Chief Data Officer (CDO)

Chief Data Officer (CDO)

Status: Exempt

Location: New York, NY (Hybrid)

Reports to: Senior Vice President, Policy & Program

Improving Health Care for Every New Yorker

United Hospital Fund (UHF) is dedicated to creating an effective and equitable health care system for all New Yorkers. As an independent nonprofit organization, UHF analyzes public policy, brings together diverse stakeholders, and supports innovative programs to improve health and health care across New York.

About the Role

UHF is seeking a Chief Data Officer to strengthen the organization's ability to use data, evidence, and insight to understand emerging needs, identify opportunities for impact, and inform policy and programmatic priorities.

This new, key leadership role will oversee UHF’s data analytic strategy, priorities, and partnerships; data infrastructure and access; visualization and dashboards; and data governance. Working collaboratively across the organization, the role will help bring together quantitative analysis with policy research, stakeholder and community perspectives, and programmatic expertise to generate insights and inform action to improve population health outcomes.

The CDO will bring a strategic, innovative, and forward-looking perspective to UHF's work, helping identify and assess opportunities for impact and working with colleagues and external partners to develop, test, refine, and strengthen promising approaches. This role requires a leader with the technical depth to lead a sophisticated data and analytics function and the strategic judgment, initiative, and creativity to understand what the evidence means, identify what it makes possible, and translate insight into action.

Organizational Positioning

The Chief Data Officer is a senior leader within UHF's Policy & Program division, reporting to the Senior Vice President (SVP), Policy & Program.

The CDO will work in close partnership with the Managing Directors responsible for Medicaid and Practice Transformation. Together, these leaders bring complementary data, policy, programmatic, clinical, and stakeholder perspectives to understand emerging health care needs, evaluate opportunities, shape priorities, and advance UHF's mission.

Key Responsibilities

Data Strategy & Analytics Leadership

• In collaboration with the SVP, set and lead the strategic direction for data and analytics across UHF's Policy & Program work, ensuring that analytic priorities and investments are aligned with UHF's mission and evolving policy and programmatic needs.
• Lead and develop UHF's data and analytics team, establishing clear priorities, roles, standards, and expectations, and build the technical and analytic capabilities needed to support UHF's work.
• Provide strategic and technical leadership for UHF’s analytic methods and tools, data quality, governance, privacy, and security.
• Assess UHF's current and future data and analytic needs and ensure the organization has the appropriate data access, infrastructure, tools, talent, partnerships, and capabilities, including developing external data and analytic partnerships where additional expertise, infrastructure, or collaboration can strengthen UHF's work.
• Establish consistent analytic frameworks, measures, visualization standards, and approaches for prioritizing analytic work based on strategic relevance, potential impact, feasibility, and organizational need.

Integrated Insight & Evidence Synthesis

• Lead the integration and interpretation of quantitative and qualitative evidence, including health care data, policy research, stakeholder and community perspectives, and programmatic experience to surface trends and gaps, understand complex health and social care issues in context, and translate findings into actionable insights that inform UHF's policy, programmatic, and strategic priorities.

Strategic Innovation & Opportunity Assessment

• Partner with Policy & Program leadership to identify, understand, evaluate and prioritize emerging needs and opportunities relevant to UHF's mission and expertise, and translate promising opportunities into evidence-informed approaches that can be tested, refined, and advanced based on potential impact, feasibility, sustainability, and UHF’s distinctive capabilities.

Thought Leadership and External Engagement

• Strengthen UHF's ability to develop distinctive, evidence-based perspectives on important and emerging health care issues by bringing together data, research, policy expertise, programmatic experience, and stakeholder perspectives.
• Partner with UHF leaders and subject matter experts to translate data and evidence into reports, briefs, presentations, policy recommendations, convenings, and other forms of thought leadership.
• Build and maintain productive relationships with government, health plans, health systems, providers, community-based organizations, funders, researchers, and other partners; engage stakeholders to understand needs and perspectives, test assumptions, inform UHF's thinking, and identify opportunities for collaboration and impact.
• Represent UHF in external forums, partnerships, working groups, and discussions and advance UHF's role as a trusted, independent source of evidence, insight, and practical approaches for improving health and health care in New York.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Serve as a senior leader within Policy & Program, contributing to broader planning, prioritization, and decision-making and partnering closely with the Managing Directors of Medicaid and Practice Transformation and other UHF leaders.
• Serve as a bridge across technical, policy, programmatic, clinical quality, research, communications, development, technology, financial, operational, and external perspectives, fostering collaboration and helping multidisciplinary teams move from evidence and ideas toward decisions and action.
• Operate with a high degree of initiative, ownership, and a solutions-oriented mindset; proactively identify needs, opportunities, risks, and practical solutions.
• Recruit and retain strong data and analytics talent and foster a culture of rigor, curiosity, collaboration, initiative, innovation, accountability, and continuous learning.
• Manage relevant budgets, consultants, vendors, partnerships, and resources associated with UHF’s data and analytics function.

