Lost Angels Career Center - Chief Operating Officer

Lost Angels Career Center (LACC) is a California nonprofit organization serving transitional age youth in the Antelope Valley and Los Angeles through hands-on vocational training, employment pathways, and wraparound support. LACC operates an integrated model that combines social enterprise, workforce development, and direct services across multiple sites. As the organization scales, we are building the senior leadership infrastructure required to grow without losing the operational discipline and mission focus that make our model work.

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) is the senior executive responsible for translating LACC's strategic priorities into operational reality across all sites and functions. This role owns organizational execution, financial oversight, workforce outcomes alignment, and cross-site operational consistency. The COO serves as the primary integrator across finance, career services, case management, and program delivery, ensuring that every function is pulling in the same direction and that the systems, standards, and accountability structures are in place to support sustainable growth. This is a high-accountability role that requires someone equally capable of thinking at the organizational level and rolling up their sleeves to solve real operational problems.

Organizational Leadership & Strategy

• →Own organizational execution across all sites and functions, translating strategic priorities into operational plans, establishing performance management rhythms, and ensuring consistent operating standards across LACC's Antelope Valley and Los Angeles locations.
• →Directly manage and develop a team of functional leaders including the Senior Case Manager, Senior Job Developer, and CFO Interim, providing coaching, clarifying performance expectations, and building the accountability structures that allow each function to operate with clarity and confidence.
• →Partner with the CEO on hiring planning, leadership development, and organizational design as LACC continues to grow, serving as a key thought partner on the decisions that will shape the organization's capacity and culture over the next several years.

Financial Leadership

• →Provide financial oversight in partnership with the CFO, including budgeting, forecasting, grant fund utilization, and audit readiness, ensuring financial planning is aligned to programmatic growth and that leadership has accurate, timely visibility into organizational health.

Operations & Administration

• →Build and maintain the operational infrastructure required for multi-site scale, including documented standard operating procedures, defined decision rights and escalation paths, organizational dashboards, and a consistent performance review cadence across the leadership team.
• →Drive workforce outcomes alignment by ensuring strong coordination across intake, case management, and job placement functions, improving participant persistence and completion rates, and strengthening the employer partnership pipelines that make placement possible.

• 10 or more years of progressive leadership experience in operations, nonprofit management, program administration, or a closely related field, with demonstrated accountability for multi-functional teams and organizational performance.
• Demonstrated experience building organizational systems and operational infrastructure in growth-stage environments, including performance management frameworks, SOPs, and cross-functional coordination structures.
• Track record of financial oversight responsibility, including budget management, grant compliance, and financial reporting in a nonprofit or government-funded program context.
• Proven ability to manage and develop senior leaders, set clear performance expectations, and hold teams accountable to measurable outcomes across multiple sites or functions.
• Strong analytical and systems thinking capability, with the ability to identify operational bottlenecks, build data visibility, and translate performance data into actionable organizational improvements.

• Experience in workforce development, vocational training, or youth-serving nonprofit environments.
• Familiarity with nonprofit financial structures, grant funding compliance, and social enterprise or earned revenue models.
• Experience with multi-site program management and the organizational design challenges that come with geographic expansion.
• Bilingual English/Spanish preferred but not required.