Vice President, People

About Center for Justice Innovation The Center for Justice Innovation is a community justice organization that centers safety and racial justice. Since our founding in 1996, the Center has partnered with community members, courts, and the people most impacted to create stronger, healthier, more just communities. Our decades of experience in courts and communities, coupled with our field-leading research and practitioner expertise, help us drive justice nationwide in innovative, powerful, and durable ways. For more information on how and where we work, please visit www.InnovatingJustice.org

Center for Justice Innovation

Building community justice in partnership with communities, courts, and the people most impacted.

Community CourtsProblem-Solving JusticeJustice ReformDemonstration ProjectsPublic PolicyResearchTreatment CourtsAlternatives to IncarcerationJuvenile JusticeViolence Reduction

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C

innovatingjustice.org

501-1,000 employees

Non-profit Organizations

New York, New York

1996

Nonprofit

59k LinkedIn followers

• The Center seeks a mission-driven Vice President of People to bring this vision to life. This leader will be responsible for shaping and executing a forward-looking strategy and roadmap for the People function while ensuring strong day-to-day operations.
• The Vice President reports to the Managing Director, Enterprise Strategy and People, and the two work closely together on people strategy and policy. The Vice President leads the People function and makes the day-to-day decisions within it.
• This role is ideal for an experienced HR leader, whose path may also run through labor relations, operations or program leadership, and who combines operational discipline with a passion for building a People function that reflects and embodies the Center’s values.
• You will also work closely with the General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel, with Finance and Business Operations, with Technology, and with the leadership of our three program divisions.
• The responsibilities below describe the role as we expect it to operate once established.
• Leading and developing the People team
• Lead the Employee Relations, HR Operations, and People Experience & Development teams through their three directors, setting shared direction and priorities across the function.
• Assess the function’s structure, staffing and roles against its workload, and clarify ownership and hand-offs across the three teams.
• Hold regular supervision and growth conversations with direct reports, lead the function’s performance review process, and build visible development pathways and learning opportunities for People staff.
• Service delivery and operations
• Oversee reliable day-to-day delivery across the employee lifecycle — recruitment and onboarding, benefits, leave and accommodation, promotions and separations — for roughly 900 staff at about forty sites.
• Oversee benefits administration, HR systems and vendor relationships — roughly $16.5 million in annual spend — within the approved budget.
• Partner with Finance on payroll and with Technology on HR systems and people data.
• Ensure changes to People processes and policies are communicated thoughtfully and intentionally, with the reasoning and advance notice to those affected.
• People strategy and infrastructure
• Bring the Center’s own way of working to its people practices: learn what staff need, design solutions with them, test and measure what is built, and give what works time to take hold.
• Finalize the design of an organization-wide job architecture, including title consolidation and an explicit basis for crediting experience, including lived experience and non-traditional backgrounds.
• Strengthen and unify the Center’s frameworks for performance management, progressive discipline, promotion and career pathing.
• Test and evaluate approaches to how People staff partner with program sites, and bring the evidence to the executive team to inform the function’s long-term model.
• Employee relations, compliance and labor partnership
• Oversee employee relations and workplace investigations so that they are fair, timely and consistent, and informed by the restorative and procedural justice principles the Center practices in its own work.
• Oversee leave and accommodation determinations.
• Ensure people practices comply with federal, state and local employment law in every jurisdiction where the Center operates, working with the General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel under an agreed escalation list.
• Support contract bargaining, administration, and a constructive partnership with the Center’s unions, working with Legal and outside labor counsel on matters touching bargaining.
• Organizational leadership and partnership
• Serve as the Center’s senior-most voice on people matters, advising the Managing Director, Enterprise Strategy and People.
• Build working relationships with the leadership of the three program divisions, and spend regular time at program sites learning how the work is done.
• Lead employee listening and internal communication on people matters, and ensure the Center’s values of integrity, impact, equity, and collaboration are reflected in how it treats its own staff.

Required

• Candidates must meet each of the required qualifications below.
• A demonstrated commitment to the vision described above, including experience designing people practices in partnership with the staff they serve and using evidence and data to decide what to build and whether it is working.
• Broad and deep HR expertise across employee relations, leave and accommodation, compensation, compliance and HR operations at scale, including working knowledge of federal, New York State, and New York City employment law and multi-state compliance. You will lead the Center’s HR practice and be its senior-most voice on people matters.
• Experience building a function or bringing one to a new stage, rather than only running a mature one.
• Comfort operating in a partly unionized environment, including contract administration and union partnership.

Preferred

• A demonstrated habit of learning an organization before changing it. The Center is unusual and place-specific, and the leaders who do well here are the ones who take that seriously.
• Genuine comfort in community settings. Much of our work happens in neighborhoods, storefronts and courthouses rather than offices, and a People function that does not go there cannot serve it.
• A record of developing the people who report to you, including growth conversations and fostering visible internal growth pathways.
• Experience leading a people function for a distributed, multi-site workforce that includes people with lived experience with the criminal legal system.
• Ten or more years of progressive experience in HR or people leadership, including senior leadership of a team or function.
• Nonprofit, public-sector or other mission-driven experience.
• The required qualifications are the baseline for this role. If you meet them, we encourage you to apply even if you do not have every preferred qualification.

• Comprehensive healthcare
• Dental coverage
• Vision insurance
• Short-term disability
• Long-term disability
• Life insurance
• Flexible spending accounts
• Commuter FSA
• Mental health services
• 403(b) retirement plan