Executive Vice President.
Fractional Executive Leadership Role | New York City | Hybrid.
About Align:
Align Social Impact is a full-service impact agency working at the intersection of strategy, storytelling, research, culture, philanthropy, and systems change.
We help organizations turn ambitious ideas into meaningful action. Our partners include companies, nonprofits, foundations, government entities, and influential talent working to address complex social and cultural challenges. Depending on the engagement, our work may involve shaping an impact strategy, developing a campaign, building a cross-sector partnership, strengthening an organization, designing a philanthropic initiative, or creating an experience that brings people together. What connects our work is a belief that impact should be both deeply felt and meaningfully measured.
Align is a women-owned business with offices in New York City and Amsterdam. We are a close-knit, entrepreneurial team that values imagination, rigor, generosity, cultural fluency, and follow-through. We work across disciplines rather than in silos, and we are comfortable moving between big-picture thinking and the practical details required to bring an idea to life. We are building toward a just, inclusive, and vibrant world where people, planet, and culture thrive.
The Opportunity:
Align is seeking an experienced Executive Vice President to serve as a senior partner to our CEO and leadership team. This is a fractional, hands-on executive role—not a traditional advisory position and not solely a “manager of managers” role. The EVP will help lead selected client engagements, coach senior leaders, advance business opportunities, strengthen internal systems, and take ownership of priorities that would otherwise require the CEO’s direct involvement.
The right person will bring executive-level judgment without needing layers of infrastructure around them. They will know when to step forward, when to coach, when to make a decision, and when to create space for others to lead.
Because Align’s work crosses sectors and disciplines, this person should be comfortable navigating complexity and connecting ideas that do not always arrive in neat categories. On any given week, that could mean advising a client through a sensitive decision, reviewing an impact strategy, helping a team resolve a scope or staffing challenge, shaping a proposal, or bringing greater clarity to an internal priority.
The EVP will report directly to the CEO and provide leadership and accountability to SVPs, VPs, account leaders, and other senior team members.
What You’ll Do:
Lead alongside the CEO:
- Serve as Align’s senior-most executive leader below the CEO, representing our work, values, and standards internally and externally.
- Act as a trusted thought partner to the CEO on client, team, growth, and organizational priorities.
- Take ownership of selected decisions and workstreams that would otherwise require the CEO’s involvement.
- Provide clear, concise updates on performance, risks, decisions, and emerging needs, with appropriate expectations for a fractional schedule.
- Help clarify ownership, decision-making authority, and escalation paths across the organization.
- Step in when a client or organizational issue requires leadership beyond the SVP or VP level.
Guide meaningful client work:
- Provide executive oversight and strategic guidance across a focused portfolio of priority accounts.
- Take an active role in the day-to-day leadership of a limited number of high-touch client relationships.
- Help teams translate ambitious goals into strong strategies, practical plans, and excellent work.
- Review and strengthen strategies, proposals, presentations, scopes, and other critical deliverables.
- Guide teams through complex questions involving priorities, budgets, staffing, timelines, and client expectations.
- Serve as a senior point of contact and escalation resource when appropriate.
- Lead specific work products in areas of expertise, such as strategic planning, organizational development, or monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
- Identify opportunities to deepen relationships and create additional value for existing clients.
Support and strengthen senior leaders:
- Coach SVPs, VPs, account leaders, and other senior colleagues in client leadership, team management, decision-making, and accountability.
- Help senior leaders establish clear priorities, goals, and measures of success.
- Lead selected leadership and management meetings.
- Strengthen consistency in how teams plan, communicate, manage clients, and deliver work.
- Help resolve challenges that cross accounts, disciplines, or areas of responsibility.
- Support staffing decisions, recruitment, onboarding, and leadership development when needed.
Help Align grow thoughtfully:
- Partner with the CEO and senior leadership team to cultivate new clients, partnerships, and revenue opportunities.
- Build relationships with prospective clients, funders, collaborators, and influential connectors.
- Participate in discovery conversations, pitches, proposals, scopes, budgets, and negotiations.
- Connect prospective partners’ needs with Align’s full range of capabilities.
