Chief Operating Officer

About Fòs Feminista

Fòs Feminista is a global intersectional feminist organization advancing the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women, girls, and gender-diverse people. Led and governed by the Global South, Fòs Feminista works through a constellation of affiliated organizations, legal entities, strategic partnerships, and movement relationships with around 200 civil society partners across 40 countries.

Our work integrates advocacy, grantmaking, research, movement-building, sexual and reproductive healthcare, and innovative finance to strengthen feminist organizations and movements worldwide. Operating across multiple jurisdictions and institutional structures, Fòs Feminista brings together legal, political, philanthropic, and movement strategies to advance gender justice and achieve lasting systemic change.

Position overview

Fòs Feminista is seeking a Chief Operating Officer to provide strategic and operational leadership across the organization.
Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer and serving on the Strategic Management Team (SMT), the COO will translate strategy into coordinated plans, sound resource decisions, effective institutional systems, and accountable implementation.
The COO will integrate People, Inclusion, and Culture; Business Intelligence, Evaluation and Research; and Legal Affairs. The Chief Financial Officer will report to the COO for operational integration and fiduciary responsibilities while retaining a direct relationship with the CEO. The role requires a leader who can move between strategy and execution and work across functions, regions, and cultures.

Position within the organization

Reports to: Chief Executive Officer

Leadership body: Strategic Management Team

Direct and functional oversight:

• People, Inclusion, and Culture

• Business Intelligence, Evaluation and Research
  • Legal Affairs
  • Chief Financial Officer, within the dual-reporting arrangement described above

Principal responsibilities

1. Executive leadership and strategic execution
• Serve as a strategic partner to the CEO and an active member of the SMT, contributing to the development, review, and implementation of organizational strategy.
• Translate priorities into annual and multi-year plans that connect responsibilities, timelines, resources, and measures of progress.
• Help SMT assess opportunities and challenges in relation to mission impact, finances, organizational capacity, risk, and effects on partners; monitor progress and address barriers.
• Support organizational continuity, assume responsibilities delegated by the CEO, and represent Fòs Feminista with the Board, partners, donors, advisers, and other external actors as appropriate.

2. Organizational integration and performance
• Act as a principal integrator across strategy, finance, people, evidence, legal affairs, resource mobilization, and operational capacity.
• Strengthen cross-unit planning, clarify responsibilities and decision points, and ensure that organizational gaps and matters without a clear institutional owner are addressed.
• Lead policy development, integrated systems implementation, the responsible use of AI, and major organizational change to improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

3. Financial stewardship and organizational sustainability
• Provide executive oversight of financial planning and performance with the CFO and CEO, connecting budgets, forecasts, staffing, fundraising projections, program commitments, and organizational priorities.
• Support budgets, financial scenarios, and resource-allocation recommendations; monitor performance, sustainability, and risks; and ensure that SMT receives timely analysis.
• Ensure strong systems for financial controls, restricted funding, grants and contracts, audits, procurement, and compliance while protecting the CFO’s professional and fiduciary responsibilities, including direct access to the CEO and, where appropriate, the Board.

4. Connection with resource mobilization

• Align revenue strategies and major proposals with organizational priorities, delivery capacity, financial forecasts, commitments to partners, realistic costing, and risk analysis.
  • Strengthen coordination throughout the funding cycle; support governance and performance monitoring of the Feminist Impact Fund; and assess the funding portfolio’s effect on longer-term sustainability.
  • Join selected donor discussions when institutional, financial, or operational questions require executive participation. Fundraising strategy, donor cultivation, and revenue generation remain with Resource Mobilization and the CEO.

5. People, inclusion, and culture

• Provide strategic leadership to People, Inclusion, and Culture and ensure that recruitment, performance, compensation, development, succession, and staff well-being support the mission and strategy.
  • Strengthen management practice, organizational design, workforce planning, accountability, and team development while sustaining trust and collaboration.
  • Ensure that people practices reflect feminist values, equity and inclusion, and a distributed multilingual workforce, and that difficult matters can be addressed with clarity, fairness, and appropriate confidentiality.

6. Business intelligence, evidence, and organizational learning
• Provide strategic oversight to Business Intelligence, Evaluation and Research; strengthen the use of data in planning and decisions; and ensure that reporting and indicators serve learning and accountability.
• Ensure appropriate governance, protection, and ethical use of organizational and partner data. Oversee and integrate staff safety, digital and information security, AI risks, and crisis response.

