Senior Director of Operations

Innovative Human Rights NGO Seeks Senior Director of Operations

About Asylum Access

We are human rights advocates who support forcibly displaced individuals and communities as they reclaim their rights, agency, and power.

Our unique combination of legal empowerment, policy advocacy, and global systems change creates conditions in which refugees can live safely, move freely, work legally and go to school. Our work transforms the traditional approach of endless humanitarian handouts into a sustainable solution that honors refugees’ freedom, dignity, and autonomy, and equips them to make choices about their own lives.

Asylum Access’ global team and family of local civil society organizations advocate making human rights a reality for refugees throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Our national organizations are led and staffed primarily by community members in those countries, and there is strong mutual trust and respect between our clients and us. On the international stage, we work with established institutions to shift the global system to better uphold and promote refugees’ human rights. We can help catalyze and lead systemic transformation because, uniquely among NGOs in the refugee response sector, we focus exclusively on rights and governance.

Department Description

The Operations Department at Asylum Access ensures that teams worldwide have the resources, tools, and support they need to effectively realize Asylum Access’s goals and vision. This includes oversight of a wide variety of functional areas, including systems and technology, monitoring and evaluation, planning and learning, human resources, risk management, and structure. In all these areas and in our day-to-day work, we embed Asylum Access’s values in the processes we create and ensure that the organization is equipped to achieve impact on an individual, community and systemic levels.

Position Description

The Senior Director of Operations works under the Chief Strategy Officer to guide the Operations Department, ensuring that the Asylum Access team has an operational and structural framework that allows it to achieve its mission and vision, and that tools and systems are aligned with organizational strategic direction.

Key Responsibilities

Organizational Health and Planning (20%)

• Oversee risk mitigation and response across the organization, developing policies and procedures that mitigate risks, responding to crises, and proactively identifying risks to organizational leaders and developing plans for response
• Serve as a lead for organizational legal compliance, ensuring our structure, practices and actions are aligned with requirements and liaising with external counsel
• In cooperation with the Chief Strategy Officer, facilitate Asylum Access’s annual planning process, ensuring that programmatic and operational teams across the organization set goals in line with strategic priorities and have the tools necessary to monitor progress and revise plans as needed
• Coordinate among monitoring, evaluation, and learning staff at the organization, ensuring standardization of key metrics, centralized tracking of overall impact, and cross-organizational sharing of MEL best practices

Human Resources, People, and Culture (30%)

• Oversee Human Resources (HR) at Asylum Access, supervising the HR team and ensuring that Asylum Access has the personnel as well as HR policies, practices and systems needed for organizational impact and stability
• Develop and implement strategies and resources for people and culture that reflect Asylum Access’s strategic priorities, values, and approaches
• Promote diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels and across all functional areas

Technology and Systems (25%)

• Along with the Global Systems Manager, build the overall technology and systems roadmap for the organization and oversee its execution and implementation

• Proactively identify areas where systems, processes and technology are not well-matched to organizational needs or values and work with cross-functional teams to develop solutions

• Along with the Global Systems Manager, serve as an administrator for key technical systems

Operations, Internal Communications, and Knowledge Management (25%)

• Oversee general operations for Asylum Access Headquarters, including but not limited to: procurement, supplies, mailing, legal compliance, etc.
• Steward Asylum Access’s knowledge management practices, ensuring that information is organized, discoverable and accessible to team members across the organization
• In partnership with the Chief Strategy Officer and other organizational leaders, build internal communications strategies and tools that ensure that all team members feel connected to the organization and its mission, vision and values

Reports to: Chief Strategy Officer (hire also in progress)

Supervises: Associate Director of HR, Associate Director of HR for Mexico (on an interim basis), Global Systems Manager, Operations Manager

Minimum Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience in high-level operations management for a nonprofit, encompassing human resources, IT, finance and beyond
• Strong commitment to and interest in Asylum Access’s mission and vision
• Substantial experience managing complex projects that are tied to key organizational priorities
• Demonstrated experience in risk management and mitigation
• Clear experience developing policies, procedures and systems that are reflective of organizational values, compliant with key requirements, and efficient and clear in their implementation
• Experience managing budgets
• Excellent people management skills
• Strong communication skills and cultural intelligence, orientation toward building and strengthening relationships
• Robust technical skills, including experience with the management and implementation of technical systems (experience with Salesforce, NetSuite, Wordpress, and Google Suite preferred)
• Excellent communication across written and verbal channels and the ability to customize messages for different internal audiences
• Commitment to realizing equity and inclusion in ways of working and experience in culturally diverse environments
• Fluency in English

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience creating and delivering trainings to a wide variety of audiences
• Experience working in human rights-focused and/or international nonprofits
• Fluency in or working knowledge of Spanish

Hours and Location of Work

The Senior Director of Operations is a full-time, exempt role. We anticipate that the role will take approximately 40 hours per week.

We are open to candidates in a variety of locations with at least 4 hours of overlapping working time with US Eastern Time Zone. Note that employment arrangements and contract details may differ based on location. All candidates, regardless of location, should be aware that some flexibility regarding working hours is required in order to take out-of-hours calls and meetings with international colleagues.

The position comes with a well-paying nonprofit salary based on location, with an annual salary for US-based candidates of USD 128,000. The offered salary will be calculated based on location and offered in local currency. Generous paid time off policies and healthcare coverage appropriate to the location will also be offered.

Asylum Access is committed to paying competitive salaries and upholding sustainable equity practices. Due to the ways in which salary negotiations perpetuate existing structural inequities, Asylum Access as a practice does not participate in salary negotiations for any candidate.

Application Instructions to Candidates

Please submit a resume and cover letter. In your cover letter, please describe your reasons for applying, relevant qualifications, and how you learned about the position.

Asylum Access is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We value the expertise of those who have experienced displacement, and encourage people with such lived experience to apply.

For more information about our organization, visit www.asylumaccess.org_._