About Foster America

Foster America believes that, together, we can transform family-serving systems that today fall short of providing parents and children with the support they need and deserve. Every day, in communities across the nation, Foster America works alongside bold, innovative leaders in pursuit of a reality where:

Parents facing hardship know where to go for help – and the resources to help them raise their children are plentiful and provided equitably.
Child welfare systems are far smaller and placing children in foster care is incredibly rare, so families are free from unnecessary and harmful involvement in the child welfare system.
All children and families can thrive in safe and supportive communities that sustain their wellbeing.

In pursuit of that future, Foster America is:

Working with those who have experienced the child welfare system firsthand, so they can lead the way in creating its replacement.
Accelerating transformation by building capacity in places that are ripe for change, through dedicating our team to advance local efforts and by developing the skills of local leaders.

Testing, refining, and scaling transformative new approaches to caring for families.

Role Purpose

Colorado is a national leader in transforming how communities and the public sector, including the state Department of Human Services and 64 Colorado counties, collaborate to support children and families. Foster America serves as the backbone coordinator to a 17-member statewide steering committee — more than half of whom bring lived child welfare experience — sitting alongside government and community leaders that have committed to building a future where child welfare involvement is rare.

Reporting to Foster America's Vice President of Programs, the Colorado Site Director will lead the next chapter of this work, including a central focus on the 211 Warmline — a nationally recognized alternative pathway that connects families to voluntary services with dignity, outside of unnecessary system involvement. The incoming leader will benefit from an established coalition built on a deep trust and the unique mentorship of a predecessor who remains a close collaborator.

Responsibilities

Strategy & Partnership Stewardship (30%)

Strategic Roadmap: Translate Foster America's mission and co-designed vision of Colorado leaders into clear priorities and an actionable path forward — maintaining momentum across a multi-year, multi-stakeholder effort while continuing to identify and pursue new opportunities.
Knowledge Leadership: Maintain a deep understanding of Colorado’s evolving landscape, connecting implementation insights, pilot data, partner perspectives, and emerging opportunities to inform and continue to adapt Foster America’s strategy, investments, and approach within the state.
Opportunity Identification: Spot and pursue new opportunities where Foster America’s partnership can advance family-centered innovation or accelerate promising approaches, attract new collaborators, or shape how resources and attention flow toward prevention.
Sustainability & Funding: Steward operational and funding relationships that sustain and extend our impact, in close collaboration with Foster America's leadership.
Values Representation: Advance Foster America's perspective and core values in statewide policy, practice, and public conversations.

Backbone Coordination & Coalition Health (25%)

Backbone Coordination: Maintain and continue to grow the health, coherence, and momentum of the Reimagining Child Welfare in Colorado initiative — keeping a broad coalition of government leaders, community partners, and lived experts moving together with purpose.
Reimagining Committee Leadership: Lead the collective efforts of the Reimagining Committee — designing agendas, preparing materials, facilitating sessions, and driving follow-through across steering committee meetings, workgroups, and partner convenings.
Multi-Sector Influence: Sustain and deepen authentic partnerships across government agencies, community organizations, lived experts, and funders, working through influence rather than authority, across organizational boundaries.
Centering Lived Experience: Elevate the voices and leadership of lived experts throughout the committee's work and governance structures, ensuring their perspectives are central in design and decision-making.
Capacity Building: Actively build the commitment and leadership skills of Reimagining Committee members and partners, supporting their growth goals and sustaining their engagement while attracting new energy, leadership, and attention to this mission and this work.
Local Governance Design: Support counties in developing local versions of parent voice and lived experience leadership structures, building durable local capacity for co-design and innovation.

Pilot Implementation, Learning, & Data (25%)

Warmline Oversight: Drive the strategic implementation of the 211 Warmline pilot in partnership with the Kempe Center and CDHS, troubleshooting at a systems level to ensure operational success.
Data Stewardship: Act as the primary relationship holder with evaluation and learning partners, ensuring data findings are relevant to local context and drive continuous improvement.
Evidence-Base Strategy; Bring “data into the room” by translating implementation insights and evaluation findings that shape partner behaviors and coalition decisions.
Strategic Reporting: Author clear, timely updates for the Reimagining Committee, private and public funders, and other key stakeholders that articulate both technical progress and qualitative impact of the transformation.
Scalability Planning: Identify the environmental and operational conditions under which pilots are ready to scale and lead the partnerships necessary to move from pilot to a permanent, scaled system.

Communications & Public Influence (10%)

Narrative Development: Produce high stakes strategic materials — including briefings, memos and reports — that maintain coherence across a multi-partner initiative, elevate Colorado's progress, and advance the public narrative around family-centered child welfare transformation.
Field Building: Translate Colorado's learning for national audiences, contributing to Foster America's field-building role and elevating Colorado's story to those who can learn from and build on it.
Leader Coaching: Prepare and support local leaders navigating key meetings, decisions, and communications — providing thought partnership and context that sharpens their impact.

