Deputy Director

EpicWorks team members specialize in finance, human resources, compliance, legal services, organizational culture, and labor relations. Each team member brings years—often decades—of experience supporting organizations fighting for justice.

This role will work directly for EpicWorks and will not be employed by Working Families Party or Working Families Power.

About This Role

The Deputy Director is a senior leader responsible for helping turn EpicWorks’ strategy and priorities into action. Working closely with the Executive Director and senior leadership team, the Deputy Director will lead major organizational initiatives, manage and develop staff, strengthen management and labor relations practices, and help ensure that teams and projects deliver on their commitments.

This role requires an exceptional people leader and project manager—someone who shapes culture, creates clarity, establishes accountability, drives work forward, and helps others succeed. The ideal candidate combines strong judgment and strategic thinking with a bias toward action and follow-through.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Translate organizational strategy into clear priorities, plans, and measurable outcomes to undergird the larger performance management process.
• Manage principals towards organizational and departmental goals, including holding members of the senior leadership team accountable.
• Lead major cross-entity projects like our process to onboard participating organizations or strategic risk mitigation efforts from planning through implementation, establishing clear ownership, timelines, deliverables, and accountability.
• Identify barriers to progress, facilitate decisions, and ensure commitments translate into action.
• Strengthen coordination across teams and improve systems and processes that support organizational effectiveness by developing a new structure for accountability that can be implemented by our two cross-functional teams – Participating Organizational Services and Compliance.
• Support the EpicWorks Advisory Board and the Executive Director by planning and facilitating pieces of our quarterly meetings.
• Oversee risk mitigation strategy and crisis response protocols for the organization, including monitoring risk, leading process documentation and document retention efforts.
• Support business continuity planning through close partnership with the Chief Financial Officer, Executive Director, and Controller.
• Ensure financial strategy is tightly aligned with organizational priorities and drives sustainable growth.

• Partner with the Executive Director and department heads as a member of the Senior Leadership Team, providing candid feedback, honest counsel, and constructive challenges.
• Manage and develop staff through clear expectations, regular coaching and feedback, professional development, and accountability for results.
• Support Director of People and Process and Executive Director in performance management, goal-setting, and organizational planning.
• Lead internal staff learning and communication efforts, including all-staff and manager meetings.
• Develop and oversee a strong onboarding experience for EpicWorks staff.

• Oversee labor and management relations.
• Serve as a senior advisor to executives of Participating Organizations on complex labor relations, collective bargaining, organizational change, partnership-building approaches, workforce impacts, and conflict.
• Help develop and advance EpicWorks’ approach to progressive, values-aligned management and labor relations.
• Develop training, coaching, tools, and shared resources that strengthen management capacity across EpicWorks and Participating Organizations.
• Advise EpicWorks’ leaders and Participating Organizational leads on management and labor-relations challenges, trends, risks, and opportunities.
• Build opportunities for shared learning and disseminate effective management practices across the EpicWorks network.

• Ensure coordination across Finance, People & Culture, Legal, Technology, Operations, and key Participating Organization contacts so policy and process don’t work at cross-purposes.
• Sponsor organization-wide initiatives requiring multi-functional coordination.
• Provide strategic oversight to assigned programs and initiatives, ensuring clear goals, strong execution, and alignment with organizational priorities.
• Establish meaningful measures of program effectiveness and regularly assess and present progress against goals.
• Partner with Finance and program staff to monitor budgets, performance, and sustainability.
• Build strong relationships with Participating Organizations and other partners and use their feedback to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Represent EpicWorks with Participating Organizations, unions, partners, funders, and other stakeholders.

Skills and Qualifications

• At least 10 years of experience with expertise in nonprofit management, political campaigns, or organizational operations with increasing levels of responsibility.
• At least 5 years of experience in a senior leadership role, preferably managing multi-functional teams and projects.
• Demonstrated experience strengthening organizational project management capacity, including introducing effective tools and practices, coaching staff, and helping teams build the skills needed to plan, coordinate, and drive complex projects to completion.
• Strong people-management experience, including coaching and developing staff, managing managers, setting expectations, and supporting accountability and performance.
• Strong judgment and problem-solving skills, with the ability to navigate ambiguity, competing priorities, and sensitive organizational issues.
• Some data analysis skills, with the ability to identify trends and drive data-informed decisions in a fast-paced environment.
• Demonstrated ability to build strong, trusting relationships across teams and with organizational leaders, partners, and other stakeholders.
• Some experience working within a collective bargaining environment and partnering effectively with union leadership.
• Some experience with complex, multi-entity nonprofit structures, such as organizations that include 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4), and PAC entities.
• Demonstrated commitment to racial, economic, and gender justice and to building equitable, values-aligned organizations.