Chief Operating Officer - Green-Wood

Position

The inaugural chief operating officer (COO), responsible for shaping Green-Wood’s long-term operational, financial, and organizational growth, will serve as a strategic thought partner and advisor to the President and an essential member of the senior leadership team. Leading a team of over 70 staff, this role drives enterprise-wide planning, ensures strong financial stewardship, advances innovative revenue strategies, and builds the operational foundation needed to support Green-Wood’s next chapter.

• Partner with the President to guide Green-Wood’s long-term vision and institutional direction.
• Lead the development and execution of major planning initiatives, including Strategic Plan, 20-Year Capital Plan, and Five-Year Operational Plan.
• Conduct rigorous analysis of economic, operational, and land-use impacts across cemetery, horticulture, and resilience functions, including green burials and beyond, innovations in green-space management, emissions and energy-reduction strategies, major capital project planning, and leveraging new exhibition and event venue.

Building Systems/Processes and Operational Oversight

• Work with the President and across departments to convert manual and siloed operations into an integrated system, including cemetery sales, administration, and inventory systems alignment, developing data stories to support fundraising, bookkeeping and budgeting, and land management.
• Lead complete IT overhaul, focused on upgrading and consolidating databases to provide one central portal for information, inquiry and transactions.
• Oversee Green-Wood’s administrative domains, including IT, security, and facilities.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to establish performance indicators and metrics to measure the effectiveness of core Green-Wood initiatives. Prepare and present results through an internal tracking dashboard and high-level progress reports for the senior leadership team and Board.
• Maximize Green-Wood’s buying power through facilities and inventory management and procurement.
• Lead the evaluation of internal systems, business processes, and use of technology resources to ensure continuous innovation, efficiency, and responsiveness to Green-Wood’s growing and changing organizational needs.

Revenue Innovation and Business Development

• Lead revenue modeling for new ventures that will support Green-Wood’s long-term financial sustainability, such as natural organic reduction NOR and the Green-House.
• Evaluate and model the optimal balance between mission-driven public programming and revenue-generating initiatives.
• Develop a detailed understanding of the profit and loss of every aspect of the Green-Wood enterprise, including the Cemetery and Cultural Services.
• Partner with the President to make strategic investments in revenue-generating opportunities that support the cemetery’s mission.

Executive Management

• Lead and manage five direct reports across IT, Facilities, Security, Operations, and Finance and a total team of 70 staff.
• Assess roles and functions as needed to ensure alignment with Green-Wood’s core mission and strategic priorities.
• Communicate priority goals to all staff, resulting in coordinated work products.

Experience – Required

• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, public administration, finance, or related field
• 15 years of senior leadership experience in public sector or large, complex nonprofit organizations in NYC, with at least 7 years at the C-suite level with responsibility for organizational/business planning, budgeting, strategy, and/or infrastructure/capacity building
• Proven track record of successfully scaling organizations, driving revenue modeling and generation, overseeing operations and land use portfolio/ventures and complex business transactions, overseeing multiple infrastructure and administrative domains, and/or leading large and diverse teams
• Ability to optimize the sustainable and compliant use of perpetual care funds through strategic planning, expense alignment, and rigorous financial oversight
• Highly disciplined business and financial planning skills with the ability to anticipate and forecast environmental…