Vice President of Community Development and Community Affairs Officer

Company

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is part of the nation’s central bank, and we’ve provided many opportunities for professional growth during our history.

For twenty-five years in a row, we’ve been named “One of Northeast Ohio’s Best Places to Work” by North Coast 99. This prestigious award honors organizations with outstanding employment practices, including compensation, benefits, training, recruitment, retention, community services, and employee communications.

Our People Make the Difference! The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is seeking innovative thinkers with vision to build the framework that will carry the Bank into the future.

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The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is seeking a Vice President of Community Development and Community Affairs Officer (CAO).  Reporting to the Senior Vice President of External Engagement the CAO leads the Bank’s community development function, a multi-disciplinary team of research and engagement professionals focused on surfacing insights, identifying barriers to economic mobility and elevating promising solutions that support low- and moderate- income (LMI) communities across the Fourth District.

The goals of the Cleveland Fed’s Community Affairs Officer are to:

• Advance community development strategy: Develop and lead regional community development strategies, focused on improving economic conditions in LMI communities, using research and local insight to shape action across the Fourth District and beyond.

• Strengthen the Bank’s understanding of LMI communities: Ensure the Cleveland Fed hears from LMI communities across the District, and those who work with them, through high-quality engagement and trusted partnerships – so that those voices inform research, policy and programmatic decisions.

• Position the Cleveland Fed as a credible voice on economic mobility Serve as a public-facing thought leader on LMI communities, demonstrating the Fed’s commitment to economic growth and opportunity, financial inclusion, and systems change.

• Foster collaboration between sectors: cultivate partnerships with business, philanthropy, local government, financial institutions, and community-based organizations to create shared understanding and measurable progress on common goals.

• Integrate community development into the Bank’s broader external engagement strategy: ensure that community development perspectives are visible and valued across all of the Bank’s external-facing functions, including research and analysis, government relations, bank supervision, and communications.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

The CAO will collaborate across the External Engagement function and the broader Bank to ensure that insights from community development inform policymaking, public discourse, and institutional action.

Strategic Leadership of Community Development

• Lead the design and implementation of regional community development strategies grounded in economic research, place-based insights, and system-level thinking.

• Translate Federal Reserve System priorities into regionally relevant research, partnerships, and engagement initiatives.

• Ensure the Cleveland Fed remains a trusted voice on issues affecting LMI communities, with a special focus on economic and workforce development, small business access to credit, and housing.

• Build trusted relationships with LMI communities, designing and facilitating listening sessions, focus groups, and other feedback mechanisms to surface lived experience and elevate community-identified priorities. Ensure that insights gathered are synthesized and translated into actionable input for internal Bank partners – including researchers, policymakers, and senior leadership – to strengthen the feedback loop between community voice and institutional decision-making.

Team Management and Oversight

• Lead the community development team, guiding its research and outreach agendas and helping to ensure outputs are timely and relevant for the communities we serve

• Lead the implementation and monitoring of performance metrics to demonstrate achievement of community development objectives.

• Promote cross-team collaboration and a learning culture within CD

External Engagement and Collaboration

• Represent the Cleveland Fed in high-impact partnerships with financial institutions, non-profit, philanthropic, civic, and academic institutions focused on LMI issues.

• Facilitate collaboration between financial institutions and community-based organizations to expand credit access, affordable housing, small business growth and financial inclusion in LMI communities.

• Serve as a key internal connector – ensuring that the community development perspective is integrated into external engagement, government relations, communications and is a helpful input into policy and research products and processes.

• Contribute to communications strategies, including speeches, publications, electronic media and public programs that help improve public understanding of the regulations, policies and practices that impact LMI communities.

• Actively engaging in, and leading, Federal Reserve System committees and initiatives to both learn from other Reserve banks as well as ensure that the expertise and perspectives of Cleveland Fed’s district are represented.

Thought Leadership and Influence

• Serve as an institutional thought leader on community and economic development and broad-based economic growth

• Identify opportunities to amplify CD research and insights across public platforms, including convenings, working groups, and media engagement

• Stay attuned to trends in LMI communities across the Fourth District and ensure the Bank is responsive to emerging needs and opportunities.

CRITICAL BACKGROUND AND CAPABILITIES

The successful candidate will be an experienced community development professional with broad and substantive knowledge of community and economic development issues and a record of successful leadership in a government, nonprofit, academic or financial services organization. 

