Chief Content Officer (Volunteer)

Chief Content Officer (Volunteer)

Executive Team | Content Strategy, Storytelling, Editorial Vision & Audience Impact

Organization: Mentor A Promise (MAP)

Division: Executive Team

Location: Remote with NYC-based collaboration as needed

Type: Volunteer Executive Leadership Role

Commitment: Approximately 5–10 hours per week

Minimum Commitment: 6-month commitment required

Reports To: Chief Executive Officer

Works Closely With: PromisePages, PromiseStudios, PromiseVoice, PromisePublic, PromiseBrands, PromisePrograms, and Executive Leadership

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, literacy, education, social-emotional learning, creative opportunity, advocacy, technology-enabled programming, and community-centered support.

As MAP grows across publishing, film, animation, podcasts, educational media, journalism, advocacy, and digital platforms, we are building an organization capable of creating content with both creative ambition and meaningful purpose.

Executive Opportunity

Mentor A Promise is seeking an exceptional Chief Content Officer to lead the organization’s enterprise-wide content strategy.

The CCO will help determine what MAP creates, why we create it, who it is for, where it belongs, and how our growing portfolio works together.

This role connects strategy with storytelling.

The CCO will establish a coherent content ecosystem across MAP while empowering specialized creative, editorial, communications, and program leaders to lead their respective disciplines.

The goal is not to make everything MAP creates look or sound the same.

It is to ensure everything we create has a reason to exist.

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise Content Strategy

• Develop and lead MAP’s organization-wide content strategy.
• Establish clear audiences, objectives, priorities, and distribution approaches.
• Build a balanced portfolio across educational, editorial, creative, advocacy, and mission-driven content.
• Identify gaps, opportunities, duplication, and emerging formats.
• Connect content investments to organizational strategy and measurable impact.

Content Portfolio & Architecture

Provide strategic oversight across content including:

• Books and publishing
• Film and short-form cinema
• Animation
• Podcasts and audio
• Editorial and journalism
• Educational content
• Advocacy and public-interest storytelling
• Photography and visual storytelling
• Social and digital content
• Youth-centered storytelling
• Campaigns and multimedia experiences

Help determine which division should own each initiative and ensure responsibilities remain clear.

Storytelling & Editorial Standards

• Establish enterprise-level principles for quality, voice, storytelling, accuracy, representation, and audience experience.
• Protect the dignity and humanity of children and families represented in MAP content.
• Promote developmentally appropriate and trauma-informed storytelling.
• Strengthen fact-checking, sourcing, attribution, and editorial integrity.
• Partner with legal, privacy, safeguarding, and creative leaders when content presents elevated risk.

Audience & Impact

• Ensure content begins with a clear understanding of its intended audience.
• Strengthen how MAP develops, distributes, and evaluates content.
• Use audience insights and performance information to improve future work.
• Identify opportunities to extend successful ideas across formats and platforms.
• Balance reach with meaningful engagement and mission impact.

Cross-Division Leadership

Create alignment across MAP’s content-producing divisions without replacing their leadership.

PromisePages leads publishing and literary work.

PromiseStudios leads film, animation, photography, audio, and creative-media production.

PromiseVoice leads communications, editorial communications, marketing, and organizational voice.

PromisePublic leads advocacy, public engagement, and community-facing public education.

PromiseBrands leads brand, design, campaigns, and creative brand experiences.

The CCO connects these capabilities into a coherent enterprise content strategy.

Content Development & Greenlighting

• Help establish criteria for evaluating major content initiatives.
• Assess audience, mission alignment, originality, feasibility, resources, distribution potential, and impact.
• Strengthen concepts before significant organizational resources are committed.
• Establish appropriate review pathways for high-profile or sensitive projects.
• Recommend when projects should move forward, evolve, pause, or end.

Not every good idea needs to become a MAP project.

