Chief of Staff; Community Access

ABOUT COMMUNITY ACCESS

The mission of Community Access is to expand opportunities for people living with mental health concerns to recover from trauma and discrimination through affordable housing, training, advocacy, and healing-focused services. We are built upon the simple truth that people are experts in their own lives. For decades, we’ve led the charge for housing and resources for the most vulnerable people in our community.

Our story began in 1974 when our founders purchased two small Lower East Side buildings to support families and ex-mental health patients, laying the foundation for what is now known as supportive housing. Now almost fifty years later, Community Access owns and operates 22 beautiful housing programs throughout New York City — provides homes to over 1,700 individuals and families, serves over 3,000 people annually, and employs 300 dedicated team members.

Over time, our programs have expanded beyond housing to provide other healing focused services to meet the needs of New Yorkers living with mental health concerns. Our ground-breaking employment and training program - the Howie the Harp Advocacy Center - established in 1995 - has been recognized internationally and replicated in The Netherlands. Our commitment to meeting people where they are and taking our lead from participants in guiding service delivery sets us apart.

We look forward to continuing our work of system transformation, highlighting the necessity and value of truly person-centered services.

Learn more about our work munityaccess.org

This is an exciting opportunity to join an organization committed to human rights and upholding the dignity of each of us. For 50 years Community Access has fought the good fight to ensure that New York City’s public mental health and supportive housing services center the voices of the people we serve. We are an organization dedicated to learning – from our successes and our mistakes.

We foster environments where creative individuals have the agency to innovate and broadly contribute to the organization’s success. This role presents a unique opportunity to work across the organization to strengthen our infrastructure, increase agency wide collaboration, and implement effective change management strategies.

Given the breadth of Community Access’s work—ranging from supportive housing and mental health services to advocacy, education, digital equity, crisis support, and peer training—the organization requires a Chief of Staff (COS) who can operate as a true strategic leader and integrator across functions. The Chief of Staff will also be an important actor in our ongoing journey to become an explicitly anti-racist organization, working with other leaders to further develop elements of an inclusive and equitable culture and contribute to implementation efforts.

• connect the dots across departments and service lines
• ensure that data and technology truly support the mission
• elevate insights that improve care and equity
• help the CEO operate at a strategic, future-oriented level

This role requires someone who is analytical, operationally strong, systems-minded, and deeply aligned with Community Access’s values and commitment to mental health and human rights.

• Serves as a strategic advisor to the CEO, offering insightful analysis, routinely consolidating key information, identifying potential risks and opportunities through collaboration with senior leadership, and promoting organizational coherence.
• Attends key partner and funder meetings, prepares briefing materials, and represents Community Access / the CEO as needed.
• Provides strong, timely data to the CEO and leadership team. Understands trends in data and helps drive appropriate decisions and produces relevant dashboards, etc.
• Provides strategic oversight for the IT function, aligning technology systems with organizational objectives, supporting frontline staff, advancing digital equity, and ensuring the efficient operation of a multi-service nonprofit.
• Provides visionary or strategic leadership to the QI and Data teams, establishing a culture…