The District of Columbia (City) looks to expand its strong foundation in resilience. The City has been selected to join 100 Resilient Cities, pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation. As part of this program, the City is creating a Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) role to transform and accelerate the City’s focus on resilience.
Reporting to the City Administrator, the CRO will develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive Resilience Strategy for the District of Columbia, identifying systems-wide solutions that tackle physical, social, environmental, and economic shocks and stresses identified through a comprehensive, inclusive, and integrated strategy development process.
The CRO is a senior level position which ensures that resilience is a cornerstone of program planning and execution across the City’s departments. The CRO requires demonstrated expertise and experience in the development, planning and delivery of strategy, policy and programs across the City government, community and private sectors with success in long-term project management, collaboration, stakeholder management and community engagement.
The CRO exercises an extensive degree of independent judgement, cross department leadership, and professional and managerial knowledge to ensure the overall success and timely delivery of the District’s Resilience Strategy and subsequent implementation, along with other ongoing resilience building activities. The CRO will report directly to the City Administrator and will work across all City departments/agencies while collaborating with external stakeholders and governmental entities, including the Council of the District of Columbia, Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, and other local, state, and federal government partners. The CRO also represents the City as the primary point of contact for the 100 Resilient Cities program, leveraging the benefits of the 100 Resilient Cities network for the benefit of all City agencies/departments.
Qualifications:
Bachelor’s degree from an accredited four year college or university, plus at least a minimum of eight (8) years of work related experience; OR an equivalent combination of education and experience which exhibits the ability to perform satisfactorily in the position required. Master’s degree preferred.
Major Duties:
Over a nine- to twelve-month process, the CRO and its partners will develop a cohesive Resilience Strategy for the District of Columbia through:
- Objectively, assessing and prioritizing the greatest threats to the City’s resilience, harnessing the expertise and resources across City agencies, other jurisdictions, and the community in order to effectively identify these threats.
- Engaging diverse leaders from within and external to City government and inspiring action to address the most pressing threats to the District of Columbia.
- Facilitating input from a wide variety of stakeholders to identify the City’s resilience challenges, capabilities, and plans to address issues and any current gaps or shortfalls in achieving resilience goals.
- Managing the Office of Resilience and its staff, and leading overall coordination efforts of City’s departments in the development of the District of Columbia Resilience Strategy.
- Coordinating with the Mayor’s communications team to develop a communication strategy for the City’s resilience building efforts.
- Working closely with 100 Resilient Cities and the designated Strategy Partner to leverage the benefits and services of the 100 Resilient Cities program, network and Platform. Monitor and report to 100 Resilient Cities on progress towards deliverables.
- Broad recognition as the point person on the City’s comprehensive efforts on resilience, bringing together stakeholders from across the City to establish a compelling vision and driving the resilience conversation in the City.
- Ensuring a holistic view is applied to all projects with a goal of providing high reward, yet cost-efficient, final products that address multiple resilience efforts whenever possible.
- Fostering external relationships with partner municipalities, regional organizations, civic groups, community foundations, elected officials, local businesses, and residents with a goal of improving communication, training and educating stakeholders, promoting synergy, eliminating duplicative work or processes, and ensuring active and inclusive input.
- Serving as the City’s international resilience representative by participating in technical training and learning opportunities with the 100 Resilient Cities network, including the annual international CRO Summit.
- Provides data, innovative ideas, and strategic direction to achieve City’s goals.
Photo credit: Storm Cunningham