Chief Operations Officer

About us: Wallowa Valley Center for Wellness (WVCW) is an innovative nonprofit providing comprehensive services to individuals impacted by mental health, addictions and developmental disabilities. We hire individuals that are skilled and motivated to meet our mission through outcome-based strategies that foster personal and community transformation. 

Position Summary 

The Chief Operating Officer is Wallowa Valley Center for Wellness's senior operational executive and a key member of the C-Suite. The COO translates organizational strategy into reliable execution by building the systems, accountability structures, operational capacity, technology, performance-management processes, and cross-functional coordination necessary to deliver high-quality services across WVCW's programs and locations.

The COO works in close partnership with the CEO, CFO, Chief Clinical Officer, and other leaders to ensure that organizational priorities are executed consistently and that operational, financial, clinical, regulatory, quality, technology, and workforce considerations are integrated rather than managed in isolation.

The COO is responsible for organizational operating effectiveness, rather than personally managing every operational task. The role develops leaders, creates accountable systems, identifies organizational risk, monitors performance, removes barriers, and ensures that critical operational responsibilities have clear ownership. The COO serves as a senior representative of WVCW and may act on behalf of the CEO when delegated.

Supervisory Responsibility

The COO will oversee the Director of Operations and other assigned directors/managers in organizational performance, quality/compliance, information technology, developmental disabilities, integration, and related functions. Leadership roles may change assigned staff from time to time and will reflect the needs of the organization. 

Essential Functions

Executive Operational Leadership & Organizational Integration

• Serve as the CEO's primary executive partner for organizational operations and implementation.
• Translate organizational priorities into clear operational plans, ownership, timelines, resources, measures, and accountability.
• Maintain an organization-wide view of operating conditions, emerging risks, competing priorities, and resource demands.
• Ensure clear ownership and accountability across departments rather than allowing important functions to become informally shared or unassigned.
• Establish operating rhythms for decision-making, escalation, follow-through, and cross-department coordination.
• Exercise delegated authority over operational spending, staffing, workflow and partner communication within approved organizational limits
• Identify systemic barriers and lead development of sustainable solutions rather than relying on repeated workarounds.
• Provide executive oversight and coaching to assigned directors and managers.
• Build leadership capacity so operational knowledge and responsibility are increasingly distributed throughout the organization.

Organizational Performance & Accountability

• Lead WVCW's organization-wide performance-management infrastructure.
• Ensure leaders understand and actively use state, payer, grant, access, productivity, quality, financial, workforce, and operational metrics relevant to their responsibilities.
• Establish clear accountability for performance targets and corrective-action plans.
• Develop dashboards and reporting structures that translate complex requirements into usable management information.
• Ensure performance data results in operational action rather than functioning solely as a reporting requirement.
• Monitor trends in access, capacity, productivity, service utilization, timeliness, staffing, client experience, and other organizational indicators.
• Identify performance deterioration early and ensure responsible leaders develop and implement corrective action.

Strategic Execution & Organizational Change

• Lead implementation of major cross-functional organizational initiatives.
• Develop implementation structures for complex projects involving multiple departments, vendors, partners, funding sources, or regulatory requirements.
• Maintain executive-level visibility into major projects, dependencies, barriers, timelines, and deliverables.
• Lead operational redesign when services, regulations, technology, funding, staffing, or community needs change.
• Ensure major grants and strategic initiatives are integrated into normal operations rather than functioning as isolated projects.
• Support new-program development, service expansion, organizational restructuring, and implementation of major state and federal initiatives.

Quality, Compliance, Risk & Organizational Readiness

• Provide executive oversight of WVCW's organizational quality, compliance, privacy, policy, and risk-management infrastructure.
• Partner with QA/QI, Clinical, Finance, HR, IT, and program leadership to integrate overlapping state, federal, payer, certification, privacy, contractual, and program requirements.
• Maintain organization-wide readiness for audits, certifications, corrective-action plans, site reviews, and regulatory changes.
• Ensure identified findings produce corrective action, sustained improvement, and measurable follow-through.
• Monitor significant organizational risk involving operations, quality, safety, compliance, service continuity, technology, reputation, or financial exposure.
• Ensure risk mitigation has clear ownership and deadlines.
• Support development and maintenance of enterprise policies and operational controls.

