Director, Health & Safety

The Goddard School•Philadelphia, PA

About The Position

The Head of Health & Safety provides enterprise leadership for protecting children, faculty, families, and school communities across Goddard's franchise system. The role sets the direction for health and safety, strengthens standards and operating disciplines, identifies emerging risks, and ensures serious incidents and recurring issues lead to timely action and system-wide learning. The leader translates risk and regulatory requirements into practical operating expectations, leads a high-performing team, influences independent franchise owners and school leaders, and uses data to improve safety and compliance across the system. The role oversees the health and safety audit program, incident response and Franchise Relations processes, regulatory monitoring, system support, technology implementation, and the function's budget and external resources. Regular travel and support for urgent incidents outside normal business hours may be required.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
At least 10 years of relevant experience in health and safety, risk, compliance, quality, operations, or a related field, including substantial leadership responsibility.
Experience establishing standards and governance across a multi-site or similarly complex operating system.
Experience leading assessment, corrective-action, serious-incident, and root-cause work.
Experience implementing a technology-enabled audit, case-management, or corrective-action system.
Strong written, verbal, and executive communication skills.
Ability to travel regularly and support urgent incidents outside normal business hours when needed.
Ability to walk prospective and active construction sites, including uneven or unfinished terrain, for extended periods.
Ability to sit for extended periods while working at a computer or traveling.
Ability to influence without direct authority and work effectively with franchisees, executives, and cross-functional partners.

Nice To Haves

Experience in early childhood education, schools, childcare, or another environment serving children or vulnerable populations.
Working knowledge of licensing, public health, product safety, crisis communications, or school security.
Experience with audit, case-management, corrective-action, or operations-management technology.
Experience supporting franchisees or independently operated locations within a common brand system.

Responsibilities

Set the enterprise direction for health and safety and establish standards and operating practices aligned with licensing, brand, and School Excellence requirements.
Use data to identify emerging and recurring risks.
Lead the Regional Health & Safety Managers and Franchise Relations Manager, establishing priorities and accountability across two regions, 11 Health & Safety Specialists, and Franchise Relations Specialists.
Lead the health and safety audit program, ensuring consistent execution across schools and timely communication, corrective action, escalation, and closure.
Expand the audit program to include cleanliness and education-focused audits, partnering with Education to translate standards into consistently applied audit criteria.
Lead onboarding of the technology partner and implementation of the operations management system to support audit execution, results communication, corrective-action tracking, and visibility into completion and trends.
Oversee Franchise Relations intake and triage for incidents, accidents, crises, complaints, concerns, and recognition.
Establish protocols and guide serious incident, safeguarding, and crisis response from escalation and leadership notification through communication, follow-up, and root-cause review.
Monitor licensing, regulatory, and enforcement developments; serve as liaison to the Chief Medical Advisor; and coordinate public-health guidance and responses to product, equipment, and toy recalls.
Provide health and safety guidance for due diligence, new school openings, operating transitions, and school security.
Partner across GSL to implement priorities, training, and tools.
Manage the function's budget and external resources.
Travel regularly for site visits, market tours, business meetings, and in-person events, and support urgent incidents outside normal business hours when needed.
Walk prospective and active construction sites, including uneven or unfinished terrain, for extended periods.