Chief Executive Officer

The President and CEO serves as the chief executive and strategic leader of Midlands Housing Alliance and Transitions Homeless Center, advancing the organization’s mission to engage and equip homeless adults of the Midlands to transition into stability and permanent housing. Reporting to the Board of Directors, the CEO is accountable for the overall leadership, operational effectiveness, financial sustainability, public reputation, and mission impact of the organization. This leader will guide a complex, service-intensive organization that provides shelter, case management, housing navigation, employment support, healthcare access, meals, and coordinated services for adults experiencing homelessness.

The CEO will ensure that programs are effective, facilities are safe and well-maintained, staff are supported and developed, resources are responsibly stewarded, and partnerships with local governments, businesses, neighborhoods, funders, service providers, and community stakeholders are strengthened. The President and CEO must be a credible public voice on homelessness in the Midlands, a thoughtful partner to the Board, and a values-driven leader who can inspire trust, accountability, collaboration, and measurable progress toward long-term stability and permanent housing for clients.

Reports to: Midlands Housing Alliance / Transitions Board

Direct Reports: Three (3) – Vice Presidents (Operations, Programs, and Development)

Location: Columbia, SC

To view the full position profile, please visit: Transitions CEO Profile

The ideal candidate will be a mission-centered, externally engaged executive who can lead Midlands Housing Alliance and Transitions Homeless Center into its next phase of impact. This leader will inherit an essential community organization with experienced staff, established housing programs, significant shelter capacity, broad community reach, and a strong operational foundation. The new President and CEO must preserve these strengths while improving high-impact relationships, strengthening financial sustainability, increasing public visibility, and determining if the organization’s service model should evolve in response to changing client and community needs.

Reporting to the Board of Directors, the President and CEO will be accountable for strategic leadership, operational effectiveness, financial stewardship, organizational reputation, and measurable mission impact. The organization provides shelter, case management, housing navigation, employment support, healthcare access, meals, and coordinated services for adults experiencing homelessness.

This opportunity requires more than a traditional nonprofit administrator. The successful candidate must be an effective ambassador, relationship builder, strategist, fundraiser, organizational leader, and advocate who can navigate a highly visible and politically complex operating environment.


IDEAL EXPERIENCE
The strongest candidate will bring substantial executive or senior leadership experience in a complex nonprofit, human-services, public-sector, healthcare, housing, behavioral-health, or similarly mission-intensive organization.

Homelessness, Housing, or Related Sector Knowledge

Direct experience in homelessness response, housing services, low-barrier shelter, behavioral health, social services, healthcare, workforce development, or services for vulnerable populations is highly preferred. Familiarity with housing-first practices, coordinated care, trauma-informed services, case management, public funding, behavioral-health partnerships, and the barriers faced by adults experiencing homelessness would be particularly valuable.

Executive and Organizational Leadership

The ideal candidate will have:

• At least ten years of progressively responsible management experience, including accountability for budgets, facilities, operations, human resources, staff development, organizational administration, and safety or security matters.
• Experience leading a complex, service-intensive organization with multiple programs, stakeholder groups, funding sources, and operational risks.
• A record of translating mission and strategy into clear priorities, measurable expectations, and sustained organizational performance.
• Experience advising and partnering with a governing board on strategy, risk, accountability, and major organizational decisions.
• Demonstrated success recruiting, developing, mentoring, and retaining senior leaders and employees in demanding service environments.
• The ability to assess an organization objectively without dismissing its history, strengths, or institutional knowledge.

External Relations and Political Acumen

The ideal candidate will have a successful record of:

• Building trust with local government, public agencies, community organizations, law enforcement, businesses, neighborhoods, healthcare providers, and institutional partners.
• Operating effectively in politically sensitive and publicly visible environments.
• Repairing strained relationships without becoming defensive, passive, or unnecessarily adversarial.
• Listening respectfully to criticism and perspectives that challenge existing assumptions.
• Representing an organization effectively with public officials, civic leaders, donors, media, funders, partners, and community members.
• Building coalitions among groups with different priorities, definitions of success, and levels of trust.

Operational and Programmatic Judgment

Although the position should become more externally oriented, the CEO must remain sufficiently operationally informed to evaluate program performance, facilities, staffing, safety, compliance, and service quality.

Relevant experience may include oversight of shelters, residential programs, healthcare settings, community-service campuses, schools, correctional facilities, camps, or other complex, high-traffic environments. Experience with security personnel, emergency procedures, law-enforcement coordination, facilities planning, client safety, and public-facing incidents would be beneficial.

The successful candidate must be able to examine difficult questions about:

• The alignment of the service model with client acuity.
• Access to mental-health and substance-use services.
• Staffing levels and service intensity.
• Client exits, aftercare, and downstream community effects.
• Potential future models, including multiple sites, non-congregate options, or redesigned service delivery.

The new CEO should be a leader capable of conducting a candid, evidence-based assessment and engaging the Board, staff, City, and partners in the resulting decisions.

LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES

• Mission Commitment and Client Focus: The ideal candidate will demonstrate a genuine commitment to the dignity, safety, stability, and long-term success of adults experiencing homelessness. This leader will understand that compassion and accountability are complementary and will balance client needs with employee safety, operational realities, community impact, and responsible stewardship.
• Relationship Building: The successful candidate will build trust across constituencies and communicate before problems escalate. This leader will be accessible, credible, respectful, and comfortable engaging people who hold conflicting views of the organization or its work.
• Diplomacy with Conviction: The ideal candidate will listen carefully and seek common ground without compromising the organization’s mission or avoiding necessary decisions. This individual will understand how language, timing, and context influence sensitive public discussions.
• Strategic Agility: The candidate will distinguish between practices that should be preserved and conditions that require adaptation. This leader will connect immediate operational realities with a longer-term vision for housing, services, partnerships, facilities, workforce, and community impact.
• Courageous and Evidence-Based Decision-Making: The next CEO must be willing to examine legacy assumptions, acknowledge challenges, and make difficult decisions. At the same time, the leader must avoid imposing rapid or predetermined change without understanding why current practices developed and what is working well.
• Humility and Learning Orientation: The ideal candidate will enter the organization with curiosity rather than certainty. This leader will spend time learning the client journey, programs, organizational history, staff strengths, partnership structure, and community context before reaching major conclusions.
• Empowering People Leadership: Staff value autonomy, flexibility, distributed decision-making, and trust. The successful CEO will respect existing expertise, delegate appropriately, avoid micromanagement, and recognize that important external relationships may be effectively managed by different members of the leadership team.
• Communication and Public Presence: The ideal candidate will be an excellent written, verbal, interpersonal, and public communicator who can speak credibly with clients, employees, the Board, donors, public officials, community partners, neighborhood stakeholders, funders, and the media.
• Results Orientation: The candidate will value both service volume and long-term results. This leader will strengthen the organization’s ability to collect, understand, and communicate data concerning permanent housing, employment, stability, program effectiveness, aftercare, and returns to homelessness.
• Integrity and Accountability: The President and CEO must demonstrate unquestioned integrity, sound judgment, emotional maturity, discretion, and the ability to lead independently while remaining accountable to the Board, mission, clients, staff, funders, and community.

• Provide visionary, mission-centered leadership that advances Transitions’ role as a critical safety-net and housing-focused resource for adults experiencing homelessness in the Midlands.
• Partner effectively with the Board of Directors, Board Chair, and committee leadership to support sound governance, strategic decision-making, organizational accountability, and clear communication regarding key opportunities, risks, and priorities.
• Oversee the performance, integration, and continuous improvement of shelter operations, residential programs, case management, workforce development, housing navigation, healthcare access, and other client-centered services.
• Lead, mentor, and develop the senior leadership team and staff, fostering a professional culture grounded in compassion, accountability, safety, collaboration, and respect for the dignity of every client, volunteer, partner, and employee.
• Ensure strong fiscal stewardship through disciplined budgeting, accurate financial reporting, effective internal controls, successful audits, prudent reserve management, and thoughtful alignment of resources with mission priorities.
• Strengthen revenue generation and resource development by cultivating philanthropic support, public and private funding opportunities, community partnerships, donor relationships, and events that enhance the long-term sustainability of the organization.
• Build and maintain productive relationships with local governments, neighborhoods, businesses, faith communities, service providers, healthcare partners, funders, volunteers, and peer organizations to improve coordinated responses to homelessness.
• Serve as a visible and credible spokesperson for the organization, representing Transitions with the media, public officials, civic leaders, donors, partners, and the broader community.
• Maintain transparent, timely, and professional communication with internal and external stakeholders, including clients, staff, volunteers, partners, funders, community members, and the Board.
• Ensure that facilities, security practices, emergency procedures, and daily operations support a clean, safe, respectful, and service-oriented environment for all stakeholders.
• Provide executive oversight for policies, procedures, compliance requirements, grievance processes, staff discipline matters, risk management, and organizational standards of conduct.

Required Education and Experience

• Master’s degree or higher in nonprofit management, public administration, social work, business administration, human services, public health, or another field relevant to executive leadership of a complex human services organization.
• Ten (10) or more years of progressively responsible management experience, including oversight of budgets, facilities, operations, human resources, staff development, safety or security protocols, and organizational administration.
• Unquestioned integrity, sound judgment, emotional maturity, and the ability to lead independently while remaining accountable to the Board, mission, and community.
• Proven ability to recruit, develop, mentor, and retain staff; build leadership capacity; and foster a healthy workplace culture in a demanding service environment.
• Demonstrated ability to develop, implement, and maintain policies, procedures, systems, and performance expectations that support a well-governed, compliant, and effective organization.
• Excellent written, verbal, interpersonal, and public communication skills, including the ability to speak clearly with media, public officials, funders, community partners, staff, clients, and the Board.
• Experience raising funds, strengthening donor and partner relationships, supporting development activities, and communicating a compelling case for investment in an organization’s mission.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading or partnering with organizations that provide homelessness response, housing services, social services, behavioral health, healthcare, workforce development, or other supports for vulnerable populations.
• Familiarity with low-barrier shelter operations, case management, housing-first practices, coordinated care models, or community-based service delivery.
• Experience overseeing complex facilities, campus-based operations, residential programs, shelters, schools, correctional facilities, healthcare settings, camps, or other high-traffic service environments.
• Background managing security staff, emergency protocols, law enforcement coordination, client safety issues, and public-facing situations requiring discretion and judgment.
• Experience with nonprofit financial management, audits, reserves, grants, public funding, philanthropic revenue, or investment oversight.
• Working knowledge of technology systems, data management, client information systems, software platforms, or reporting tools that support operational effectiveness and accountability.
• Ability to design, lead, or facilitate staff training, client education, community presentations, or partner learning sessions.
• Knowledge of social work principles, trauma-informed service delivery, case management, poverty-related barriers, affordable housing challenges, and coordinated community responses to homelessness.