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 CareGuild’s Care at Scale List, highlighting our innovative approach to strengthening the care workforce and expanding access to care.

Position Details

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 recommendations and actions;
• Shape the shared outcomes in Carina's agreements with partners, ensuring they are evidence-informed and aligned with Carina's organizational priorities and perspective. This work includes partnering with Product and Engineering to validate outcome-based commitments that are made prior to contracting, and then working with functional area leaders to translate them into clear internal plans, ownership, priorities, and accountability;
• Monitor the health of each partner relationship using progress toward shared outcomes and leading indicators of risk, and act before issues surface in a renewal or escalation;
• Hold regular reviews with each partner on how the program is performing and progress toward shared outcomes.

Lead the external-facing growth and engagement function

• Develop market-specific growth and engagement strategies, onboard partner staff to relevant Carina tools and resources, drive adoption across partner organizations and collaborate with partners to increase worker and consumer referrals to Carina;
• Optimize supply and demand across Carina's platform by working with Product, Data, and community partners to identify and address barriers to worker and consumer engagement and by strengthening the pathways into the platform, including partners’ channels to Carina's own website and channels;
• Build and maintain the network of organizations and trusted community channels through which workers and consumers discover and engage with Carina; provide strategic leadership to marketing, communications, and community outreach along with external vendors and partners;
• Build the tools, materials, and relationships that enable community organizations and program partners to understand Carina's model, confidently refer workers and consumers, and see how Carina connects to and supports their own programs and goals (outward enablement);
• Translate Carina's evidence, outcomes, and learning into compelling narratives that articulate its differentiated value to state agencies, funders, policymakers, community partners, and other stakeholders.

Transform portfolio performance into organizational learning

• In partnership with the CEO, Chief Strategy Officer, and senior team, set Carina's learning and evaluation agenda (what we need to learn, how we will measure it, and how evidence will inform decisions), and focus Carina's shared research, insights, evaluation, and innovation capacity on its highest-value questions and opportunities;
• Work with Data, Product, and external research partners to develop meaningful measures of program performance, user outcomes, market impact, partner value, and how people find Carina;
• Refine Carina's value proposition and impact narrative, in partnership with the CEO and the Chief Strategy Officer, using evidence from programs, partners, workers, consumers, and markets to articulate the organization's differentiated value and inform strategy, growth, and external positioning;
• Ensure partner, worker, consumer, and field insight is channeled into and informs Carina's priorities (inward enablement);
• Work with senior team to translate partner-specific needs into generalizable requirements, biasing toward solutions that serve the whole portfolio;
• Lead the partner-facing side of cross-functional program launches, ensuring that new capabilities are translated effectively into program operations and partner communications;
• Close the feedback loop by communicating back to partners how their input has influenced Carina's work.

Help build the organization for scale

• Establish clear roles, priorities, processes, and measures of success across the team;
• Direct shared services resources in marketing, research, insights and innovation, and coordinate external vendors and research partners;
• Operate within Carina's OKR framework and quarterly goal-setting process (required across the organization), while adapting team-level practices - such as sprint cadence, planning rhythms, and retrospective to fit the team's needs as they evolve;
• Establish the operating rhythms, knowledge management, accountability, and cross-functional coordination needed to manage a complex portfolio effectively;
• As Carina evolves, partner with the senior team to design organizational structure, capabilities, and staffing needed to support the growing portfolio;
• Lead the execution of agreed organizational changes and take on additional functions over time;
• Contribute to Carina's broader strategic planning and organizational development as a member of the leadership team;
• Lead high-priority, cross-functional strategic initiatives that advance Carina's mission, organizational effectiveness, market position, and impact.

You Have: 

• 8-10 years of progressive experience leading strategic initiatives, business transformation, program management and organizational enablement efforts;
• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, Public Administration, Organizational Development, or a related field, or equivalent experience;
• 7-10 years of experience working with complex external partnerships (examples include labor unions, government agencies, large employers and institutional partners);
• Demonstrated program and contract management skills, including scopes of work, amendments, and performance reporting;
• Ability to develop trusted relationships with senior external stakeholders while managing the operational details underneath;
• Exceptional strategic judgment and the ability to move between big-picture strategy and day-to-day execution;
• Experience translating data, research, and qualitative insight into clear outcomes and impact narratives;
• Understanding of how to build and manage stakeholder engagement strategies, particularly in complex environments;
• Strong cross-functional leadership skills and the ability to influence teams without direct authority;
• A successful track record leading and developing teams, with judgment about what should be owned internally versus through shared services or external partners;
• Experience managing managers, including setting direction, monitoring the quality of their teams' work, and holding them accountable;
• Experience operating within objectives and key results (OKRs) or quarterly goal-setting frameworks, with comfort adapting team-level execution practices (sprints, retros, etc.) as needed;
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with government leaders, community partners, funders, and internal executives;
• A strong orientation toward learning, evidence, and continuous improvement, with comfort working where the path forward is not fully defined.

It Would be Great If You Have:

• Experience in the nonprofit or social-impact sector;
• Experience with home care, healthcare, workforce development, or care economy markets;
• Experience working with government procurement, RFPs, or state contracting processes;
• Experience designing and implementing evaluation or outcomes measurement frameworks;
• Experience working at the intersection of research, strategy, innovation, and program or product development;
• Experience building and managing community engagement or supply-and-demand optimization strategies in two-sided marketplaces;
• Experience in roles focused on helping partners succeed with a technology platform as well success with a new program or initiative.

Salary Range:

• $145,000 - $149,800

Benefits:

• Fully Paid Medical, Dental and Vision;
• 18 days PTO, 15 Sick days, 9 holidays, 1 floating holiday and 2 personal days;
• Employer Funded Defined Contribution Pension Plan and 401(k) options with company match;
• Fitness, cell phone, internet and furniture stipends.
• Mid-year summer break and end of the year winter break

Carina provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.