Career Opportunity – Program Manager with Found Village in Cincinnati, OH
Do you believe thoughtfully designed experiences can change a young person’s life? Are you energized by developing teams, building strong systems, and creating opportunities where young people feel they belong and can thrive? If so, we want to speak with you.
The Program Manager designs and leads a connected portfolio of developmental experiences that strengthen belonging, confidence, leadership, community, and opportunity for young people. This role leads the Youth Experience Team and brings programming, logistics, transportation, volunteers, and community partnerships together as one coordinated system. During the early phase of the role, the Program Manager will also perform Program Coordinator responsibilities to learn the work firsthand and build the systems, documentation, and standards needed for future growth.
Responsibilities:
- Design a coherent portfolio of workshops, leadership opportunities, career exploration, celebrations, cohorts, and community experiences that advances the Found Village Developmental Framework.
- Ensure each experience has a clear developmental purpose, reinforces coaching and care management, and prepares young people for what comes next.
- Lead, coach, and develop the Youth Experience Team, including the Program Coordinator, Transportation Coordinator, volunteers, and future team members.
- Build repeatable operating systems, including playbooks, calendars, templates, communication standards, training resources, and standard operating procedures.
- Coordinate programming, logistics, transportation, volunteers, communications, and cross-functional partners to deliver consistent, high-quality experiences.
- Create meaningful opportunities for young people to serve as planners, facilitators, advisors, ambassadors, and leaders.
- Develop partnerships with employers, colleges, artists, entrepreneurs, volunteers, and community organizations that expand opportunity.
- Create emotionally and physically safe environments where dignity, belonging, inclusion, and strong relationships can grow.
- Use youth feedback, participation patterns, developmental outcomes, and reflective practice to continuously improve programming.
- Initially carry key Program Coordinator responsibilities, then successfully transition from doing the work to developing the people and systems that sustain it.
- Build, design, curate, and implement meaningful youth experiences using the organization’s existing foundational structure.
- Bring the organization’s programming vision to life through imagination, creativity, joy, and strong execution.
- Create new processes within a developing function and coordinate work across teams, potentially using tools such as Asana.
- Actively engage young people and incorporate their perspectives into programming, designing experiences based on both evidence and direct youth feedback.
- Identify trends in organizational data and connect them to emerging youth needs.
- Directly supervise approximately 2–3 people while influencing and coordinating colleagues who are not direct reports.
- Activate others and manage work across teams, with the opportunity to build a team or influence its future structure.
- Build relationships with transportation providers, community organizations, and other external partners.
- Stay informed about national and global trends affecting youth programming.
- Seek feedback and apply innovative ideas to meet the needs of young people and the broader Cincinnati community.
Requirements:
- Experience designing and delivering youth development, education, nonprofit, community-based, or experiential learning programs.
- Demonstrated success leading, coaching, and developing staff, volunteers, or cross-functional teams.
- Ability to think about developmental journeys rather than isolated events or activities.
- Strong facilitation, communication, relationship-building, and community partnership skills.
- A systems mindset with experience improving workflows, documenting processes, and creating clear operating standards.
- Ability to balance creativity, hands-on execution, long-term planning, and disciplined follow-through.
- Commitment to youth partnership and to designing experiences with young people, not simply for them.
- Comfort using feedback, participation information, outcomes, and reflection to improve programs.
- A collaborative approach and willingness to learn the work deeply before redesigning it.
- A people-oriented builder who can combine creativity with execution and create structure and processes in a growing environment.
- Ability to use data, youth input, and emerging trends to guide programming.
- Strong influencing and coordination skills, including the ability to move work forward without relying solely on direct authority.
- Ability to connect effectively with people of different ages and backgrounds.
What success looks like:
- In the first 90 days: Learn and perform Program Coordinator responsibilities, build relationships across the village, assess the programming portfolio, document key workflows, and begin strengthening planning and execution systems.
- Within six months: Establish clearer developmental progression, stronger alignment across teams, meaningful youth leadership, reliable operations, documented procedures, and consistent coaching and accountability.
- Within one year: Build one coherent developmental programming portfolio, a capable Youth Experience Team, strong community partnerships, and reliable systems that allow others to deliver excellent work consistently.
Who thrives in this role:
You love designing meaningful experiences, naturally develop people, think systemically, and enjoy turning strong ideas into dependable execution. You believe belonging can be intentionally designed and are willing to work hands-on while building a team and infrastructure for the future. You measure success not only by attendance or completed events, but by youth growth, increasing leadership, expanded opportunity, and an organization’s ability to sustain excellence.
About Found Village
Found Village creates the relationships, experiences, and opportunities young people need to thrive. Our developmental approach connects coaching, care management, programming, transportation, and community partnership into one coordinated journey. Guided by Boundless Hope, Courageous Love, Safe Place, Safe People, Collaborative Community, and Spend It Well, we work to ensure every young person experience dignity, belonging, growth, leadership, and a meaningful path forward.
Found Village Values
Boundless Hope: Every young person deserves a village committed to their future.
Courageous Love: We create alignment through honest conversations, shared accountability, and unwavering belief in young people’s potential.
Safe Place, Safe People: We build coordinated systems grounded in trust, predictability, and psychological safety.
Collaborative Community: We create villages where every person understands their role in supporting youth development.
Spend It Well: We steward relationships, resources, and partnerships intentionally to maximize developmental impact.
A System in Need of Support
We fill the gaps.
Let’s face it, our society runs on a network of various systems set in place to meet the needs of individuals. Unfortunately, many of these systems, though well intended, are not designed to raise kids and meet their needs holistically. Because of this, the teens we work with often lose trust, give up, and let their pain drive choices and behavior. They have been in and out of detention centers, courtrooms, foster homes, shelters, different schools, and more. They are from hard places and circumstances that leave them frustrated and discouraged. They are assigned diminishing labels, misdiagnoses, unrealistic work plans, and offered subpar support programs. To nobody’s surprise, there is often no real change.
We come alongside families and communities in need. We are here to partner with these systems—to come behind them and fill in the gaps wherever necessary. Without a holistic approach to serving kids in crisis, many areas of need are left unmet. In turn, this results in deeper levels of trauma, neglect, and misunderstanding. We exist to support our teens and their families so they can understand and navigate the systems they have become a part of. We aim to help elevate the voices of our youth and provide them with the support that an average teenager born into different circumstances would inherently receive.
Apply online today!
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