Chief Program Strategy And Impact Officer

Company Description National CASA/GAL Association for Children is a national nonprofit that supports a network of 890 state organizations and local programs across 48 states and the District of Columbia. The organization promotes court-appointed volunteer advocacy so children and youth who have experienced abuse or neglect can be safe, have a permanent home, and the opportunity to thrive. National CASA/GAL drives the growth and development of programs that recruit, train, and support volunteers who advocate in court for the best interests of children in the child welfare and foster care systems. Volunteers collaborate with legal and child welfare professionals, educators, and service providers to ensure judges receive complete, reliable information for each child’s case. For many children, a CASA or GAL volunteer becomes the one consistent adult in their lives, creating a positive impact that supports long-term well-being.

The Opportunity

National CASA/GAL Association for Children seeks a highly accomplished research, evaluation, and learning executive to serve as Chief Program Strategy & Impact Officer. This leader will build the evidence, research, program-design, and learning systems needed to demonstrate—and continually strengthen—the impact of CASA/GAL advocacy on the safety, permanency, well-being, and opportunities of children and families.

Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief Program Strategy & Impact Officer will lead National CASA/GAL’s transition from measuring activities and reach to producing credible evidence about outcomes and impact. The position will establish the organization’s research and evaluation agenda, develop its theory of change and outcomes framework, lead original child-welfare research and evaluation studies, and create the roadmap for National CASA/GAL to become an evidence-based and evidence-generating organization.

The role also provides executive oversight for CASA/GAL University, curriculum strategy, program innovation, and selected strategic initiatives. The successful candidate will ensure that training and curricula are evidence-informed, grounded in adult-learning science, and evaluated for their effect on volunteer competency, advocacy practice, and outcomes for children and families.

About National CASA/GAL

National CASA/GAL supports a nationwide network of state and local organizations that recruit, train, and support court-appointed volunteers who advocate for children and youth who have experienced abuse or neglect. Through its Strong Families. Strong Futures. 2030 strategic direction, the Association is advancing permanency-focused, family-centered advocacy; strengthening and supporting families; reducing the number of children in foster care; and expanding access to high-quality CASA/GAL advocacy.

What This Leader Will Accomplish

· Build the evidence base for CASA/GAL advocacy

· Develop and lead a multi-year research and evaluation agenda focused on the most consequential questions about CASA/GAL advocacy and outcomes for children and families.

· Create a rigorous roadmap for National CASA/GAL to become an evidence-based and evidence-generating organization, including appropriate standards of evidence, study designs, partnerships, and investment priorities.

· Design, lead, commission, and oversee quantitative, qualitative, mixed-method, implementation, and outcomes studies involving children, families, volunteers, programs, courts, and child-welfare partners.

· Establish research partnerships with universities, evaluators, public agencies, funders, and national child-welfare organizations.

· Ensure ethical research involving vulnerable populations, including appropriate human-subject protections, informed consent, privacy, data security, and respectful engagement of people with lived experience.

Define and demonstrate impact

· Develop and steward an organization-wide theory of change that connects CASA/GAL services, volunteer advocacy, program quality, and learning investments to measurable outcomes.

· Establish common outcomes, indicators, measurement protocols, and evaluation approaches related to safety, permanency, well-being, family stability, advocacy quality, and volunteer effectiveness.

· Lead the annual survey and strengthen national data collection, quality, analysis, and reporting so findings are trusted and useful for strategy, program improvement, fundraising, public policy, and external accountability.

· Translate findings into practical recommendations, program refinements, investment decisions, dashboards, impact narratives, and credible claims about National CASA/GAL’s contribution to child and family outcomes.

Lead program design, evaluation, and innovation

· Apply evidence, implementation science, and human-centered program design to develop, test, evaluate, refine, and scale programs and strategic initiatives.

· Require new initiatives to have a defined population, research-informed theory of change, program model, intended outcomes, implementation measures, evaluation plan, and sustainability strategy.

· Establish disciplined criteria for piloting, continuing, scaling, modifying, or ending initiatives based on evidence, feasibility, cost, quality, and strategic fit.

· Oversee a portfolio of special strategic initiatives and ensure that learning from each initiative strengthens the broader CASA/GAL network.

· Advance outcomes-based learning through CASA/GAL University

· Provide executive oversight for CASA/GAL University and the national learning strategy for volunteers, staff, facilitators, boards, and state and local leaders.

· Ensure pre-service, in-service, specialty, leadership, and professional-development curricula are evidence-informed, aligned with the theory of change, and designed around the competencies needed to improve advocacy and outcomes.

· Apply adult-learning principles, instructional-design standards, implementation supports, and multiple learning modalities to strengthen engagement, knowledge transfer, skill development, and application to practice.

· Move learning evaluation beyond participation and satisfaction by measuring knowledge, competency, behavior change, fidelity, transfer to practice, and contribution to child and family outcomes.

· Use research findings, network data, learner feedback, and emerging child-welfare practice to continuously improve curricula and learning pathways.

· Shape the field through research and thought leadership

· Author and oversee white papers, research reports, policy and practice briefs, conference presentations, peer-reviewed publications, and other field-shaping products.

· Translate complex research for practitioners, courts, policymakers, funders, network leaders, and the public without overstating findings or confusing association with causation.

· Serve as a senior child-welfare research and strategy leader on permanency, family strengthening, prevention of removal and re-entry, kinship, older youth, specialized advocacy, and related issues.

· Represent National CASA/GAL in research, evaluation, education, child-welfare, and philanthropic forums.

Provide executive and strategic leadership

· Advise the CEO and executive leadership on strategy, impact, evidence, program investments, and emerging child-welfare research and trends.

· Translate strategic priorities into clear outcomes, milestones, accountabilities, evaluation questions, and performance information.

· Lead and develop an integrated Strategy and Impact team and manage external researchers, evaluators, curriculum experts, and institutional partners.

· Collaborate across quality and accreditation, network growth, grants, technology, resource development, communications, government relations, legal and compliance, and operations.

Required Qualifications

· Ph.D. or equivalent research doctorate in evaluation, education, social work, psychology, public policy, public health, child development, research methods, learning sciences, or a closely related discipline.

· At least 10 years of progressively responsible leadership in research, evaluation, evidence building, program design, organizational learning, or applied social-science research, including leadership of complex, multi-partner projects.

· Demonstrated expertise in designing and leading rigorous quantitative, qualitative, mixed-method, implementation, and outcomes research.

· Deep knowledge of program evaluation, theory-of-change development, logic models, measurement, implementation science, research translation, and standards of evidence.

· Strong knowledge of adult-learning principles, curriculum development, instructional design, competency-based learning, and evaluation of learning transfer and effectiveness.

· Substantive knowledge of child welfare and the experiences of children, youth, and families involved with courts or public systems; experience conducting research with vulnerable populations is essential.

· Demonstrated knowledge of research ethics, human-subject protections, informed consent, privacy, data governance, and responsible interpretation of findings.

· Strong record of producing or overseeing high-quality white papers, evaluation reports, research publications, briefs, presentations, and executive-level recommendations.

· Demonstrated ability to translate evidence into program strategy, operational decisions, curriculum improvements, and accessible communications for varied audiences.

· Experience leading teams, external researchers, consultants, university partnerships, and cross-functional initiatives in a complex or networked environment.