Job Type
Full-time
Description
Reports to: President & CEO
About IYF:
The International Youth Foundation is a global nonprofit with an exceptional 35-year history of connecting young people with economic opportunities to transform their lives. Our team is composed of global experts in creative problem solving at the systems level, and partnering with youth, school systems, technical training institutions, and global employers to scale what works for both youth and employers.
The International Youth Foundation partners with governments, private foundations, and global leaders like Google, Hilton, Caterpillar, Fed-Ex, McDonalds and Burberry —companies that employ millions of young people—to provide essential life skills and industry-specific training, guiding them into meaningful employment. We have a particular expertise and an extended team in Latin America, the US and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Since its inception, International Youth Foundation has made a global impact, reaching youth in 182 countries through more than 600 local partners, directly serving over 8 million young people in-person and reaching another 6 million online. In 2025, our team is distributed across four continents and collaborates remotely.
The opportunity
IYF is looking for a fast-moving operator who wants a life filled with purpose.
Here’s specifically what we are looking for:
- A dynamic, strategic, and highly capable chief operating officer (COO) with a strong CFO-level financial background.
- An experienced nonprofit/startup leader who thrives on big, complex design challenges.
- Someone excited about the potential of redesigning and transforming IYF’s operations.
- A strategic partner to drive change management as IYF unlocks the next 35 years of growth by becoming a more nimble and entrepreneurial organization.
- A service-orientated leader excited about supporting IYF’s mission and organization by orientating key functions (finance, HR, IT) as critical parts of a larger machine towards a shared goal of driving growth.
- Someone with experience working directly with an entrepreneurial leader or founder and who enjoys that dynamic.
The COO will lead a comprehensive evaluation of IYF’s operational functions, including finance/accounting, IT, legal, and HR, and update those designs as needed for organizational strength, scalability, efficiency, and longevity. They will manage a current team of 10 in-house staff along with outsourced vendors and collaborate closely with other executive leaders in programs and business development.
Financial experience is required. Our COO must have a background in financial architecture, financial modeling, operational systems, and building teams. They must have a clear, confident vision of what operational excellence looks like for a growth-oriented nonprofit and the expertise to bring that vision to life through design, key hires, and on-the-ground management and improvement.
This is a rare opportunity to make an outsized impact at an organization driving meaningful, large-scale change for youth around the world.
Requirements
Experience, skills, and attributes:
- 10 years of management experience, including 5+ years at an executive leadership level, with a proven track record in CFO and COO-level roles
- Extensive experience in both nonprofit financial management or social enterprises AND growth-orientated startups — looking for someone who thinks strategically and can get into the details to do the work themselves
- Demonstrated ability to oversee HR, IT, Finance, and Legal functions effectively
- Demonstrated experience designing operational solutions that balance global consistency with local adaptability in emerging or complex regulatory environments.
- Skilled at working across cultures, time zones, and legal frameworks to ensure alignment and compliance while fostering trust and accountability.
- Background in organizational redesign and change management, with a focus on operational efficiency
- Experience leading technology-driven solutions for operational and financial improvement
- Proven experience serving as a right-hand partner to a CEO, influencing and informing key strategic decisions
- Experience with board management and reporting
- Strategic thinker and systems-level designer with strong analytical and financial modeling skills
- Exceptional people management skills, with the ability to evaluate and optimize team structures; track record of building high-performing, mission-driven teams and knowing how to coach others into designing well
Job level
Executive leadership
Location
Remote
If in US, must be based in one of these US locations: California, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and Washington D.C.
If international, must be based in Mexico, Colombia, or Zimbabwe, and must have familiarity with US financial and legal requirements.
For more context, read on about:
- Core responsibilities
- Core competencies
- Success in this role at 6 and 12 months
- IYF culture and values
- Why join IYF?
Core responsibilities
- Financial strategy and organizational design
- Lead a comprehensive evaluation of IYF’s financial architecture, assessing current workflows, team capacity, and system efficiencies across geographies.
- Assess the current financial team and roles, making recommendations on fit, performance, and potential redesign.
- Design and implement a financial operating model that improves reporting accuracy, strengthens forecasting, and reduces close-out timelines by measurable margins.
- Provide actionable, data-informed insights to the CEO and Board, using scenario modeling, variance analysis, risk management, and trend forecasting to inform long-term strategy.
- Evaluate the finance team’s structure and capabilities, offering developmental coaching, restructuring plans, or role redefinition as necessary.
