Chief of Staff (Community Access)
Nonprofit HR
On-site
ABOUT COMMUNITY ACCESS
The mission of Community Access is to expand opportunities for people living with mental health concerns to recover from trauma and discrimination through affordable housing, training, advocacy, and healing-focused services. We are built upon the simple truth that people are experts in their own lives. For decades, we’ve led the charge for housing and resources for the most vulnerable people in our community. Our story began in 1974 when our founders purchased two small Lower East Side buildings to support families and ex-mental health patients, laying the foundation for what is now known as supportive housing. Now almost fifty years later, Community Access owns and operates 22 beautiful housing programs throughout New York City — provides homes to over 1,700 individuals and families, serves over 3,000 people annually, and employs 300 dedicated team members. Over time, our programs have expanded beyond housing to provide other healing focused services to meet the needs of New Yorkers living with mental health concerns. Our ground-breaking employment and training program - the Howie the Harp Advocacy Center - established in 1995 - has been recognized internationally and replicated in The Netherlands. Our commitment to meeting people where they are and taking our lead from participants in guiding service delivery sets us apart. We look forward to continuing our work of system transformation, highlighting the necessity and value of truly person-centered services.
Learn more about our work at www.communityaccess.org
ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY
This is an exciting opportunity to join an organization committed to human rights and upholding the dignity of each of us. For 50 years Community Access has fought the good fight to ensure that New York City’s public mental health and supportive housing services center the voices of the people we serve. We are an organization dedicated to learning – from our successes and our mistakes. We foster environments where creative individuals have the agency to innovate and broadly contribute to the organization’s success. This role presents a unique opportunity to work across the organization to strengthen our infrastructure, increase agency wide collaboration, and implement effective change management strategies.
Given the breadth of Community Access’s work—ranging from supportive housing and mental health services to advocacy, education, digital equity, crisis support, and peer training—the organization requires a Chief of Staff (COS) who can operate as a true strategic leader and integrator across functions. The Chief of Staff will also be an important actor in our ongoing journey to become an explicitly anti-racist organization, working with other leaders to further develop elements of an inclusive and equitable culture and contribute to implementation efforts. The statement below provides additional context regarding our efforts.
Why This Role Is Integral to Community Access
Given the complexity of CA’s model—integrating Housing First, mental health services, crisis support, peer-led programming, digital equity efforts, and advocacy—the Chief of Staff must be someone who can:
- connect the dots across departments and service lines,
- ensure that data and technology truly support the mission,
- elevate insights that improve care and equity, and
- help the CEO operate at a strategic, future-oriented level.
Duties and Responsibilities
- Serves as a strategic advisor to the CEO, offering insightful analysis, routinely consolidating key information, identifying potential risks and opportunities through collaboration with senior leadership, and promoting organizational coherence.
- Attends key partner and funder meetings, prepare briefing materials, and represents Community Access / the CEO as needed.
- Provides strong, timely data to the CEO and leadership team. Understands trends in data and helps drive appropriate decisions and produces relevant dashboards, etc.
- Provides strategic oversite for the IT function, aligning technology systems with organizational objectives, supporting frontline staff, advancing digital equity, and ensuring the efficient operation of a multi-service nonprofit.
- Provides visionary or strategic leadership to the QI and Data teams, establishing a culture of continuous improvement where outcomes are rigorously evaluated, service delivery is consistently enhanced, and data-driven decision-making is embedded across Community Access. Champions data integrity, ensures robust accessibility, advances the development of insightful dashboards, and transforms complex data into actionable narratives, trends, and strategic insights that empower organizational leadership.
- Leads cross-departmental projects that advance strategic priorities, operational improvements, or new service models. Manage timelines, deliverables, and accountability across teams.
- Leads Operational Coordination by tracking commitments from leadership and staff, ensure follow-up, and maintains organizational rhythm.
Requirements
- 12+ years of relevant experience, strongly preferred.
- Eight (8) or more years of supervisory experience, strongly preferred.
- Nonprofit experience strongly preferred.
- Bachelor’s degree in management, operations, or a related field is required.
- Master’s degree preferred
- PMP or similar Project Management certification, strongly preferred.
- Strong experience with project management tools and processes required.
- Thrives on managing change with a positive and optimistic style, who values proactive high-level execution.
- Strong communication skills
- Background in / Experience with community development, social services, property management, real estate operations or mental health is preferred.
- Knowledge of supportive housing and / or real estate preferred.
- This candidate should enjoy serving the people who serve the people and thus exhibit a patient, thoughtful, and engaging approach to leadership, manage diverse stakeholders well, and build consensus and collaboration while bridging cross-functional teams.
COMPENSATION
Salary of $160,000 to $180,000 depending on experience.
LOCATION
Chief of Staff is expected to be in office 3 to 4 days per week.
Community Access’s HQ Office is located in Lower Manhattan (Financial District).
HOW TO APPLY
Community Access has exclusively retained Impact Search Advisors by Nonprofit HR / OneDigital to lead the recruitment efforts for our next Chief of Staff. For consideration, all interested candidates should submit a completed application, cover letter and resume prior to January 19th, 2026 at https://nonprofithr.applytojob.com/apply/D4ZAmvZZu5
For further details or any inquiries about this opportunity, please contact Hakimu Davidson, Executive Recruiter with Impact Search Advisors by OneDigital/Nonprofit HR, at [email protected].
Nonprofit HR is committed to fostering and maintaining a work environment where diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are fully integrated into everything we do for the benefit of our employees and the clients that we serve. To fully realize our goal, we prioritize our understanding of the complexities of DEI within our workforce to inform our approach to talent management. We believe that this guides how we do our work, advise our clients to operationalize DEI and position our content and educational opportunities help strengthen the talent management capacity of the social impact sector.
Continue reading our about our commitment at nonprofithr.com/deinow.