Director of Strategic Initiatives and Enablement

Director of Strategic Initiatives and Enablement

Carina is a nonprofit technology organization founded in 2016 that operates an online home care matching platform. We connect individuals who need publicly funded home care services, including Medicaid, with home care workers seeking meaningful work and good jobs. We work closely with state and local governments, labor unions, training funds, and private employers. Since our founding, Carina has successfully facilitated thousands of matches, resulting in more than 5 million hours of home care being delivered.

Carina has been recognized as an MIT Solver in the care economy, a Black & Brown Innovator honoree by MIT Solve, and an honoree on Care Guild’s Care at Scale List, highlighting our innovative approach to strengthening the care workforce and expanding access to care.

Location: Hybrid work Headquartered in Downtown Seattle, remote work possible from CA, IL, NY, RI, OR and WA.

Work Schedule: This is a 40 hour-per-week role. Employees are expected to be available during core business hours of 9:00am - 4:00pm, Monday through Friday. The remaining hours may be flexed before or after core hours based on workload and business needs.

Travel Requirements: Up to 10-15%

Category: Full-Time, FLSA Exempt, Regular

Physical Requirements: Must be able to perform tasks that may require prolonged periods of sitting or standing, with or without reasonable accommodation.

Position Summary

This is a senior leadership role reporting to the CEO and working closely with Carina's leadership team and functional leaders across the organization.

The Director of Strategic Initiatives and Enablement leads Carina's state portfolio across Washington and Oregon. Carina operates in the individual provider (IP) home care market - a model where care seekers choose and manage their own caregivers, rather than receiving care through an agency. Carina's work spans multiple consumer funding programs, including Medicaid (the largest payor for home care in the United States), as well as multiple funding programs beyond Medicaid.

The Director will lead the organization in navigating this program complexity across Washington and Oregon, with additional markets anticipated.

This role unifies program and contract management, communication and engagement, and evaluation under one portfolio, with a focus on enabling both the communities Carina serves and the internal teams that build for them. The Director of Strategic Initiatives and Enablement will serve as a leader, earning the trust of external and internal partners, bringing structure and strategic coherence to the portfolio, developing a strong team, and turning what Carina learns from its markets and stakeholder insights into measurable outcomes.

They should be equally comfortable asking, "What do we need to achieve with our partners next quarter?" and "What are we learning from this market that should change how Carina operates over the next three years?"

The Director will lead a small internal team, supported by shared service capacity and external vendors, covering program and contract management, communications (including marketing and community outreach), and research and evaluation. The role requires a mix of hands-on work and strategic leadership. As Carina enters additional markets or serves more programs in its current markets, the Director will build the team and operating model needed to support the expanded portfolio.

You

Will:
Run the state program portfolio

• Own the overall strategic and operational health and performance of Carina's work with individual provider programs and related care seeker-side programs in each state Carina serves, ensuring that we achieve the shared outcomes in our contracts while continuously strengthening the value we provide to partners and communities;
• Serve as a senior day-to-day relationship leader with state agencies, contract counterparts, program partners, and other key stakeholders, identifying opportunities to strengthen partnerships, shape future priorities, and create greater value;
• Work with executive leadership on contracting for new agreements;
• Own the operational management of Carina's state program agreements, including amendments, renewals, scope and shared outcomes, performance requirements, and compliance reporting;
• Understand operational partners’ interests, motivations, needs and evolving priorities; anticipate risks and opportunities across the portfolio; and translate emerging signals into strategic…