State System Partnerships Director

Job Description

Job Description

About Empower Community Care

Empower Community Care is a family of mission-driven organizations delivering evidence-based behavioral health, child welfare, and community care programs and services. Our portfolio includes BSFT, Carey Group, Evidence-Based Associates (EBA), FFT LLC, MST Services, Orbis, and The Incredible Years — each advancing outcomes for children, families, and the communities we serve.

The Opportunity

Empower Community Care partners with public systems to deliver and scale evidence-based programs and services that improve outcomes for children, youth and families across juvenile justice, child welfare, behavioral health, human services and early childhood. Our portfolio brings together clinical programs, assessment and case management tools, practitioner development, implementation support and technology under one enterprise.
We are building a commercial organization capable of multiplying the company's reach over the next five years. The Director, State System Partnerships is central to that build. This role owns a named book of state-system relationships in a defined pod territory and is accountable for developing multi-program, multi-year partnerships with the agencies and executives who fund and govern care.
This is not a product sales role. You will sell Empower's ability to help a state understand need, select the right interventions, build local provider capacity and sustain outcomes. Your job is to orchestrate Empower's capabilities around the customer rather than to personally hold every one of them.

What Makes an Opportunity Enterprise

We define enterprise by the buyer's authority and the scope of the system conversation, not by deal size. This distinction matters, because it determines what you will be held accountable for.

• Buyer authority: The buyer holds authority across multiple programs or agencies, not a single program budget.
• Conversation scope: The conversation centers on system-level or population-level outcomes: juvenile justice transformation, family preservation, statewide behavioral health capacity.
• Contract potential: There is a plausible path to a multi-year, multi-program contract vehicle.
• Required fluency: The sale requires policy, funding and executive fluency.

A single-program engagement can be a large contract without being an enterprise sale, and a governor's office conversation can start small in dollar terms while functioning as an enterprise sale because of the multi-program access it opens. Where a buyer's authority stops at one program, our Specialty sellers lead and you support.

The Profile We Are Looking For

The strongest fit understands government from the inside and enterprise selling from the outside. That often looks like someone who began their career as a legislative staffer, in a governor’s policy office, in a state agency or in an appropriations role, and then moved to the commercial side of government services. It can equally look like someone who held a meaningful operating or policy role inside a state system and went on to build a successful track record selling into those systems.
We are looking for policy fluency, not policy ownership. You need to recognize and shape an opportunity, read appropriations and procurement dynamics, and hold your own with a commissioner, a Medicaid leader or a governor’s policy advisor. You are not expected to be our policy or government affairs expert. That capability sits with our government relations resources and executive leadership, and you will draw on it.

Key Responsibilities

Own the Named Account Book

• Account ownership: Own a defined book of state and system relationships within an assigned pod territory, concentrated in Empower's priority states.
• Account planning: Build and maintain an annual account plan for each priority state covering the systems and executives in play, continuum gaps, current Empower penetration, funding and procurement cycles, required proof points and the plays for the year.
• Commercial accountability: Carry full commercial responsibility for the book: pipeline development, forecast accuracy, deal execution and renewal of the accounts you own.
• CRM discipline: Maintain disciplined opportunity, forecast and activity hygiene in HubSpot. Pipeline that is not in the system does not exist.

Lead Complex Public-Sector Sales Cycles

• Full sales lifecycle: Run the full enterprise lifecycle with state and local government, from first executive engagement through contract execution, on cycles that commonly run 12 to 24 months or longer.
• Procurement navigation: Navigate multi-stakeholder procurement, braided funding, legislative calendars and agency leadership transitions.
• Pre-positioning: Pre-position ahead of procurement: build relationships early enough to inform scope and requirements before an RFP is released.
• Funding fluency: Bring funding fluency to the table. Understand how Title IV-E, Medicaid, CCBHC, JJDPA and state appropriations move through systems, and help buyers find budget where they believe none exists.
• Government relations partnership: Draw on Empower's government relations strategists, lobbyists and executive leadership where policy positioning, legislative timing or appropriations advocacy can open or accelerate an opportunity. Policy ownership sits with those resources; you bring the fluency to recognize when to engage them and what to ask for.
• Field intelligence: Translate field intelligence into clear direction for that partnership: which states, which committees, which budget cycles and which policy windows matter most to the book.