7. Legal affairs, compliance, and risk

• Provide executive oversight of Legal Affairs and ensure that legal considerations enter organizational planning and decisions early.
  • Maintain an organization-wide approach to legal, financial, operational, safeguarding, security, data, reputational, and people-related risks, including appropriate controls, escalation, continuity arrangements, and responses to significant compliance matters.
  • Ensure that contractual, regulatory, and governance obligations across jurisdictions are understood and managed.
  • Protect the professional independence of Legal Affairs. Its head retains direct access to the CEO and, when required, the appropriate Board body, including for concerns involving any senior manager or the COO.

Decision-making and authority

The COO will exercise authority delegated by the CEO and established through organizational policies, approved plans, and governance responsibilities. Decisions with significant strategic, financial, legal, reputational, workforce, or partner implications will be brought to the CEO, SMT, or Board. The COO will support them with integrated analysis, clear options, and effective implementation.

Leadership profile

The successful candidate will be a senior organizational leader with the judgment, experience, and relational capacity to work across multiple functions and institutional contexts. They will combine strategic perspective with disciplined execution and lead through coordination, trust, and influence as well as formal reporting relationships.

They will bring:

• Demonstrated experience in a senior executive or enterprise-wide role in a complex international nonprofit, philanthropic, social-impact, or other mission-driven organization.
  • Experience leading or integrating several functions, such as finance, people and culture, operations, legal or compliance, organizational data, strategy implementation, or business development.
  • Strong financial literacy and experience using budgets, forecasts, and analysis to guide decisions and connect strategy with measurable results.
  • Experience working across countries, cultures, legal environments, or distributed teams and building productive relationships with senior colleagues, boards, staff, partners, donors, and advisers.
  • Experience leading change, strengthening systems without unnecessary bureaucracy, supporting functional leaders, and fostering collective accountability, with excellent judgment in sensitive matters.
  • A clear commitment to feminist principles, sexual and reproductive health and rights, racial and gender justice, and leadership from the Global South.
  • An understanding of partnership-based organizations and systems responsive to partner priorities. Professional fluency in English is required; Spanish, Portuguese, or French is an asset.

No single professional pathway is required. Candidates may come from operations, finance, organizational strategy, people and culture, international nonprofit management, philanthropy, social enterprise, or another relevant field, provided they demonstrate the breadth required for enterprise-level leadership.

Personal and leadership qualities

The COO should be:

• Strategically minded and attentive to implementation, able to move between organizational detail and long-term questions and create clarity in ambiguous situations.
  • Collaborative but prepared to make difficult decisions, hold colleagues accountable, respect their expertise, and listen across differences.
  • Transparent, reliable, calm under pressure, and committed to shared leadership, sound delegation, and collective governance.

Indicators of success

During the initial period, success in the role would include:

• Clearer integration among Finance; People, Inclusion, and Culture; Business Intelligence; Legal Affairs; Resource Mobilization; and other units.
  • Greater consistency among strategy, budgets, staffing, fundraising commitments, operational capacity, and organizational evidence.
  • Clear and trusted planning, follow-through, decision-making, and escalation processes, with stronger support for managers.
  • Effective management of institutional risk through systems that remain proportionate and responsive to partners.
  • A trusted working relationship among the CEO, COO, CFO, SMT, and Board, and a leadership culture combining accountability with feminist values.

Location: This position is fully remote.

Compensation: Fòs Feminista offers generous compensation consistent with competitive salaries and a benefits package that includes private health coverage, life insurance, retirement benefits, paid sick, vacation leave and parental leave, holidays, and flexible working arrangements. The annual salary is up to USD up to $220,000.

Safeguarding Commitments
Fòs Feminista is committed to ensuring that the health, rights and wellbeing of all children, young people, and vulnerable populations who work and engage with Fòs Feminista ’s Team Members and Associated Persons are respected and protected in their interactions with them and requires all its Team Members and Associated Persons to share this commitment.

The successful candidate must:
• Demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to safeguarding in the United States and the international context.
• Sign and adhere to Fòs Feminista’s International Safeguarding Policy and Safeguarding Code of Conduct, including the minimum operating standards for protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA).

Equal Opportunity Employer Statement
Fòs Feminista is an equal opportunity employer dedicated to advancing sexual and reproductive rights and health and dismantling inequities from a feminist intersectional lens. Reproductive justice, racial justice, and diversity are driving forces for us.
Fòs Feminista provides equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to age, race, color, disability, national origin, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital and partnership status, genetic information, veteran status or any other protected category under federal, state and local law.
At Fòs Feminista, we continue to build an inclusive culture that encourages, supports, and celebrates the diverse voices and experiences of our employees. We strongly encourage applications from all kinds of backgrounds to build a diverse workforce in which all social and minority groups are represented.

Originally posted on Himalayas