senior leadership, and the IP staff during office-wide meetings, and
• modeling the Innocence Project’s values of an inclusive and respectful workplace and encouraging the same from their staff.

The Chief Program Officer, Exoneration Strategy & Support reports to the Executive Director, and also works closely with all members of the Senior Leadership Team – including the Chief Program Officer, Policy, Research, and Prevention, Chief People and Culture Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Communications Officer, and the Chief Development Officer – to advance the vision, strategy, goals, integration and cohesion of the Innocence Project.

The Chief Program Officer, Exoneration Strategy & Support will model the Innocence Project’s values of an inclusive and respectful workplace and encourage the same from their staff. All Innocence Project employees must model our IP Values of accountability, collaboration, empathy + compassion, equity, person-centeredness, quality focus, and self-awareness. In addition, they must embrace, respect and value the rich diversity of perspectives and lived experience of our staff.

We recognize and appreciate that our work is better for having varied participants and thought partners.

We are interested in every qualified candidate who is eligible to work in the United States. However, we are not able to sponsor visas…