Leadership & Organizational Capacity

• Develop strong content leaders rather than centralizing every decision.
• Mentor directors, editors, producers, writers, and creative leaders.
• Clarify decision rights and escalation pathways.
• Strengthen collaboration across disciplines.
• Identify talent and capability gaps.
• Help recruit exceptional content and creative professionals.

The CCO should build a content organization that becomes stronger without requiring the CCO to personally approve everything.

Content Integrity & Safeguarding

Because MAP serves children and families experiencing housing instability, the CCO must ensure content practices respect:

• Privacy and confidentiality
• Informed consent
• Youth safeguarding
• Media permissions
• Copyright and intellectual property
• Accuracy and attribution
• Dignified representation
• Appropriate professional boundaries
• Trauma-informed storytelling

A powerful story is never worth compromising the dignity, privacy, or safety of the person whose story made it possible.

Ideal Candidate

This opportunity is particularly well suited for an accomplished:

• Chief Content Officer
• Editorial Director or Executive Editor
• Head of Content
• Media or Publishing Executive
• Executive Producer
• Content Strategist
• Creative Executive
• Journalism Leader
• Multiplatform Storytelling Leader

Strong candidates will demonstrate:

• Significant content, editorial, media, publishing, or storytelling leadership experience
• Exceptional editorial and creative judgment
• Experience developing multiplatform content strategies
• Strong understanding of audiences and distribution
• Ability to evaluate ideas across different creative disciplines
• Experience leading and developing multidisciplinary teams
• Excellent communication and executive judgment
• Ability to balance creative ambition with organizational realities
• Respect for creative ownership and specialized expertise
• Strong understanding of ethical storytelling
• Genuine commitment to MAP’s mission

What Success Looks Like

Success means:

• MAP has a clear enterprise content strategy.
• Every major content initiative has a defined purpose and audience.
• Divisions understand their content ownership and decision rights.
• Strong ideas receive appropriate investment and weak or duplicative initiatives are addressed early.
• MAP’s content becomes more distinctive, consistent, ambitious, and impactful.
• Audience insights influence future decisions.
• Editorial, creative, ethical, and safeguarding standards remain strong.
• Content leaders have the authority and support to lead.
• MAP builds recognizable intellectual and creative properties capable of growing across formats.
• The organization develops a content ecosystem rather than a collection of disconnected projects.

Why This Role Matters

MAP is becoming more than an organization that produces content.

We are building stories, publications, films, conversations, educational experiences, and creative worlds capable of reaching children, families, communities, and audiences far beyond a single program.

That requires more than producing more.

It requires knowing what deserves to be created.

The Chief Content Officer will help MAP make those choices with imagination, discipline, judgment, and purpose.

Commitment

• Approximately 5–10 hours per week
• 6-month commitment required
• Participate in weekly leadership meetings
• Meet regularly with the CEO
• Maintain regular communication with relevant division leaders
• Drive agreed content priorities and follow through on commitments
• Recruit, mentor, and develop content leadership where needed
• Maintain confidentiality, professionalism, integrity, and appropriate executive boundaries

What You’ll Gain

• Opportunity to shape the content strategy of a growing mission-driven organization
• Executive leadership across publishing, media, storytelling, advocacy, and education
• Collaboration with multidisciplinary creative and organizational leaders
• Opportunity to develop original intellectual and creative properties
• Experience building enterprise content systems and standards
• Opportunity to mentor emerging creative and editorial talent
• Meaningful opportunity to create work capable of influencing how children and communities see themselves and what they imagine is possible

How to Apply

Interested candidates should apply directly through Idealist and submit:

• Resume or Executive CV
• Cover Letter
• Portfolio, published work, or examples of relevant content leadership where available

Please highlight experience in content strategy, editorial leadership, publishing, media, film, storytelling, audience development, creative leadership, or related fields.

This is an unpaid volunteer executive leadership 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.

Build the strategy. Protect the story. Develop the people. Create work worthy of the mission.