What are the responsibilities and job description for the Northside Initiative Director position at Poughkeepsie Children's Cabinet?
Join The Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet
Northside Initiative Director
About This Opportunity
This is a rare opportunity to help shape one of the Hudson Valley's most ambitious neighborhood transformation efforts at a formative stage. Working closely with private and public stakeholders and long-term residents of the Northside neighborhood in the City of Poughkeepsie, the successful candidate will have the opportunity to influence strategy, capital investment, and development decisions that could impact the neighborhood for generations.
The Northside Initiative Director is a senior leadership position responsible for advancing the implementation of the Northside housing and neighborhood development strategy.
Working closely with the Executive Director, local government, development partners, lenders, philanthropic investors, and residents, the Director will lead efforts to identify, finance, and advance mixed-income housing and neighborhood revitalization opportunities that support long-term economic mobility for Northside families. We believe that stable housing within a thriving neighborhood is critical to youth success and achieving our North Star Goal: socioeconomic mobility.
This position is designed for an experienced real estate development, community development finance, or neighborhood revitalization professional who can translate community priorities into executable development strategies to achieve the long-term vision for the Northside.
About the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet
Children's Cabinets are a collective impact model that reimagines youth development systems through cross-sector collaboration that centers youth and families' needs across education, economic, health, the built environment, and broader community context.
The Poughkeepsie Children's Cabinet was formed in 2020, an outcome of a gathering of over 20 civic leaders at Harvard University to discuss longstanding issues of educational disparities and intergenerational poverty that impact the lives of children, youth, and families in Poughkeepsie.
At the conclusion of the summit, the Mayor and the Superintendent of the Poughkeepsie City School District agreed to launch and co-chair the Cabinet Leadership Council. A first-of-its-kind partnership and social compact was formed between the city government, public school system and key public and private anchor institutions.
We are guided by our North Star, that by 2033 over 5,000 City of Poughkeepsie young people and their families will be connected annually to transformative cradle-to-career opportunities that place them on pathways to postsecondary completion and socioeconomic mobility. A key part of the Cabinet's growth has been its ability to attract national partners to help rapidly scale its capacity and impact. Those partners include Purpose Built Communities, The EdRedesign Lab at Harvard Graduate School of Education, StriveTogether, Harlem Children's Zone, The Wallace Foundation, and others.
At the intersection of education and community, The Northside Initiative is the Cabinet’s long-term project to support a thriving City of Poughkeepsie Northside community guided by a Neighborhood Transformation Plan that incorporates mixed-income housing, economic development, and access to health and well-being supports, along with the educational services built across the full Cradle-to-Career continuum.
The Northside Initiative follows the Purpose Built Communities model, a national approach to neighborhood revitalization that coordinates mixed-income housing, a cradle-to-career education pipeline, and community wellbeing through a single local lead organization, known in the model as the "community quarterback."
As a prospective member of the Purpose Built Communities Network, the Cabinet will serve in that quarterback role, keeping residents at the center of decisions about their own neighborhood. This work is already underway through the City of Poughkeepsie's Choice Neighborhoods Initiative planning efforts.
Role Details
• Reports to: Executive Director
• Full-time, exempt position
• Hybrid work arrangement
• Compensation: $110,000 plus benefits and PTO
• Regular local travel and occasional national travel
Application Process
Open until filled; priority interviews given to applications received prior to June 26th.
Please email a resume and cover letter to jobs@pkchildren.org.
Applications without a responsive cover letter will not be reviewed.
Experienced, qualified applicants who do not meet 100% of the listed qualifications are encouraged to apply.
The Poughkeepsie Children's Cabinet provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants and seeks to build a diverse staff representative of the communities we serve.