Chief Programs Officer

The Tenement Museum seeks a Chief Programs Officer to work under the direction of the Tenement Museum’s President and help guide the strategic vision for programming and interpretation, with particular emphasis on K-12 programs. The Chief Programs Officer will oversee the education department, creatively and efficiently harnessing its training, operations and content components in order to continue the museum’s post-pandemic recovery and prepare it to launch a new strategic plan. The CPO will be responsible for leading the education department and scaling its impact both virtually and on-site.  

The Tenement Museum welcomes visitors into the recreated homes of immigrant, migrant and refugee families who lived in our landmark tenements at 97 and 103 Orchard Street from the 1860s to the 1980s. We tell a diversity of stories through highlighting families from China, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Puerto Rico and Central and Eastern Europe, and will open an exhibit on a Black family living in the tenements in the 1860s this fall. We seek to build a more inclusive, expansive and pluralistic American identity. Educator-led tours of recreated historic family apartments and the Lower East Side neighborhood use storytelling and primary source documents to spark learning, engagement, and emotional connection to local and national history. What makes us unique and effective—the diversity of stories and educator-led tours—demands that we are not only creative in our programming, but also dynamic in our operations. The CPO will help update new training, scheduling and hiring practices to create efficiencies that allow for more room for innovative training, content updates, and evaluations. 

Service to New York City (NYC) school children, immigrants, and new arrivals has always been central to the Museum’s work and mission. Over time, generations of NYC school children have visited our historic immigrant, migrant, and refugee family apartments to build knowledge, historical perspective, and empathy. Our long-running Shared Journeys program welcomes immigrants and new arrivals to learn English through tours of the Museum while also connecting to a long legacy of immigration and migration to our country. However, the pandemic significantly impacted our school and community partners with major staffing transitions and ongoing service delivery challenges. We are eager to rebuild our long track record of service and community outreach and leverage success with new technology and on-site multi-sensory exhibits to rebuild, re-envision, and expand our service to these core target audiences. A new CPO will help drive this work.

The ideal CPO candidate will have: an advanced degree in education, history or museum studies; experience working as a K-12 educator and/or a museum or nonprofit background; and a proven track record of successful program development, and strong staff and partnership management. The CPO will:

Responsibilities

• In coordination with President, COO, and CDO play a key role in the overall development, strategic planning, service delivery, financial goals, and management of the organization.
• Manage the education department, comprised of 12 full time employees (including 2 Vice Presidents) and 40 part-time educators.
• In coordination with senior staff in Education and HR, implement efficient and on-budget staff planning to reach monthly, quarterly and annual goals. Be forward thinking around seasonal shifts in visitation and create staffing plans (hiring, training, scheduling, ongoing evaluation) accordingly.  
• Lead the rebuilding and expansion of the Museum’s K-12 virtual and on-site programs, and create new ways to sequence and package programs (virtual, onsite, Your Story, Our Story, curricula, teacher training) to increase educational impact to local and national audiences. 
• Ensure continuous quality control of all programs and content, including ongoing educator evaluation, observation and training.  Work with program leadership and external evaluators to identify meaningful ways to measure the impact of education programs and community partnerships.
• Oversee the training and support of Museum Educators to support K-12 student learning.
• Lead the rebuilding and expansion of the Museum’s Shared Journeys programs. 
• Reinvigorate key relationships with local educators, school districts, and community institutional partners.
• Leverage technology to provide expanded educational opportunities to teachers and students from NYC and beyond.
• Create and adapt programming for a new multi-sensory exhibit space for K-12 students and families.
• Work closely with President and Development in the expansion of program designs, objectives and budgets to support funding proposals and efforts.  

Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications

• A passionate commitment to the Museum’s purpose of educating the nation about the importance and value of immigration and immigrants.
• Love of history and storytelling
• Minimum of 10 years of progressive experience of development and delivery of educational and/or museum-based programming.
• Proven ability to lead and manage both senior and junior level teams and ability to work creatively and collaboratively across departments. 
• Significant experience as a leader of people with the proven ability to recruit, manage performance, retain and develop key talent.  
• Demonstrated experience in conceptualizing, developing and implementing projects and creating funding proposals and budgets to support that process.
• Excellent analytical, strategic thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills.
• Familiarity with digital and emerging technology a major plus.
• Master’s Degree or Ph.D. in education, history or museum studies preferred. 

Benefits

• Comprehensive Medical, Dental and Vision insurance
• 403(b) Retirement Plan with up to 5% matching contribution
• Separate banks for Vacation, Personal, and Sick Time
• Summer Bonus Days
• 10 Paid Holidays and one Floating Holiday
• Flexible Spending Account and Transit Checks
• Employee Assistance Plan
• Paid Parental Leave

Salary Range

• $130,000 – $150,000

How to Apply:

Please submit your resume and cover letter through our career portal.