Senior Director, Direct Services

About Think of Us

Think of Us (TOU) is transforming the child welfare system into one where young people and families can heal, develop, and thrive. We drive purpose-driven work aligned with meaningful systems change, powered by data and the insights of lived experience. Our focus is on prevention, keeping families strong before crisis, and on building kinship-first systems so children grow up with people they know and trust. Through bold collaborations with leaders and innovators across the public and private sectors — from Presidential Administrations to local providers — we identify leverage points and co-create solutions that re-architect child welfare for the future.

Here’s what this looks like:

• Built the Lived Experience Engine into the largest dataset of its kind (51,000+ voices), powering AI tools and shaping reforms
• Partnered with California to launch the Kinship Accelerator in 8 counties, backed by $150M and a budget increase from $317M → $896M
• Drove a national kin-first shift: 39 states (plus 5 tribes) adopting kinship standards, unlocking $3B for families
• Operate one of the largest direct resource networks, connecting 1,827 families to $28M+ in support

Our team members share a commitment to driving systems change through creative problem-solving, obsessive curiosity, and a love of quickly driving innovative, measurable, and impactful results.

Position Overview

Department: Programs & Services - Direct Services

Reports to: Executive in Residence

Direct Reports: Senior Manager, Care Navigation; Senior Manager, Beta Team

Location: Hybrid; Washington, DC (min. 3 days in the office)

Relocation assistance is available for eligible candidates and will be

provided based on organizational guidelines and approved eligibility criteria.

Category: Full Time; Exempt

Think of Us (TOU) is seeking a mission-driven, operationally strong senior leader to serve as Senior Director of Direct Services — providing programmatic and operational oversight of TOU’s direct services work across two complementary teams: the Care Navigation team serving kinship families, foster youth, and transition-age youth (TAY) in California, and the Beta Team advancing digital resource navigation in Texas Region 7.

This is a cross-functional leadership role that sits at the intersection of direct service delivery, operational management, and systems innovation. The Senior Director will ensure both teams are delivering high-quality, lived-experience-centered support while building the infrastructure, practice standards, and learning systems needed to sustain and scale TOU’s direct service model. The Senior Director will directly supervise the Senior Manager of Care Navigation and the Senior Manager of the Beta Team, creating alignment across both programs while honoring the distinct contexts and goals of each.

At Think of Us, direct service is not separate from systems change — it is systems change in action. The Senior Director of Care Navigation holds the vision that every family and young person served is both supported in the moment and contributing to the evidence base that transforms child welfare at scale.

Candidates must be based in Washington, DC and able to meet the hybrid requirements (minimum 3 days per week in office) of this role in order to be fully considered.

Key Responsibilities

Senior Leadership & Team Oversight

• Provide direct supervisory oversight of the Senior Manager of Care Navigation (California) and the Senior Manager of the Beta Team (Texas), ensuring both leaders have the clarity, coaching, and support needed to lead their respective teams effectively.
• Set and sustain a shared leadership culture across both teams that centers lived experience, trauma-informed practice, unconditional positive regard, and continuous learning.
• Hold programmatic accountability for service quality, team performance, and outcome achievement across Care Navigation and Beta Team operations.
• Create alignment between the two teams — identifying opportunities for shared learning, cross-pollination of practice insights, and coordination without collapsing the distinct purposes of each model.
• Partner with the Executive in Residence to translate frontline learning and operational insights into organizational strategy and senior leadership decision-making.
• Represent the direct services portfolio in cross-functional leadership conversations, ensuring the voice of families, youth, and frontline staff informs TOU’s broader systems change agenda.

Programmatic Oversight — Care Navigation (California)

• Provide strategic and programmatic oversight of TOU’s Care Navigation model in California, ensuring the delivery of whole-person, relationship-centered support to kinship families, foster youth, and transition-age youth.
• Ensure the Care Navigation model is implemented with fidelity to TOU’s values — centering lived experience as a core design and accountability mechanism throughout service delivery.
• Support the Senior Manager of Care Navigation in building and sustaining a team of Care Navigators who deliver proactive, system-navigating support rather than transactional referrals.
• Monitor program performance against key outcomes, using data and qualitative learning to identify practice trends, gaps, and opportunities for model refinement.
• Ensure compensation structures, engagement protocols, and participation supports for people with lived expertise are equitable, accessible, and consistently implemented across the California program.

Programmatic Oversight — Beta Team (Texas)

• Provide strategic and operational oversight of TOU’s digital resource navigation model in Texas Region 7, ensuring service quality and the integrity of the navigation model as it evolves.
• Support the Senior Manager of the Beta Team in managing day-to-day operations, coaching Beta Community Responders, and maintaining the human-centered quality of support delivered to TAY and kinship caregivers.
• Ensure frontline learning from the Texas Beta Team is systematically captured, synthesized, and fed into TOU’s broader program design and strategy.
• Serve as a senior liaison between the Beta Team’s operational realities and TOU’s design, data, and engineering functions, ensuring staff insights shape tool and workflow development.
• Monitor the Texas program’s KPIs and ensure the Beta Team’s work is contributing meaningfully to TOU’s national learning agenda on human-AI collabora