Chief Finance and Operations Officer; Pivotal

Posted on April 14, 2019

As a population, foster youth struggle to succeed in school and the workplace. It's not because they're doing anything wrong. In fact, 95% want to go to college. But being in foster care is a tough road, no matter how you look , while they dream of brighter futures, on a national level, 50% of foster youth drop out of high school and most never make it to college.

Pivotal specializes in guiding foster youth towards academic and employment success.

Pivotal is a nonprofit committed to supporting young people in and from foster care
to realize their educational and career goals and ensure their equitable access to opportunity. Envisioning a community in which every young person gets the education, career, and life they want for themselves, Pivotal’s proven programs directly impacting foster youth and improving the policies and systems surrounding them, with a business model that supports sustainability and significant scale.

Recently rebranded from the merger of the Silicon Valley Children’s Fund, established over twenty years ago to address the unfulfilled educational needs of foster youth, and Teen Force, a Silicon Valley non-profit with a solid reputation for finding foster youth jobs, Pivotal – a name chosen to highlight its role in the lives of the foster youth it serves – is seeking nominations and applications for the newly-created role of Chief Finance and Operations Officer (CFOO).

Through its integrated mission Pivotal is the only nonprofit in the Silicon Valley that focuses exclusively on education and employment support for high school and college age foster youth. This strong combination of support includes 1:1 coaching support, college scholarships, tutoring, summer internships, and professional development training. With Pivotal’s support, foster youth in the Silicon Valley have proven to graduate from high school and college at significantly higher rates than their foster youth peers.

Reporting to the CEO, the CFOO will join a passionate, highly experienced leadership team at an exciting moment in Pivotal’s history to help achieve these strategic goals. As a member of the senior leadership team, the new CFOO will help Pivotal solidify its financial and operational capabilities, build efficient and adaptive infrastructure, and scale strategically for greater impact. The CFOO will also help build effective policies, learning experiences, and practices to create a culture grounded in community engagement;

data-informed innovation; and diversity, equity, and inclusion. To drive holistic change, the CFOO will lead and oversee key capabilities areas including accounting and financial management, programmatic learning and evaluation, program administrative support, human resources, technology, physical space and related operations as Pivotal grows both its organizational footprint and impact.

The successful candidate will be passionate about youth and human services and deeply inspired by Pivotal’s mission. The new CFOO will first and foremost demonstrate the ability to ensure the financial soundness and integrity of the organization as it grows in revenue and related complexity. S/he/they will have experience successfully designing, implementing, and evolving operational and service delivery systems to support a rapidly growing organization, as well as effectively analyzing data, trends, and evidence to inform enterprise-wide decisions and continuous improvements.

S/he/they will be a strategic thinker grounded in design thinking and have the proven ability to enable efficient organizational growth and scale. Leadership experience and emotional intelligence in collaborating with internal and external stakeholders is crucial along with ability to inspire and manage high-performing teams and foster a culture of curiosity, innovation, excellence, and purpose in which all staff can grow and thrive.

Finally, as a key member of the Pivotal leadership team, the CFOO will serve as a thoughtful and active ambassador for Pivotal and advocate for foster youth throughout and across all sectors of the community.

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