Senior Advisor to the CEO (Volunteer)

Senior Advisor to the CEO (Volunteer)

Executive Team | Strategy, Leadership, Organizational Effectiveness & Executive Advisory

Organization: Mentor A Promise (MAP)

Division: Executive Team

Location: Fully Remote — United States

Type: Volunteer Senior Executive Advisory Role

Commitment: Approximately 5–10 hours per week

Minimum Commitment: 6 months

Reports To: Chief Executive Officer

Works Closely With: CEO, Chief of Staff, Executive Leadership Team, Chiefs, and senior organizational leaders

About Mentor A Promise

Mentor A Promise (MAP) is a New York City–based nonprofit supporting children and youth ages 5–18 experiencing housing instability through mentorship, education, literacy, social-emotional learning, creative expression, career development, advocacy, and community-centered opportunity.

As MAP continues to grow, the organization is building the leadership, systems, partnerships, programs, and institutional capacity necessary to translate an ambitious mission into sustainable impact.

Role Overview

MAP is seeking an accomplished Senior Advisor to the CEO to serve as a trusted strategic thought partner to the Chief Executive Officer.

This is a high-trust advisory role for an experienced leader who understands that the most valuable executive advice is rarely simply agreement.

The Senior Advisor will help the CEO examine major organizational questions, pressure-test decisions, anticipate consequences, navigate complexity, strengthen leadership practices, and maintain perspective as MAP grows.

The role sits close to organizational strategy without becoming a substitute CEO, Chief of Staff, Chief Operating Officer, or division leader.

The Senior Advisor brings perspective.

The CEO retains executive authority and makes the decisions.

Strategic Advisory

Serve as a confidential thought partner on matters involving:

• Organizational strategy
• Growth and scale
• Organizational design
• Executive leadership
• Strategic priorities
• Institutional development
• Major initiatives
• Partnerships and opportunities
• Organizational capacity
• Leadership structure
• Culture
• Risk
• Long-term sustainability
• Emerging organizational challenges

Help the CEO move beyond the immediate question to consider what a decision may mean six months, two years, or five years later.

CEO Thought Partnership

Provide a trusted environment where the CEO can examine ideas before they become organizational decisions.

The Senior Advisor should be comfortable asking:

What problem are we actually trying to solve?

What assumptions are we making?

What are we not seeing?

Who will be affected?

What happens if this succeeds?

What happens if it fails?

What precedent does this create?

Is MAP organizationally ready?

Who should own the work?

What should the CEO personally own—and what should be delegated?

The objective is not to make decisions for the CEO.

It is to improve the quality of thinking surrounding those decisions.

Decision Support

For significant organizational matters, help the CEO:

• Define the decision that actually needs to be made.
• Separate facts from assumptions.
• Identify reasonable alternatives.
• Examine organizational implications.
• Surface risks and dependencies.
• Consider stakeholder perspectives.
• Identify information gaps.
• Determine appropriate consultation.
• Clarify decision authority.
• Establish follow-through expectations.
• Revisit significant decisions when circumstances change.

Strong advisors do not eliminate uncertainty.

They help leaders make sound decisions despite it.

Organizational Strategy & Growth

Support the CEO in thinking through MAP's long-term development.

Areas may include:

• Organizational priorities
• Program expansion
• New divisions and initiatives
• Leadership capacity
• Institutional partnerships
• Revenue diversification
• Organizational sustainability
• Innovation
• Technology
• Geographic or programmatic expansion
• Organizational infrastructure
• Reputation and positioning
• Long-term impact

Help distinguish between opportunities MAP can pursue and opportunities MAP should pursue.

Growth should strengthen the mission rather than simply increase the size of the organization.

Organizational Design

Advise the CEO on how MAP's evolving organizational structure can support accountability and execution.

This may include:

• Executive structure
• Division responsibilities
• Leadership roles
• Reporting relationships
• Decision rights
• Cross-functional coordination
• Delegation
• Organizational boundaries
• Leadership spans
• Accountability systems

Help leadership continuously clarify:

Own → Recommend → Review → Approve → Execute → Monitor → Escalate

Organizational structure should make responsibility clearer, not simply create more titles.

Executive Leadership Development

Serve as a resource to the CEO in strengthening executive leadership across MAP.

Support thinking around:

• Leadership expectations
• Executive accountability
• Delegation
• Performance
• Leadership development
• Succession
• Team dynamics
• Difficult conversations
• Executive communication
• Organizational culture
• Leadership transitions

The Senior Advisor may provide perspective on individual leadership situations when requested but should not become an unofficial supervisor of MAP executives.

Executive Team Effectiveness

Help the CEO strengthen the effectiveness of the Executive Leadership Team.

This may include advising on:

• Meeting effectiveness
• Strategic alignment
• Cross-functional leadership
• Decision-making
• Accountability
• Communication
• Leadership expectations
• Organizational priorities
• Executive-team development

The strongest executive teams should not merely report what happened.

They should solve problems, make decisions, anticipate what comes next, and take collective responsibility for the organization.

CEO Prioritization

One of the Senior Advisor's most important responsibilities will be helping protect executive attention.

Support the CEO in distinguishing among:

• What requires CEO involvement
• What should be delegated
• What requires executive-team attention
• What belongs within a division
• What requires governance review
• What can wait
• What should stop entirely

An organization can have more worthwhile ideas than it has capacity to execute.

Executive discipline sometimes means deciding what MAP will not do.

Special Projects & Complex Issues

At the CEO's request, provide strategic support on particularly complex or sensitive matters.