Sell the Empower Platform, Starting with Implementation and Quality Infrastructure

• Primary seller: Act as the primary seller of Empower's implementation and quality infrastructure services: system assessment and readiness, technical assistance, provider capacity building, training, service coordination, workforce and program implementation.
• Integrated positioning: Position the full portfolio to system-level buyers as an integrated capability rather than a catalog of programs.
• Statewide continuum: Develop statewide continuum opportunities that connect assessment, intervention, practitioner development and outcomes measurement into a single partnership.
• New buyer types: Expand into newer buyer types, including Medicaid agencies, managed care organizations and performance-based or value-based arrangements.

Run the Land-and-Expand Motion with Specialty and Customer Success

• Create the mandate: Create the mandate at the system level, then bring in the relevant Specialty seller to lead the program or solution conversation with the operational buyer. On a genuine enterprise opportunity you stay actively engaged through close — you own the executive relationship and the procurement path while Specialty owns the solution.
• Clean routing: Route cleanly to Specialty when qualification shows the buyer's authority stops at a single program. That is the model working, not a lost deal. You are measured on routing accurately and quickly, not on holding volume that belongs elsewhere.
• Multi-seller coordination: Coordinate multiple Specialty sellers on multi-program pursuits and own the integrated proposal.
• Capability orchestration: Orchestrate the full set of Empower capabilities around the account — clinical programs, assessment and practitioner tools, implementation support, government relations and executive sponsorship — rather than carrying every capability yourself.
• Proof-point reinvestment: Carry delivery proof and outcomes evidence from initial engagements back up into the executive relationship to unlock the next program, region or agency.
• Account ownership model: Own the system-level relationship, executive access and long-term contract strategy. Specialty owns program-level delivery and fidelity. Customer Success and Implementation Success owns adoption and implementation health. You are accountable for holding the whole account picture together.
• Post-close transition: Transition program-level delivery relationships to Specialty, Customer Success, and Implementation Success after close. You retain the system relationship, the executive sponsor and the expansion strategy; you do not hold the operational day-to-day.
• Renewal ownership: Stay engaged post-close. You own the renewal forecast and the expansion thesis for your accounts.

Represent Empower in the Market

• Brand leadership: Lead with Empower Community Care in introductions, at conferences, and in written and digital presence. Program brands lead where eligibility criteria, evidence ratings or procurement language require it. Empower leads when we are being remembered; the program leads when we are being evaluated.
• Industry presence: Build presence within relevant associations, coalitions and policy forums, and represent and exhibit Empower at regional and national events.
• Market intelligence: Monitor legislative, regulatory and funding developments across your states and translate them into timed opportunities.
• Feedback loop: Feed market intelligence, competitive insight and customer signal back to the Chief Growth Officer.

Accounts in Transition Some accounts in this territory carry long-standing relationships held by our current Enterprise sellers. An early priority is to work directly with those colleagues to understand each account's history, relationship map, prior commitments and open threads, and to take on ownership through a deliberate, documented transition rather than a cold start. Protecting continuity in these relationships is part of the job, not an onboarding formality.

Required Qualifications

• Experience: Ten or more years of combined public-sector, government or policy, and enterprise commercial selling experience, with demonstrated success owning and closing complex state-system opportunities. We are deliberately open on how those years are distributed; substantial time inside government followed by a strong commercial record is a welcome profile.
• Track record: A track record of closing multi-year public-sector contracts with system-level buyers, not only program-level purchases, and of owning a multi-state or statewide book.
• Sector depth: Substantive experience in one or more of our systems: juvenile justice, child welfare, behavioral health, human services, Medicaid or education.
• Procurement command: Command of government procurement, contracting vehicles and public funding mechanisms.
• Policy fluency: Policy and funding fluency: the ability to read legislative, appropriations and budget cycles and time commercial strategy against them.
• Executive credibility: Credibility and composure with senior public officials, and the judgment to navigate agency politics with discretion.
• Cross-functional orchestration: Demonstrated ability to orchestrate cross-functional pursuit teams and internal capabilities without direct authority.
• Travel: Willingness to travel regionally and nationally.

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Evidence-based selling: Experience selling evidence-based programs, clinical models or outcomes-based services.
• Existing relationships: Existing relationships with system leaders in the assigned territory's priority states.
• Value-based contracting: Experience with managed care, Medicaid or value-based contracting.
• Government relations collaboration: Experience working alongside government relations, advocacy or lobbying teams as part of a commercial strategy.