- Technological innovation and improvement
- Review our current technology and systems to ensure they effectively support IYF’s evolving needs and that the team is trained to make the most of their capabilities.
- Diagnose any problems and design a digital transformation for IYF’s systems, processes, and tools to increase efficiency, data-driven decision-making, and collaboration.
- Conduct a systems audit across finance, HR, and program operations to identify gaps, redundancies, and opportunities for automation or digitization.
- Lead the selection, implementation, and team adoption of modern tools that improve efficiency, reduce manual processes, and support better data integration across departments.
- Facilitate regular training and support for internal teams to ensure sustainable use of new technologies and platforms.
- Track and report digital transformation outcomes using adoption rates, time saved, or user satisfaction metrics.
- Operational leadership
- Oversee and optimize the performance of core operational departments: IT (outsourced), HR, Finance, and Legal (outsourced), setting measurable team goals and service-level expectations.
- Collaborate with other executive leaders in programs and business development to ensure operational strategies align with programmatic and revenue goals.
- Serve as a cross-functional integrator, aligning back-office operations with programmatic and business development strategies by facilitating structured collaboration and shared metrics.
- Implement process improvements and scalable systems to enhance efficiency and effectiveness across departments.
- Ensure IYF maintains a strong internal infrastructure, enabling program teams to deliver at the highest level.
- Implement performance monitoring systems that allow early identification of bottlenecks or inefficiencies, followed by root-cause analysis and resolution planning.
- Establish standardized SOPs and dashboards across departments to ensure consistent service quality and accountability.
- Serve as a strategic partner to the CEO, offering operational and financial insights that inform organizational strategy.
- People and performance management
- Collaborate with HR to develop talent strategies that support organizational goals and ensure the right people are in the right roles in the COO’s domain.
- Embed a performance culture through consistent goal-setting, coaching conversations, and performance reviews tied to organizational OKRs.
- Champion a results-driven performance culture by introducing or enhancing OKRs, 360° feedback loops, and peer coaching systems within your functional domain.
- Collaborate with HR to develop competency-based hiring and promotion frameworks for operations roles, ensuring alignment with organizational values and growth trajectory.
- Regularly recognize team achievements and lead conversations that address underperformance with empathy and rigor.
- Risk management and compliance
- Oversee organizational risk management, ensuring compliance with legal, financial, and operational standards.
- Lead a proactive approach to risk management by conducting quarterly reviews across finance, legal, and operational policies and updating procedures to reflect evolving donor, legal, and sectoral requirements.
- Ensure implementation of internal controls through real-time compliance dashboards, training for key staff, and routine audit preparation protocols.
- Cultivate strong relationships with external auditors, legal advisors, and compliance bodies, maintaining up-to-date documentation and readiness across all regulated domains.
- Partner with external auditors, legal counsel, and compliance teams to ensure adherence to global standards.
Core competencies for this role:
- Strategic Thinking and Systems Design
- Financial Acumen and Modeling
- Team Leadership and Coaching
- Operational Execution Across Global Contexts
- Change Management and Process Innovation
- Inclusive Leadership and Cross-Cultural Communication
Success in this role looks like…
- Within 6 months: Completed an operational audit, proposed and began implementing a redesigned financial reporting process, and working and hiring against an updated team design.
- Within 12 months: Fully transitioned IYF to an integrated IT-HR-Finance system; staff across regions trained and onboarded.
IYF’s culture and values
At IYF, we seek leaders who are:
- Purpose-driven: self-motivated by the mission to grow our organization and transform the future for youth globally.
- Self-accountable: able to deliver on commitments with minimal oversight, thriving in a high-functioning, entrepreneurial team.
- Growth & learning-oriented: seeking better solutions and improvements to drive growth and innovation across the org.
- Empathetic and collaborative: skilled at building relationships, working effectively across cultures, and elevating team performance.
Why join IYF?
At IYF, you’ll have the opportunity to reshape the operational foundation of a global organization, directly influencing its financial and strategic direction. This is a rare opportunity to make a lasting impact on an organization dedicated to empowering youth worldwide.
Salary Description
$175,000 - $200,000 USD Yearly
This position was originally posted by the International Youth Foundation and has been curated by PurposePhil Career. To apply, please visit the original listing on the "apply" link below. We are not affiliated with the employer organization of this job ad or consultancy, and provide this curated listing as a service to our users.