This may involve:

• Conducting analysis
• Reviewing proposals
• Developing strategic options
• Facilitating leadership discussions
• Researching organizational questions
• Reviewing major initiatives
• Helping structure new organizational functions
• Supporting organizational assessments
• Advising on high-level external opportunities

The Senior Advisor should be capable of entering an ambiguous situation, understanding it quickly, asking the right questions, and helping leadership establish a path forward.

External Perspective

Bring ideas and lessons from outside MAP into executive decision-making.

The Senior Advisor should remain informed about developments affecting areas such as nonprofit leadership, organizational management, philanthropy, youth development, technology, business, workforce development, governance, partnerships, and social impact.

MAP should learn from excellent organizations without simply copying them.

The question should always be:

What can we learn, and what makes sense for MAP?

Relationship With the Chief of Staff

The Senior Advisor and Chief of Staff should have complementary responsibilities.

The Chief of Staff helps coordinate executive priorities, leadership processes, follow-through, communication, and organizational execution around the CEO.

The Senior Advisor primarily provides strategic counsel, perspective, analysis, challenge, and executive thought partnership.

The Senior Advisor should strengthen the CEO's leadership system—not create a parallel one.

Authority & Role Boundaries

This is an advisory role.

Unless authority is explicitly delegated by the CEO, the Senior Advisor does not independently:

• Direct MAP executives or staff
• Change organizational priorities
• Approve budgets or expenditures
• Enter contracts
• Establish organizational policy
• Make personnel decisions
• Exercise Board or governance authority
• Commit MAP to external partnerships
• Override division leaders
• Represent personal recommendations as CEO decisions

Access to the CEO does not create organizational authority.

When the Senior Advisor communicates on behalf of the CEO, that authority should be explicit.

Confidentiality & Executive Judgment

Because this role may involve highly sensitive organizational discussions, exceptional discretion is required.

The Senior Advisor must:

• Protect confidential information.
• Maintain appropriate boundaries.
• Avoid organizational politics and informal power structures.
• Distinguish personal opinion from organizational fact.
• Handle disagreements professionally.
• Raise concerns directly and constructively.
• Avoid using proximity to the CEO as organizational influence.
• Maintain MAP's privacy, safeguarding, governance, and ethical standards.

Trust is not simply a qualification for this position.

It is the foundation of the position.

Ideal Candidate

MAP is particularly interested in accomplished leaders with substantial experience in areas such as:

• Nonprofit executive leadership
• Corporate leadership
• Organizational strategy
• Executive management
• Management consulting
• Organizational development
• Social impact
• Entrepreneurship
• Business strategy
• Philanthropy
• Governance
• Executive coaching
• Institutional growth

Strong candidates should demonstrate:

• Significant senior leadership experience
• Exceptional judgment
• Strategic and systems thinking
• Experience advising CEOs or senior executives
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and organizational complexity
• Strong understanding of organizational design and leadership
• Excellent listening and communication skills
• Ability to respectfully challenge senior leaders
• High emotional intelligence
• Exceptional discretion
• Independence of thought
• Comfort saying what needs to be said even when it may be difficult
• Commitment to MAP's mission and young people

Prior experience as a CEO, Executive Director, President, senior corporate executive, senior nonprofit executive, entrepreneur, management consultant, or executive advisor is particularly valuable.

What Success Looks Like

The CEO has a trusted advisor who brings perspective without creating another layer of bureaucracy.

Major decisions are better examined before they are made.

Organizational priorities become clearer.

Risks and unintended consequences are surfaced earlier.

The CEO delegates more effectively.

Executive discussions become more strategic.

Organizational structure and decision rights become clearer.

The Senior Advisor knows when to challenge, when to question, when to provide perspective—and when to simply listen.

Most importantly, the CEO becomes better equipped to lead MAP through its next stage of development.

Why This Role Matters

Leadership at the highest level can create an unusual challenge: the greater a leader's responsibility becomes, the fewer people may feel comfortable questioning their assumptions.

A CEO therefore needs people nearby who are neither impressed by proximity to leadership nor afraid of it.

MAP is looking for an advisor who can enter the room without needing to be the most powerful person in it.

Someone who can listen carefully, think independently, recognize what others may have missed, respectfully challenge an assumption, and help the CEO see the organization from another angle.

The measure of this role will not be how often the Senior Advisor's recommendation is accepted.

It will be whether the CEO and MAP make stronger decisions because the right questions were asked.

What You'll Gain

• Direct strategic collaboration with MAP's CEO
• Opportunity to influence the development of a growing nonprofit organization
• Exposure to enterprise-level strategy and organizational decision-making
• Opportunity to contribute decades of professional experience to an emerging institution
• Collaboration with multidisciplinary executive leaders
• Opportunity to help strengthen organizational leadership, systems, and long-term sustainability
• Meaningful ability to contribute expertise to a mission centered on children and young people

Commitment

• Approximately 5–10 hours per week
• Minimum 6-month commitment
• Fully remote
• Regular one-on-one meetings with the CEO
• Availability for selected Executive Leadership discussions when requested
• Thoughtful preparation for strategic conversations
• Appropriate responsiveness on significant matters
• Strict confidentiality and executive discretion
• Consistent commitment to MAP's mission and organizational values

How to Apply

Interested candidates should apply directly through Idealist and submit:

• Resume or CV
• Cover Letter

The cover letter should briefly describe the candidate's senior leadership experience, experience advising executives or organizations, and why they are interested in serving as a strategic advisor to the CEO of Mentor A Promise.

This is an unpaid volunteer executive advisory position.

At this time, MAP volunteer opportunities are limited to individuals based in the United States due to legal, safeguarding, data-privacy, compliance, and programmatic requirements.

The CEO does not need another person who simply agrees. MAP is looking for someone with the experience to see around corners, the judgment to know what matters, the courage to ask difficult questions, and the humility to remember that the final decision belongs to the leader accountable for making it.