Required Qualifications

• Experience & Leadership: Minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible experience in health care data and analytics, health services research, health informatics, public health, health policy, or a related field, including significant leadership experience and demonstrated success leading multidisciplinary data and analytics teams.
• Technical & Health Care Data Expertise: Strong technical foundation in the management and analysis of large, complex health care datasets, including claims and encounter, clinical, quality and performance, population health, health-related social needs, or other administrative data. Demonstrated proficiency with SQL and familiarity with additional analytic languages and tools, such as Python, R, or comparable technologies, with sufficient technical depth to direct technical staff and evaluate analytic approaches, methods, and outputs.
• Data Infrastructure, Governance & Visualization: Experience with data aggregation, integration, modern data platforms, access, quality, governance, privacy, and security, as well as translating complex analyses into accessible visualizations and decision-support tools and overseeing relevant business intelligence capabilities.
• Quantitative & Qualitative Synthesis: Demonstrated ability to integrate quantitative analysis with policy analysis, stakeholder and community perspectives, and programmatic findings to develop a more complete understanding of complex health care issues and translate evidence into actionable insights.
• Health Policy & Delivery System Knowledge: Strong understanding of the health care policy and delivery environment, including the relationships among policy, payment, quality, delivery-system performance, population health, and health equity. Knowledge of New York State health care and public health is strongly preferred.
• Leadership, Initiative & Adaptability: Proven ability to lead and develop teams, operate independently with a high degree of initiative and ownership, adapt to evolving policy, funding, and health care environments, use data and evidence to assess implications and inform strategic, policy, and programmatic decisions, and develop practical solutions to complex problems.
• Communication, Collaboration & External Engagement: Exceptional written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills and demonstrated ability to translate complex technical information for diverse audiences, work across disciplines, and build productive relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
• Project & Resource Management: Demonstrated ability to lead multiple complex initiatives, establish priorities, manage internal and external resources, and deliver high-quality work on time and within budget.
• Demonstrated commitment to UHF's mission and to advancing an effective and equitable health care system for all New Yorkers.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree or higher in a relevant field; substantial relevant professional experience may substitute for an advanced degree.
• Experience leading a data and analytics function within a health care, public health, research, policy, nonprofit, government, or similarly mission-driven organization, including experience working with state government agencies or other public sector partners.
• Understanding of evolving data and analytics technologies, including the responsible and equitable application of AI and other emerging tools. Experience with Medicaid data is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with New York State's Medicaid program, health care delivery system, and health policy environment.

Application Details

Applicants can apply for the Chief Data Officer position by visiting our career page https://uhfnyc.org/about/careers/

Application deadline for first round consideration is November 6, 2026

Required documents:

• Resume
• Cover letter

Salary Range: $180,000 - $210,000

Compensation and Benefits: United Hospital Fund offers a competitive salary commensurate with experience combined with generous benefits, including health, dental, voluntary vision, life, and disability insurance; a 403b retirement plan; paid time off; a commuting subsidy; collegial environment.

United Hospital Fund is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive workplace. Applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, physical or mental ability, veteran status, military obligations, citizenship, and marital status. People of color, all faiths and abilities, women, immigrants, veterans, LGBTQIA2S+ people, and those with lived experiences in the communities we serve, are strongly encouraged to apply to join our team.

Compensation and Benefits: United Hospital Fund offers a competitive salary commensurate with experience combined with generous benefits, including health, dental, voluntary vision, life, and disability insurance; a 403b retirement plan; paid time off; a commuting subsidy; collegial environment.