- Help opportunity owners maintain momentum, clear next steps, and accountability.
- Improve coordination among business development, contracting, staffing, onboarding, and client delivery.
- Represent Align at selected meetings, conferences, and convenings.
Strengthen how the agency operates:
- Take ownership of selected operational and organizational priorities.
- Support resource and capacity planning across client and internal work.
- Help ensure teams have the context, tools, and support they need to succeed.
- Introduce practical systems that make priorities, responsibilities, and progress more visible.
- Improve coordination across client services, growth, operations, and administration.
- Create structure and forward movement while preserving the flexibility and creativity that make Align distinctive.
What It’s Like to Work at Align:
Align is an ambitious agency with an entrepreneurial operating style. Our environment is collaborative, fast-moving, and often nonlinear. We take the work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously. We value people who can bring structure without creating unnecessary bureaucracy; who are comfortable asking hard questions and generous enough to help answer them; and who understand that strong relationships and strong execution are equally important. Our leaders stay close to the work. Titles matter less here than judgment, contribution, and accountability. We look for colleagues who can move fluidly between strategy and implementation, communicate directly and thoughtfully, and remain steady when the path forward is not immediately obvious.
The person who thrives in this role will bring clarity, curiosity, levity, and momentum to the room.
You May Be a Strong Fit If You:
- Care deeply about social impact and share Align’s commitment to a just, inclusive, and vibrant world.
- Have served as an EVP, COO, managing director, or in a comparable executive leadership position.
- Have led senior professionals while continuing to contribute directly to client strategy and work.
- Are energized by a dynamic, entrepreneurial agency environment.
- Think strategically but remain practical, responsive, and hands-on.
- Can quickly understand a complex situation, identify what matters most, and help people move forward.
- Build trust with clients, colleagues, funders, partners, and other senior stakeholders.
- Lead with sound judgment, candor, empathy, and a strong sense of accountability.
- Know how professional-services organizations win work, manage relationships, allocate resources, and deliver excellent results.
- Can make a meaningful contribution within a focused, part-time executive schedule.
- See yourself as a steward of culture, not simply an operator within it.
Experience and Capabilities:
We expect strong candidates to bring:
- At least 15 years of relevant experience across social impact, philanthropy, nonprofits, government, corporate responsibility, corporate purpose, or related fields.
- Significant executive leadership experience, including responsibility for SVPs, VPs, directors, or other senior professionals.
- A record of leading complex client engagements, multidisciplinary teams, organizational operations, and growth initiatives.
- Experience in an agency or other professional-services environment, strongly preferred.
- Success managing senior relationships across companies, nonprofits, foundations, philanthropy, government, or adjacent sectors.
- Experience developing new business or expanding significant client relationships.
- Strong operational and financial judgment, including experience with budgets, scopes, staffing, workflows, and resource allocation.
- Excellent writing, communication, presentation, interpersonal, and facilitation skills.
- The ability to manage competing priorities and make sound decisions in a fast-moving environment.
- Knowledge of current thinking and practice across social impact, philanthropy, CSR, communications, culture, and organizational strategy.
- A demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
We also recognize that exceptional candidates do not always follow linear career paths. If this role resonates and you believe your experience would add meaningful value to Align, we encourage you to apply.
Engagement Details:
- Location: New York City–based; hybrid, with regular in-person participation.
- Engagement: Initial three-month contract, with the possibility of renewal, extension, or modification by mutual agreement.
- Time commitment: Approximately 10 or more hours per week.
- Compensation: $90–$100 per hour, based on experience.
- Schedule: Availability required during core East Coast business hours; weekly needs may vary based on client meetings, deadlines, and organizational priorities.
- Travel: Occasional travel may be requested and will be discussed in advance.
- Reports to: Chief Executive Officer.
- Work authorization: Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States.
Equal Opportunity:
Align Social Impact is an Align Communications & Creative LLC company and an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion and to building a team that reflects a wide range of backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and skills. Employment and contracting decisions are based on qualifications, merit, organizational needs, and alignment with our values.
Learn more at alignsocialimpact.com.