Role Overview

Pillar Search & HR Consulting has partnered with a confidential nonprofit client on an exciting search for a Strategic Initiatives Lead. The client is a well-known national organization with a very compelling and impactful mission. Additional details, including the name of the client and the specific initiatives, will be shared with candidates as part of the interview process.

This is a full-time, fixed-term aligned with the FY27–FY30 horizon; exact term to be aligned with deliverable completion across the initiatives assigned to this role. It is a benefits-eligible role with a salary range of $140K-$175K. The role is remote within the United States.

The client is undertaking a major, multi-year innovation effort of a mission-critical system and its supporting organizational infrastructure while beginning to define a longer-term vision for expanding the organization’s reach and impact through a nationally scalable model.

These are related but distinct efforts: a near-term innovation effort within their current operating model and a longer-term expansion that raises new questions about organizational risk, infrastructure, partnerships, and sustainable funding. Decisions made during innovation effort should account for how they could enable or constrain the longer-term vision.

Given the scope, no single organizational function can hold this work alone. The relevant team owns the innovation effort build and its associated vendor relationships, and this role will partner with functions across the organization—including legal, communications, technology, finance, operations, partner success, fundraising, and human resources, and other teams whose expertise is needed as the work evolves. The role will also bring an essential external perspective by benchmarking the client’s approach against comparable models, emerging practices, and lessons from other organizations, and by identifying and engaging outside experts when specialized insight or experience is needed. Positioned outside any one function, the role synthesizes these perspectives so that decisions reflect the whole picture.

The Strategic Initiatives Lead serves as the strategic integrator across the innovation effort and longer-term expansion efforts. This person independently frames complex questions, gathers and connects insights across functions, and turns incomplete or competing inputs into clear options, assessments of risk and tradeoffs, and decision-ready recommendations for the Executive Leadership Team and Board. Reporting to an executive leader, the role works in close partnership with leaders across the organization. This innovation effort and expansion effort is the role’s primary focus. The client also expects other major cross-functional change efforts to emerge at the enterprise level over this horizon, and this role may extend the same integrator function to those efforts as they take shape.

This is an individual-contributor role with no direct reports, though extern support may be added if there is a business need. The position is expected to lead through influence and may coordinate project resources as needed.

Core Responsibilities

Success in this role will mean that the client has a clear, evidence-based direction for the longer-term expansion; decisionmakers have timely options and recommendations for consequential choices; cross-functional ownership gaps are resolved; and the organization has durable governance, resourcing, and change-management structures to carry the work forward beyond the term of the position. Success depends on strong partnerships with executives and functional leaders who remain accountable for strategy and execution within their areas of expertise. This role exists to conduct discovery, coordinate cross-functionally, integrate perspectives, identify dependencies, frame enterprise questions, and enable organization-wide decisions that no single function can make alone.

Strategic Discovery

• Lead a focused discovery track for the client’s longer-term expansion vision in parallel with the current innovation effort, sequencing the work so that findings arrive in time to inform consequential near-term decisions.
• Conduct market and landscape analysis to identify emerging trends, comparable models, stakeholder needs, risks, and opportunities. Translate findings into practical recommendations that inform both the current innovation effort and the design of a nationally scalable model.
• Develop strategic options for resourcing and funding the longer-term vision, including financial scenarios and implications, and partner with Development to prepare for donor and capital conversations.

Cross-Functional Coordination

• Coordinate cross-functional workstreams that the innovation effort requires but does not fully resource, clarifying ownership, aligning dependencies, and maintaining momentum on decisions and follow-through.
• Facilitate conversations among relevant functions to clarify organizational needs and resolve questions that span multiple areas of expertise. For example, this may include convening legal partners to assess risk and tradeoffs or bringing together people and finance leaders to develop multi-year staffing and funding models. Synthesize the resulting perspectives to inform planning and key decisions.
• Partner closely with the existing project management function, which retains ownership of build sequencing, dependency tracking, and delivery discipline. This role does not own any project planning or scheduling, but contributes strategic analysis, cross-functional alignment, and decision support without duplicating or absorbing project management responsibilities.
• Extend this integrator function to other major enterprise-level change efforts that emerge during the term, as prioritized by the CEO and the executive leader who this role reports to.

