Vice President of Criminal Justice

ABOUT THE LAURA AND JOHN ARNOLD FOUNDATION:
The Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF) is a private foundation headquartered in Houston, TX, whose core objective is to improve the lives of individuals by strengthening our country’s social, governmental, and economic systems. LJAF’s strategy is to systematically examine areas of society in which underperformance, inefficiency, concentrated power, lack of information, lack of accountability, lack of transparency, lack of balance among interests, or other barriers to human progress and achievement exist. They then apply a rigorous and comprehensive entrepreneurial problem-solving approach to these areas, considering all possible strategies, tactics, and resource allocations to effect solutions. The approach is not limited to what has been tried, or even what has been proposed, in the past. Instead, LJAF seeks to incentivize bold, creative thinking and effort, with the goal of igniting a renaissance of new ideas and approaches applied to persistent problems.
To find out more about founders Laura and John Arnold, please visit www.lauraandjohnarnold.com.

MISSION OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE:
Overview
LJAF’s Criminal Justice initiative aims to advance community safety and the values of equity, fairness, effectiveness, and racial justice. In the coming years, LJAF will explore opportunities to advance efforts across five key policy domains: Effective Policing, Pretrial Justice, Community Supervision, Corrections, and Reintegration. To achieve its goals, LJAF supports activities that advance research, policy reform, and evidence-based innovations. They work with teams of experts from inside and outside the criminal justice field to conduct research, build evidence, create tools for practitioners, and partner with local jurisdictions to pilot and test new policies and practices. They recognize that research, data, and evidence can help define a criminal justice issue, serve as the leading edge into exploration and innovation, measure the effectiveness of a policy or practice, and elevate a successful reform so it is widely adopted. By leveraging these strategies and working with their partners, LJAF hopes to drive innovation and accelerate the adoption of proven reforms in society’s response to crime and the pursuit of justice.

ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY:
LJAF is seeking a Vice President of Criminal Justice to help transform pretrial justice across the nation through bold initiatives, strategic thinking, and a data-driven approach. The Vice President will develop, expand, and implement the Pretrial Justice portfolio within the Criminal Justice team, defining and advancing LJAF’s pretrial justice strategy and investments. This individual will be responsible for identifying, analyzing, and pursuing new, high-leverage philanthropic opportunities within pretrial justice, with a goal of increasing real-world impacts on public safety, fairness, and cost-effectiveness. Additionally, the Vice President will oversee and scale current initiatives, including the Public Safety Assessment (PSA), a pretrial risk assessment tool being piloted across the U.S.

The Vice President will partner with a Criminal Justice team of about 20 staff across the Washington D.C. and New York offices, including two Vice Presidents based in D.C. The Vice President will manage a growing team of about six researchers, analysts, and policy professionals in the New York office as well as liaise with senior management and the Board in Houston.

The three key priority areas for the Vice President of Criminal Justice include:

Strategy

• Drive, expand, and refine LJAF’s pretrial justice portfolio by developing a broad yet comprehensive legal strategy considering bail reform, court diversion, prosecution, jails, and other potential areas for impact, all in partnership with the Board, Executive Vice President, and senior team.

• Identify, build, and cultivate relationships and connections across the pretrial justice spectrum such as research institutions, law schools, public interest law firms, municipalities, court systems, advocacy organizations, and relevant community organizations and foundations.

• Leverage relationships into partnerships and grantees that work on creative, innovative, and high impact research, data analytics, and demonstration projects to strategically expand LJAF’s pretrial grantmaking portfolio.

Execution

• Oversee the national rollout of the PSA in the context of a broad and robust bail reform agenda, partnering closely with the Director of Criminal Justice and the Executive Vice President.

• Develop and implement a pretrial research and innovation agenda on various topics, such as the role of the prosecutor, court diversion, and pretrial detention.

• Collaborate with LJAF’s Criminal Justice research team to develop a comprehensive strategy for pretrial reform research, including evaluating and improving the effectiveness of the PSA as well as new research projects on potential high impact reforms across the spectrum of pretrial.

• Serve as a spokesperson for the Pretrial Justice portfolio and team when appropriate.

Management

• Work closely with the LJAF Board, Executive Vice President, and senior team in all three offices, including developing and presenting investment/grant recommendations to the Board.

• Manage, empower, recruit, and support LJAF’s New York-based Criminal Justice team and serve in a significant leadership role in the New York office.

• Foster ongoing relationships with grantees and key stakeholders to develop strategic plans, establish performance metrics, and utilize data to maximize impact.

The Vice President of Criminal Justice will report directly to the Executive Vice President of Criminal Justice, Jeremy Travis. See http://www.arnoldfoundation.org/team/