Vice President for Strategy Implementation

Raphah Institute•Nashville, TN

3d•$80,000 - $100,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Raphah Institute seeks an enterprise-minded executive who can turn long-horizon strategy into coordinated, sustainable organizational action. This role will steward the systems, relationships, decisions, and accountability through which the Strategic Plan becomes organizational reality. The Vice President of Strategy Implementation exists so that Raphah Institute successfully and sustainably operationalizes its Strategic Plan. This is an enterprise executive role. The VP will translate strategic direction into sequenced, resourced, and owned commitments; make progress and risk visible; coordinate work across functions; strengthen implementation systems; and ensure that the organization is ready to carry what it commits to. The VP will not directly supervise program or functional departments at launch. The role succeeds through enterprise authority, trusted relationships, clear decision rights, implementation governance, strong facilitation, timely escalation, and close partnership with the CEO and functional leaders. The VP is accountable for the integrity of strategy implementation across Raphah Institute, but not for performing every strategic commitment or replacing functional leadership. Functional leaders remain accountable for results within their entrusted domains.

Requirements

Significant experience translating multiyear strategy into coordinated organizational execution.
Demonstrated success leading complex, cross-functional work without relying exclusively on direct supervisory authority.
Experience building implementation systems, operating rhythms, dashboards, decision processes, or portfolio-management practices.
Strong organizational-design judgment, including roles, authority, dependencies, workflows, handoffs, and capacity.
Experience advising a CEO or senior executive team on priorities, tradeoffs, implementation risk, and organizational readiness.
Ability to convert ambiguity into structured action without oversimplifying complexity.
Strong facilitation, conflict-navigation, and executive communication skills.
Ability to build trust while supporting clear accountability.
Ability to interpret financial, people, operational, programmatic, policy, reputational, and partnership implications together.
Evidence of building durable organizational capacity rather than creating dependence.
Experience leading change without unnecessary disruption or added harm.
The successful candidate must be able to learn Raphah Institute’s programs, practice boundaries, and safeguards deeply enough that enterprise implementation never overrides participant safety, program integrity, or organizational values.

Nice To Haves

Senior or executive leadership experience in a nonprofit, public-interest, community-based, or mission-driven institution.
Experience working across direct implementation, policy, systems change, organizational development, and external partnerships.
Experience supporting board governance or executive reporting.
Familiarity with implementation science, strategy execution, portfolio management, organizational development, change leadership, Results-Based Accountability, or related disciplines.
Experience in environments where lived experience, community legitimacy, safety, and power materially affect implementation.
Experience building organizational infrastructure during growth or transition.

Responsibilities

Translate the Strategic Plan into a rolling three-year Execution Plan and annual enterprise commitments.
Maintain an accurate portfolio view, establish ownership and completion standards, monitor progress and risk, and support disciplined re-sequencing, re-scoping, pause, replacement, or discontinuation when conditions require it.
Bring leaders together around shared commitments, surface dependencies and conflicting assumptions, clarify what leaders owe one another, facilitate resolution of barriers, and ensure that program, policy, finance, people, operations, communications, development, and external relationship implications are integrated when relevant.
Design and improve the systems, dashboards, review rhythms, templates, decision pathways, documentation practices, and learning processes that make strategy implementation repeatable and useful.
Assess whether Raphah Institute has the people, authority, resources, relationships, systems, and capacity required before major commitments are activated.
Make capacity gaps visible and advise the CEO when work should be slowed, sequenced, redesigned, declined, or stopped.
Translate strategic direction into sequenced, resourced, and measurable commitments.
Maintain the enterprise portfolio of active, proposed, paused, completed, and discontinued commitments.
Establish practical standards for ownership, milestones, dependencies, risk, evidence, status, and closure.
Facilitate prioritization, pacing, and tradeoff decisions.
Design and steward executive implementation reviews, dashboards, readiness assessments, escalation protocols, and learning processes.
Convene cross-functional leaders and facilitate resolution of barriers without displacing legitimate functional authority.
Prepare decision-useful implementation reporting for the CEO, executive leaders, and board.
Administer a disciplined process for modifying strategic commitments.
Identify organizational-design, role-clarity, information-flow, or capacity barriers that threaten execution.
Advise the CEO on major implementation risks, readiness, resource tradeoffs, sequencing, and organizational implications.
Build institutional memory so that decisions and implementation knowledge do not remain concentrated in individuals.
Strengthen the agency, judgment, and effectiveness of other leaders.
Model direct communication, relational accountability, repair, disciplined follow-through, and stewardship.