Organizational Contribution (10%)

Institutional Learning: Capture, synthesize, and codify lessons from Colorado's work into tools and recommendations that inform Foster America's national strategy and broader organizational approach.
Cross-Initiative Expertise: Contribute specialized skills in co-design, facilitation, or data strategy to build capacity across the national Foster America team.
Continuous Improvement: Engage in organization-wide responsibilities that leverage your leadership to improve cross-initiative alignment.

Who You Are

Our future Site Director - Colorado is a relationship-centered leader who is energized by complex, multi-stakeholder work and motivated by the opportunity to help communities build more equitable, family-centered systems. You’ll bring strong judgement, strategic thinking, and the ability to navigate ambiguity while maintaining trust, momentum, and alignment across diverse partners.

You are someone who can hold both vision and implementation — translating ideas into action while remaining grounded in collaboration, curiosity, and continuous learning. You are comfortable leading through influence rather than authority and are skilled at building authentic relationships across government, community organizations, and lived experts.

You approach systems change work with humility, adaptability, and a deep commitment to equity, recognizing that meaningful and sustainable transformation happens alongside communities, not for them.

Qualifications

The Colorado Site Director must be an experienced, relationship-oriented leader ready to guide a growing, multi-partner initiative and to shape its next chapter. The ideal candidate brings:

Strategic Leadership & Setting Direction: Demonstrated ability to set direction, build shared vision, and translate strategy into action across a multi-year, multi-stakeholder effort. You should excel at navigating ambiguity, managing competing priorities, and maintaining momentum when the path forward requires judgment rather than a standard playbook.
Coordination & project management: Proven ability to manage complex, multi-workstream initiatives with multiple interdependent partners — tracking activities, sequencing priorities, and surfacing bottlenecks before they become problems.
Facilitation & meeting leadership: Skilled at designing and leading high-stakes meetings and learning sessions, with the ability to set agendas that move work forward and turn collective gatherings into productive, action-oriented spaces.
Communication & writing: Strong written communicator who produces clear, compelling materials for diverse audiences — government, community, funder, and family stakeholders — and can synthesize complexity into clarity at both the operational and public influence levels.
Partnership & relationship building: A track record of building and sustaining authentic partnerships across difference — with senior government leaders, community organizations, funders, and people with lived experience of child welfare or adjacent systems — with a genuine commitment to cultural humility and centering lived experience.
Coaching & influencing: Experience building the capacity, confidence, and commitment of peer and senior stakeholders — preparing leaders for high-stakes moments, sustaining contributor engagement, and working effectively through influence rather than authority.
Data & learning: Comfort working alongside researchers and evaluators as a bridge between data and practice — bringing findings into operational conversations, translating them into next steps for local partners, and using evidence to drive continuous improvement and scaling decisions.
Systems knowledge & policy fluency: Deep familiarity with child welfare, family strengthening, or prevention systems — sufficient to build credibility with senior government partners, navigate the state and national policy landscape, and connect local implementation to broader reform conversations.
Funding & sustainability: Experience stewarding funder relationships and contributing to funding strategy — with an ability to think beyond current implementation toward what it will take for the work to last and grow.
Field-building & public influence: Ability to represent and translate the work for external audiences — elevating Colorado's learning nationally, contributing to public narratives about family-centered systems change, and attracting new partners and resources to the mission.
Education & experience: Bachelor's degree required; an advanced degree in public administration, social work, public policy, or a related field is strongly preferred. A track record of progressive leadership in systems change, social services, public policy, or a related field is required — with at least eight to ten years of relevant experience expected at this level.
Colorado rootedness: Deep familiarity with Colorado's social service landscape, government culture, and community ecosystems is required. Physical presence in Colorado is expected, as the relationships this role depends on are often advanced in-person.

In addition to these role-specific qualifications, Foster America's orientations are the behaviors that reflect our values — demonstrated in how we approach our work, engage with one another, and partner with communities. We actively practice these orientations and seek a Colorado Site Director who will model:

Curiosity: Demonstrating openness to learning, inquiry, and new ideas that advance innovative approaches to systems transformation.
Support: Creating an environment where staff, partners, and communities feel empowered, valued, and equipped to contribute their expertise.
Solutions: Driving innovative strategies that address complex challenges within child- and family-serving systems and translating ideas into actionable initiatives.
Collaboration: Building strong partnerships across teams, jurisdictions, and sectors to align stakeholders and advance shared goals.
Integrity: Leading with transparency, accountability, and ethical decision-making while advancing equitable and just systems for children and families.
Assets: Recognizing and elevating the strengths of communities, partners, and lived experts, ensuring their leadership informs program design and implementation.

Benefits & Compensation

Salary is commensurate with experience in the range of $118,000-$145,000. Foster America offers a comprehensive benefits package, including medical insurance, paid vacation, paid parental leave, paid holidays, commuter benefits, participation in a retirement plan, paid sick time, and professional development opportunities.

Work Location & Conditions

The role requires regular computer-based work and may include up to 25% travel, most often in-state but periodically nationally, to support partnerships, program initiatives, and organizational priorities.

Equal Employment Opportunity & Employment Practices

Foster America is committed to building a team that reflects the communities most affected by the systems we work to transform. We believe that diversity of lived experience, professional background, and perspective is essential to our work.

Foster America is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.

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Site Director - Colorado