Full Leadership Profile: https://bit.ly/EDGIP
As an operating nonprofit, Georgia Innocence Project has three fundamental avenues for impact:
1. Investigate wrongful conviction cases and provides direct legal services to free innocent people from incarceration
2. Provide critical reentry and recovery services to survivors of wrongful conviction
3. Expose the injustices within individual cases to drive systemic reform, utilizing education and policy advocacy to prevent, correct, and remedy wrongful convictions systemwide.
GIP seeks a visionary Executive Director who will honor the organization’s heritage and committed staff while ensuring the people, systems and support are aligned to optimize the collective impact on behalf of Georgia’s wrongfully convicted and incarcerated. As a nonprofit accustomed to punching above its weight, GIP’s next leader can expect to inherit overlapping and interconnected priorities, chief among them the following:
• With the board’s guidance and input from staff and stakeholders, develop a cohesive, comprehensive vision for GIP’s future, fully leveraging opportunities for partnership and engagement. This is longer-term work for which quick answers will be elusive, but it represents a topic of conversation that all parties recognize as essential.
• Ensure an atmosphere of transparency and respect between the staff and board through regular communications, clear expectations and mutual accountability for results. An organization fighting for increased transparency and accountability in the application of justice will benefit from modeling similar norms for itself.
• Strengthen GIP’s case engagement to continue GIP’s momentum with exonerations. GIP has achieved some impressive victories in recent years, but the pace of Georgia’s exonerations lag national averages considerably, even as Georgia’s incarceration rate continues to outpace that of most other states.
• Develop and execute a strategy for legislative and policy changes at the state and community levels.
• Ensure GIP has the resources, staff, and operational infrastructure necessary to sustain and expand its impact. The cultivation and stewardship of relationships, internally and externally, will be essential to GIP’s long-term success
• Leverage best practices and relevant technology to ensure GIP operates as efficiently and effectively as possible.
The ideal candidate to lead Georgia Innocence Project will be a legally trained professional experienced in the leadership and management of a highly entrepreneurial nonprofit committed to advancing social justice.
Experience with the incarcerated, and especially the wrongfully incarcerated, would of course be advantageous, but the search committee is open to candidates who demonstrate exceptional leadership skills in other relevant contexts as long as they demonstrate a passion for GIP’s work, an affinity for outsized challenges, and the people skills to navigate relationships with strong-willed colleagues, board members and supporters.
A leader with a commitment to the possible informed by a clear-eyed view of hurdles ahead would be well received. Successful exonerations require the mastery of minutiae as well as strategy. The Executive Director cannot afford to get bogged down in the minutiae but absolutely must respect its role in the outcomes GIP seeks.
Following are the primary qualities and assets being sought, not all of which any one candidate will be expected to offer:
Competency:
• An executive with the passion to inspire, the experience to lead, the empathy to understand, the vision to dream and the confidence to prevail
• A self-confident person accustomed to leading impactful mission-based organizations, ideally ones that advance social justice; an experienced, nuanced leader focused on the possible while tending to the practical
• A community champion comfortable being the face of GIP; a magnet for resources and partnerships
• Courage and capability in fundraising; prior success in sustainable, diversified resource development is highly valued, ideally with major donors and foundations
• A practical understanding of judiciary and legislative dynamics; someone engaged (or willing to be engaged) in the fabric of the state who will find and promote opportunities for collaboration and progress
• A board-savvy executive who understands, respects and, with a deft hand, reinforces the proper roles of governance and management; someone who can help ensure strategy and structure align with core values
• Strong legal acumen. Prospective candidates need not be practicing attorneys and will not be handling individual cases at GIP, but they must have the background and credentials to inspire confidence and establish credibility with staff and stakeholders
• Substantial management experience in a larger nonprofit or other comparable context; nonprofit board experience would be additive
• A proven steward of all the organization’s assets—its people, reputation, relationships, finances, and influence
• Excellent communication skills in multiple contexts, reinforced by strong listening skills and high emotional intelligence
• The business acumen to steer an organization on the verge of rapid growth.
Culture:
• An inviting management style characterized by respect, openness and clarity of expectations
• An approachable, catalytic leader who can leverage strategy and inspire growth without ever losing touch with the why behind the work or the people who make it happen
• Ability to make decisions in a context of limited resources and seemingly unlimited needs
• A proven commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging; a high degree of cultural acuity and adaptability
• The ability in the face of competing priorities to discern when to push, when to yield and when to say no—respectfully
• Strategic and operational humility; a leader who takes genuine pride in collective success.
For potential consideration or to suggest a prospect,
please email [email protected]
or call
Sam Pettway or Michelle Hall at
404-BoardWalk (404-262-7392).
NLADA Mutual Insurance Co., RRG