Vendor and Partnership Strategy and Stewardship

• Identify and assess the strategic, operational, legal, and governance requirements of the vendor and partnership model, coordinating with the functions that own each area. Establish and evolve the structures and practices needed to manage these relationships, including memoranda of understanding (MOUs), roles and decision rights, data-sharing policies and practices between entities, and processes for governing changes over time.
• Research and assess potential external partners that could contribute capabilities, infrastructure, reach, credibility, or funding to the nationally scalable model. Develop a clear point of view on which capabilities the client should build internally and which it should pursue through partnership.
• Partner with Communications to develop the narrative and communications strategy for partner- and public-facing moments associated with the transition.

Change Management and Accountability

• Develop and coordinate the internal and external change-management approach for the combined effort, including stakeholder alignment, readiness, adoption planning, and coordination with Communications on supporting messages and materials.
• Serve as the central integrator across the combined cross-functional effort by identifying risks, opportunities, dependencies, and tradeoffs that fall between established areas of ownership and ensuring they are assigned, addressed, or elevated for decision.
• Develop strategically aligned recommendations and decision materials for the Executive Leadership Team and Board, document resulting decisions and owners, and drive follow-through on agreed actions.
• Create and maintain the documentation, decision history, governance tools, and transition plans needed for permanent owners to sustain the work into perpetuity.

Core Competencies

• Strategic judgment and synthesis: Frames complex questions, tests assumptions, integrates diverse perspectives, and identifies the material implications needed to form a clear point of view.
• Independent drive: Takes initiative to structure ambiguous work and advance cross-functional priorities with appropriate consultation, transparency, and escalation.
• Trusted partnership: Builds strong, credible relationships with senior leaders and functional experts; listens closely, surfaces differing perspectives, and facilitates productive conversations through tension, tradeoffs, and uncertainty.
• Influence without authority: Builds alignment, earns commitment, and moves decisions and action forward across teams and levels without relying on formal authority.
• Systems thinking: Anticipates how near-term decisions affect longer-term strategy, operating models, partnerships, and resourcing, and helps others understand those connections.

Qualifications and Experience

• Significant experience in management consulting, corporate or nonprofit strategy, strategic partnerships, or a comparable advisory role, with a demonstrated record of structuring complex questions, evaluating strategic options and tradeoffs, and translating cross-functional analysis into recommendations for executive or board-level decisions.
• Experience operating independently on ambiguous, multi-stakeholder initiatives without a clearly defined operational playbook.
• Ability to build and use financial models to evaluate strategic options, test assumptions, conduct scenario analysis, and inform executive decision-making.
• Experience eliciting and documenting business requirements and translating them into system and workflow designs that guide technical and operational implementation.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with experience distilling complex analysis into concise, decision-ready materials and facilitating discussions with executive or Board-level audiences.
• Experience designing or leading change-management efforts across multiple stakeholder groups, including readiness, adoption, and communication planning.
• Comfort navigating legal, contractual, governance, and data-sharing considerations in vendor or partnership settings is a plus.
• Experience in mission-driven or nonprofit environments is a plus but not required.
• Judgment in knowing when to lead, when to support, and when to step back.
• A genuine commitment to the mission of the client.
• Able to travel within the United States for occasional meetings.

Benefits

This role is eligible for a comprehensive benefits package including unlimited PTO, paid holidays and sick leave, health/dental/vision insurance, 401(k) match, professional development, and remote work.

To Apply

Pillar Search & HR Consulting has partnered with the confidential nonprofit organization on the search for its new Strategic Initiatives Lead. Qualified candidates are encouraged to submit their resume and cover letter via email to jo**@**********ch.com. No calls, please.