POSTED: 07/22/2022

ORGANIZATION

Based in New Orleans, Louisiana, New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute (NOCHI) is a private, non-profit, post-secondary culinary vocational school licensed by the state of Louisiana’s Board of Regents. NOCHI’s mission is to inspire and support those who seek to develop careers in culinary arts and hospitality—industries that know no limit.

Originally incorporated in 2013, NOCHI opened in January 2019 with a combined inaugural enrollment of 21 students in its Culinary Arts Certificate and Baking & Pastry Arts Certificate programs. Curricula for both programs were developed by CIA Consulting (of The Culinary Institute of America), and is designed to teach fundamental knowledge and technical skills, as well as the work ethic and professionalism required for industry success. NOCHI currently bears a ~$3.5 million annual operating budget and employs 14 full time faculty and staff.

As an industry-driven initiative, NOCHI is uniquely positioned to set a new standard for the future of culinary training and education in New Orleans, a city that has been at the forefront of culinary arts and hospitality for nearly 300 years.

For more information, please visit www.nochi.org.

POSITION

Reporting to the Board of Directors, the Executive Director (ED) will have overall strategic and operational responsibility for NOCHI’s staff, programs, expansion, and execution of its mission. S/he will initially develop deep knowledge of existing programs, operations and business plans.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & Management:

• Ensure ongoing programmatic excellence, rigorous program evaluation, and consistent quality of finance and administration, fundraising, communications, and systems; develop timelines and resources needed to achieve the strategic goals
• Actively engage and energize NOCHI staff, volunteers, board members, event committees, alumni, partnering organizations and funders
• Develop, maintain, and support a strong board of directors; seek and build board involvement with strategic direction for both ongoing operations as well as future growth
• Lead, coach, develop and retain NOCHI’s high-performance leadership team
• Ensure effective systems to track scaling progress, and regularly evaluate program components, so as to measure successes that can be effectively communicated to the board, funders and other constituents

Fundraising & Communications:

• Expand revenue generating and fundraising activities to support existing program operations and new program development while simultaneously retiring building debt as may still be necessary
• Deepen and refine all aspects of communications — from web presence to external relations with the goal of creating a stronger brand
• Use external presence and relationships to garner new opportunities

Planning & New Business

• Manage and continually refine the long-term strategic and financial plan and execute program expansion accordingly
• Begin to build partnerships in new program sectors, establishing relationships with the funders and leveraging political and community relationships as needed
• Be an external local and national presence that publishes and communicates program results with an emphasis on the successes of the core educational programs as a model for industry training

Leadership Competencies and Qualifications

The ED will be thoroughly committed to NOCHI’s mission. All candidates should have proven leadership, coaching and relationship management experience.

The leadership competencies required for this role should be reflected in the prior professional behaviors of candidates. These leadership competencies include:

Resourcefulness

• A capacity to creatively leverage human and financial resources and maximize their impact
• A demonstrated ability to manage limited resources and lean operational infrastructure without compromising strategic outcomes
• A professional resilience in the face of known and unknown obstacles

Cultural Fluency

• The ability to create, sustain, and leverage various stakeholder relationships for the benefit of NOCHI
• A dynamic personality capable of engaging with diverse communities Intellectual Curiosity and Learning Agility
• The capacity to bridge simultaneous steep learning curves
• A balance of creative and analytical thinking

Extraordinary Work Ethic and Productivity

• A role model for a first-in/last-out work ethic
• A keen sense of organization and planning
• A doer as much as a planner

Flexible and Collaborative Leadership Style

• A capacity to synthesize coherent strategy and sound decisions from a divergent set of ideas, interests and opinions from key stakeholders.
• The ability to create buy-in from the board, staff, and external parties for missioncritical initiatives.

Concrete experience and other required qualifications include:

• At least 10 years of senior management experience, at least partially in a non-profit environment; track record of effectively leading and scaling a performance and outcomes-based organization and staff; ability to point to specific examples of having developed and operationalized strategies that have taken an organization to the next stage of growth
• Proven direct experience and abilities in basic non-profit finance and administration, with the ability to learn and articulate the complexities of NOCHI’s financing
• Unwavering commitment to quality programs and data-driven program evaluation.
• Excellence in organizational management with the ability to coach staff, manage and develop high-performance teams, set and achieve strategic objectives, and aggressively manage a budget
• Past success working with a board of directors with the ability to cultivate existing board member relationships
• Strong marketing, public relations, and fundraising experience with the ability to engage a wide range of stakeholders
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; a persuasive and passionate communicator with excellent interpersonal and multidisciplinary project skills
• Action-oriented, entrepreneurial, adaptable, and innovative approach to business planning
• Ability to work effectively in collaboration with diverse groups of people
• Self-directed, mission-driven, and hospitality-minded