Chief Student Services Officer (Volunteer)

Chief Student Services Officer (Volunteer)

Executive Team | Student Experience, Support, Access & Success

Organization: Mentor A Promise (MAP)

Division: Executive Team

Location: Hybrid — New York City

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: PromisePrograms, PromiseRise, PromiseLearning, PromisePeople, PromisePublic, PromiseBridge, PromiseMeasure, PromiseShield, PromiseTrust, 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, career development, advocacy, and community-centered support.

At MAP, serving students well means more than offering strong programs. It means ensuring students can access those opportunities, feel welcomed and supported within them, navigate barriers when they arise, and experience consistency across their relationship with MAP.

Executive Opportunity

Mentor A Promise is seeking an experienced and deeply student-centered Chief Student Services Officer to lead the organization’s approach to student experience, access, support, engagement, and success.

The Chief Student Services Officer will help ensure that MAP sees the whole student—not simply their participation in an individual program.

Working across divisions, the Chief will strengthen how students enter MAP, connect with opportunities, receive appropriate support, transition between programs, overcome participation barriers, and remain meaningfully engaged.

This role does not replace program leadership, educators, mentors, social workers, clinicians, or case managers.

Its responsibility is to build the systems that help students successfully navigate MAP.

Key Responsibilities

Student Experience & Success

• Develop MAP’s organization-wide student services strategy.
• Strengthen the student journey from initial engagement through ongoing participation.
• Identify barriers affecting access, attendance, engagement, belonging, and continuity.
• Ensure student needs and experiences inform organizational decisions.
• Champion a consistent, dignified, youth-centered experience across MAP.

Student Access & Navigation

• Help students and families understand available MAP opportunities.
• Strengthen enrollment, orientation, referrals, transitions, and follow-up.
• Coordinate pathways between programs and opportunities where appropriate.
• Reduce unnecessary barriers to participation.
• Develop clear processes for connecting students with appropriate internal and external resources.

A student should not need to understand MAP’s organizational chart to find the support or opportunity they need.

Student Support Systems

• Establish clear processes for identifying and responding to student support needs.
• Coordinate with program teams when attendance, engagement, accessibility, or other barriers emerge.
• Develop appropriate referral and escalation pathways.
• Strengthen connections with qualified external service providers when needs extend beyond MAP’s scope.
• Ensure staff and volunteers understand where their responsibilities begin and end.

Student Voice & Belonging

• Create meaningful opportunities for students to share feedback about their MAP experience.
• Ensure student perspectives inform improvements to services and organizational practices.
• Partner with PromiseRise and other teams on youth leadership and participation opportunities.
• Promote environments where students feel respected, welcomed, capable, and heard.

Student voice should influence the organization without placing the burden of improving the organization on students themselves.

Cross-Division Coordination

• Build strong coordination across divisions serving or affecting students.
• Clarify responsibilities, handoffs, and escalation pathways.
• Identify gaps or duplication in student-facing services.
• Bring cross-functional teams together around complex student-experience issues.
• Ensure organizational systems work together from the student’s perspective.

Student Services Standards

Develop and strengthen standards related to:

• Student onboarding and orientation
• Access and participation
• Attendance and engagement
• Student communication
• Family coordination
• Accessibility and inclusion
• Referrals and resource navigation
• Student feedback
• Program transitions
• Professional boundaries
• Confidentiality and information sharing
• Student concerns and escalation

Safeguarding, Privacy & Boundaries

• Partner with PromiseShield and PromiseTrust on appropriate student safeguards.
• Ensure student-services practices protect privacy and confidentiality.
• Maintain clear professional boundaries.
• Ensure sensitive information is collected only when necessary and appropriately authorized.
• Establish appropriate escalation pathways for safeguarding concerns.
• Ensure volunteers never independently investigate suspected abuse, neglect, or other safeguarding matters.
• Maintain clear distinctions between mentorship, education, student support, clinical care, social services, and case management.

Measurement & Continuous Improvement

Partner with PromiseMeasure and program leadership to understand:

• Student participation
• Attendance and retention
• Engagement
• Access barriers
• Referral patterns
• Student feedback
• Program transitions
• Service gaps
• Student experience

Use appropriate data and student feedback to strengthen systems and improve the student experience over time.

Leadership & Team Development

• Build and develop MAP’s student services function.
• Recruit, mentor, and support student-services volunteers and leaders as needed.
• Establish clear responsibilities and accountability.
• Develop tools, procedures, training, and documentation.
• Build a culture of responsiveness, empathy, sound judgment, and follow-through.

The objective is not for the Chief to personally solve every student issue.

It is to build an organization capable of responding well when students need support.

Role Boundaries

PromisePrograms retains leadership of direct youth programming, including PromiseRooted and PromiseConnects.

Other specialized divisions retain responsibility for their respective functions.

The Chief Student Services Officer owns the organization-wide systems connecting the student experience across those functions.

The role does not independently provide therapy, clinical treatment, legal advice, housing case management, benefits counseling, or other licensed or specialized services unless appropriately qualified and specifically authorized.

When MAP cannot appropriately meet a need, strong student service means helping identify the right pathway—not pretending we can provide something we cannot.

Ideal Candidate

This opportunity is particularly well suited for an experienced:

• Student Services Executive
• Student Affairs Leader
• Youth Services Director
• Education Administrator
• School or College Student Services Leader
• Youth Development Executive
• Student Success Leader
• Social Services Administrator
• Community-Based Program Leader

Strong candidates will demonstrate:

• Significant leadership experience in student, youth, education, or human services
• Deep understanding of student-centered practice
• Strong cross-functional leadership
• Experience developing support systems and service pathways
• Excellent judgment and problem-solving ability
• Understanding of safeguarding and professional boundaries
• Ability to work effectively with youth, families, professionals, and community partners
• Cultural humility and trauma-informed judgment
• Strong organizational and operational skills
• Ability to develop and lead teams
• Genuine commitment to MAP’s mission

What Success Looks Like

Success means:

• Students can navigate MAP more easily.
• Barriers to participation are identified earlier.
• Students experience stronger continuity between programs.
• Student concerns reach the right people quickly.
• Referral and escalation pathways are clear.
• Divisions coordinate effectively around student needs.
• Students and families receive consistent information.
• Student feedback meaningfully improves MAP.
• Student-facing teams understand their responsibilities and boundaries.
• MAP develops a coherent student-services system capable of growing with the organization.

Why This Role Matters

A young person does not experience MAP as a collection of divisions, departments, policies, and reporting structures.

They experience whether someone remembered their name.

Whether they knew where to go.

Whether an opportunity was accessible.

Whether someone noticed when they stopped showing up.

Whether adults followed through.

And whether they felt that they belonged.

The Chief Student Services Officer helps ensure the organization we build internally becomes the experience we promise externally.

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 student-services priorities and follow through on commitments
• Recruit and develop the student-services function as needed
• Complete applicable safeguarding, privacy, and organizational training
• Maintain confidentiality, professionalism, integrity, and appropriate boundaries

How to Apply

Interested candidates should apply directly through Idealist and submit:

• Resume or Executive CV
• Cover Letter

Please highlight relevant experience in student services, student affairs, education, youth development, student success, social services, nonprofit 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.

See the whole student. Remove the barriers. Connect the opportunities. Build a system where every young person knows they matter.