Vice President, Management

About the Center

The Center for Justice Innovation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing community safety and racial justice. Since 1996, we’ve worked alongside communities, courts, and those most directly affected by the justice system to build stronger, healthier, and more equitable neighborhoods. With a team of over 900 staff and an annual budget of $130 million, the Center carries out its mission through three core strategies:

Backed by decades of on-the-ground experience and nationally recognized expertise, we bring innovative, practical, and lasting solutions to justice systems nationwide.
Learn more about our work ovatingjustice.org.

Our vision for the People function:

In the communities where we work, the Center builds things deliberately. We learn from the people most affected what is needed, build it with them, measure whether it is working, and give it time to take hold. Our vision is a People function that works the same way inside the organization, treating the Center’s work with its own staff with the rigor, partnership, and respect we bring to the communities we serve.

We are looking for a leader who shares this vision. HR expertise matters a great deal in this role, but it will not be enough on its own. The person we hire will succeed here only if they believe the People function should work this way, and want to build it alongside the staff and leaders who have already begun.

The Position:

The Center seeks a mission-driven Vice President of People to bring this vision to life. This leader will be responsible for shaping and executing a forward-looking strategy and roadmap for the People function while ensuring strong day-to-day operations.

The Vice President reports to the Managing Director, Enterprise Strategy and People, and the two work closely together on people strategy and policy. The Vice President leads the People function and makes the day-to-day decisions within it.

This role is ideal for an experienced HR leader, whose path may also run through labor relations, operations or program leadership, and who combines operational discipline with a passion for building a People function that reflects and embodies the Center’s values.

You will also work closely with the General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel, with Finance and Business Operations, with Technology, and with the leadership of our three program divisions.

The responsibilities below describe the role as we expect it to operate once established.

• Lead the Employee Relations, HR Operations, and People Experience & Development teams through their three directors, setting shared direction and priorities across the function.

• Assess the function’s structure, staffing and roles against its workload, and clarify ownership and hand-offs across the three teams.

• Hold regular supervision and growth conversations with direct reports, lead the function’s performance review process, and build visible development pathways and learning opportunities for People staff.

• Oversee reliable day-to-day delivery across the employee lifecycle — recruitment and onboarding, benefits, leave and accommodation, promotions and separations — for roughly 900 staff at about forty sites.

• Oversee benefits administration, HR systems and vendor relationships — roughly $16.5 million in annual spend — within the approved budget.

• Partner with Finance on payroll and with Technology on HR systems and people data.

• Ensure changes to…