Health IT, Technology, Cybersecurity, Data & AI Governance

• Provide executive oversight of WVCW's technology environment and Health IT strategy.
• Supervise or provide executive direction to IT leadership while maintaining appropriate separation between executive governance and technical administration.
• Ensure technology decisions reflect clinical, operational, financial, privacy, cybersecurity, and regulatory needs.
• Lead executive governance of cybersecurity, technology risk, data systems, artificial intelligence, and emerging technologies.
• Oversee implementation and optimization of major technology initiatives, including EHR, analytics, interoperability, and grant-funded Health IT projects.
• Ensure appropriate administrative ownership, documentation, vendor accountability, access management, business continuity, and system redundancy.
• Translate technology capabilities and limitations into organizational decision-making.
• Ensure technology investments produce measurable operational or clinical value.

Financial & Business Partnership

• Partner closely with the CFO to ensure operational decisions reflect budget realities and long-term sustainability.
• Participate in organizational budgeting, forecasting, resource allocation, and service-line analysis.
• Evaluate operational capacity, staffing, workflows, contracting, and program design through both mission and financial lenses.
• Identify operational drivers of revenue, expense, productivity, access, and financial performance.
• Ensure major operational initiatives include clear resource and sustainability plans.
• Support evaluation of contracts, vendors, grants, and investments with significant operational implications.

Executive Leadership, Talent Development & Succession

• Supervise, mentor, and develop assigned senior leaders.
• Establish clear expectations, decision authority, measurable deliverables, and accountability.
• Develop internal leadership capacity and succession readiness.
• Reduce unhealthy organizational dependence on individual senior leaders by intentionally transferring knowledge and responsibility.
• Establish organization-wide standards for written procedures, backup coverage, and documented ownership of critical systems and processes.
• Promote a culture of direct communication, curiosity, learning, accountability, initiative, and continuous improvement.
• Partner with HR and supervisors regarding leadership performance while respecting established reporting relationships.

Business Continuity, Safety & Organizational Resilience

• Provide executive oversight of organizational emergency preparedness, business continuity, operational safety, and service continuity.
• Ensure appropriate plans exist for technology failures, staffing disruption, facility emergencies, security incidents, adverse events, and other operational interruptions.
• Coordinate executive response to significant operational incidents.
• Unless otherwise designated by the CEO or emergency plan, the COO leads operational incident response and holds authority for operational decisions, including site closure and reopening; organizational communications are coordinated with the CEO or designated communications lead.
• Ensure corrective actions following incidents are completed and tested.

CEO Support, Representation & External Relationships

• Represent the CEO and WVCW at meetings, partner discussions, regulatory forums, community engagements, or other activities as delegated.
• Maintain productive relationships with state agencies, payers, healthcare partners, schools, government agencies, contractors, vendors, and community organizations as relevant to operations.
• Provide the CEO with concise, timely information regarding operational performance, risks, decisions, and emerging issues.
• Serve as a senior organizational decision-maker during CEO absence when delegated or designated by succession plans.

Measures of Success

Success in the COO role includes:

• Major organizational priorities move from decision to implementation.
• Leaders clearly understand their operational and performance responsibilities.
• State and payer metrics are actively managed rather than merely reported.
• Significant risks and performance problems are identified early and addressed.
• Health IT, cybersecurity, quality, compliance, and operational strategy function as integrated organizational systems.
• Cross-department problems have clear ownership and resolution.
• Critical organizational knowledge becomes less dependent upon individual executives.
• The CEO is able to function primarily at the CEO level rather than serving as the organization's routine operational backstop.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in healthcare administration, business, public administration, behavioral health administration, or related field; equivalent combination of education and significant executive leadership experience may be considered.
• Minimum seven years of progressively responsible leadership experience in healthcare, behavioral health, human services, public administration, or similarly complex regulated environments.
• Demonstrated leadership of complex cross-functional operations.
• Demonstrated experience with organizational performance management, implementation, change leadership, and executive decision-making.
• Working knowledge of regulatory, contractual, quality, compliance, privacy, safety, and technology considerations within healthcare or human services environments.
• Strong analytical and systems-thinking capabilities.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex information into clear organizational action.
• Preferred - Experience in Medicaid-funded behavioral health, CCBHC/CMHP environments, rural/frontier healthcare, Health IT, cybersecurity governance, grants, or value-based/performance-based contracting.  
• Must pass a pre-employment drug screen and criminal background check. WVCW adheres to federal drug screening guidelines, this includes marijuana.
• Must hold a valid driver's license for a minimum of three years, successfully pass a DMV background check, and meet the criteria for an "acceptable" driver as outlined in WVCW's Fleet Safety Policy.

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable persons with disabilities to perform the essential function. 

Wallowa Valley Center for Wellness is an equal opportunity employer.