Chief Operating Officer

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an independent international organization that provides medical care to the people who need it most. The organization cares for people affected by conflict, disease outbreaks, disasters, and social exclusion in more than 70 countries. MSF offers medical humanitarian assistance solely based on need, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or politics. Our international project teams include medical, logistical, and administrative staff, most of them hired locally and working with their own communities.

Our actions are guided by medical ethics and the principles of independence, impartiality, and neutrality. We also bear witness and speak out about the experiences of our colleagues and patients.

MSF USA is one of 24 sections supporting the global movement, primarily through staff recruitment, fundraising, advocacy, and communications. We welcome candidates who bring a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences to join us in working toward MSF’s social mission.

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) is a core member of MSF USA’s executive leadership team. The COO provides enterprise-level leadership across all operational functions, ensuring that MSF USA’s systems, processes, and infrastructure support its mission, scale, and future sustainability.

This role is responsible for MSF USA’s day‑to‑day operations, providing oversight of the full suite of internal operational functions, including, but not limited to, finance, procurement, technology, systems, and facilities. The COO leads through complexity, champions cross‑functional coordination, and ensures that MSF USA delivers with integrity, efficiency, and equity.

The COO also partners closely with the Board of Directors and the Association, advising on risk, governance, and performance, and serves as a visible and influential voice in institutional planning and organizational stewardship.

Leadership and Direction:
Inspire and guide others, communicating actions needed and how they relate to broader organizational mission and strategy. Ensures alignment across departments and is a member of the organization’s leadership team.

Stakeholder Management:
Identify and engage with key internal and/or external stakeholders to create positive working relationships that enable the initiation, delivery, and implementation of a program or project.

Advance Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion:
Support and advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (D, E, and I) by providing an example, advice and guidance on D, E, and I, to internal and external stakeholders to enable them to adopt these principles in ways that will also enhance innovation and other performance measures. Represent the organization to external stakeholders on D, E, and I issues.

Operations Management:
Execute and manage internal operations using predetermined protocols and procedures to achieve specified operational performance standards.

Organizational Capability Building:
Take action to develop capabilities at an organizational level to ensure that these are relevant to current and future organizational requirements and to enable the organization at large to achieve MSF‑USA goals and fulfill the potential of its people.

Board Relationship:
Develop relationships with Board members; identify priorities, issues and strategic challenges for Board discussion.

• Lead and oversee MSF USA's daily operations, ensuring functional excellence and alignment across internal systems.
• Ensure that core operating areas; including HR, legal, finance, procurement, technology, risk, and facilities function in a coordinated and scalable way.
• Serve as a key thought partner to the core MT, contributing to strategic planning, institutional transformation, and governance engagement.
• Partner with the Board of Directors, presenting updates on internal operational performance, institutional risk, and strategic alignment.
• Provide executive oversight for enterprise-level initiatives such as systems modernization, operational risk mitigation, and organizational readiness.
• Support internal accountability frameworks,…