Qualifications: The following demonstrated qualifications are requisite for the position.

• A deep commitment to advancing economic opportunity and strengthening LMI communities

• A deep understanding of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), including how depository institutions meet community credit needs, and the role community development plays in supporting equitable access to financial services and capital.

• Strong analytical skills, including a demonstrated understanding of both quantitative and qualitative research methods.  A graduate degree or equivalent professional credentials in economics, finance, urban or community planning, public administration or policy, or a related discipline, is strongly preferred.  Proven ability to translate findings into actionable strategies and external communications.

• Proven ability to design and lead strategic initiatives in partnership with cross-functional teams.

• Demonstrated ability to build and sustain a relationship with diverse partners – from grassroots leaders to senior community leaders – and to facilitate high-impact collaboration across sectors.

• Experience designing and implementing engagement strategies that center community voice.

• Strategic thinker with strong execution skills – able to balance long-term vision with near-term action.

• Systems thinker: able to understand and connect community-level insight with systemic levers of change (e.g. capital access, workforce systems, housing markets).

• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills, able to represent the bank with clarity, authority, and humility in both public and internal settings. Excellent oral and written communication skills.

• Proven success in leading people, managing multidisciplinary teams, and overseeing complex projects or initiatives with multiple stakeholders and timelines.

• Strong interpersonal skills, including the ability to work effectively with and build consensus among diverse constituents whose interests sometimes compete.

• Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 10 years of work experience including extensive experience in dealing with difficult and complex matters involving public policy and with managing and developing people, projects, and programs effectively to obtain optimal outcomes.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, one of 12 regional Reserve Banks, serves the Fourth Federal Reserve District, which comprises Ohio, western Pennsylvania, eastern Kentucky, and the northern panhandle of West Virginia.  The 12 regional Reserve Banks and the Board of Governors in Washington D.C. make up the Federal Reserve System, the central bank of the United States.

Our mission is to foster the stability, integrity, and efficiency of the nation’s monetary, financial, and payments systems in order to promote optimal economic performance across the country and within the Fourth District.  Our key strategic objectives:

High Performance Culture:

Build a sustained culture of high performance, engagement, and inclusion to achieve our strategies and deliver business driven outcomes with excellence

Innovative Payment Strategies and Solutions:

Proactively identify and develop payments solutions to transform Bank, System and Treasury practices

Strengthen Financial Stability:
Strengthen our contributions to financial stability through advanced analytics and research

Influential Economic Research and Policy Contributions:

Consistently produce influential, high-quality economic research and deepen expertise that informs policy contributions

Voice of the Fourth District:
Be an influential voice in our region and provide leadership in the Federal Reserve System

Location: Cleveland, OH, Columbus, OH, Cincinnati, OH, or Pittsburgh, PA

Citizenship requirements

This position requires access to confidential supervisory information and/or FOMC information, which is limited to "Protected Individuals" as defined in the U.S. federal immigration law. Protected Individuals include, but are not limited to, U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, and U.S. permanent residents who either are not yet eligible to apply for naturalization or who have applied for naturalization within the requisite timeframe. Candidates who are not U.S. citizens or U.S. permanent residents may be eligible for the information access required for this position and sponsorship for a work visa, and subsequently for permanent residence, if they sign a declaration of intent to become a U.S. citizen and meet other eligibility requirements.
 

In addition, all candidates must undergo an enhanced background check and comply with all applicable information handling rules, and all non-U.S. citizens must sign a declaration of intent to become a U.S. citizen and pursue a path to citizenship.

Physical Demands and General Working Conditions            

This is not necessarily an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, standards or requirements, efforts, skills or working conditions associated with the job. While this is intended to be an accurate reflection of the current job, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland reserves the right to revise this or any job description at any time. 

Reasonable Accommodation Statement - The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is committed to ensuring that individuals with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. To request a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please send an email to clev.4d.benefits.specialist@clev.frb.org.

Bank’s Ethics Rules and Drug Testing:

As a condition of employment, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland employees must comply with the Bank’s ethics rules which generally prohibit employees, their spouses/domestic partners, and minor children from owning or controlling, directly or indirectly, any debt or equity interest in a depository institution or an affiliate of a depository institution. A "depository institution" means a bank, a trust company, or any institution that accepts deposits, including a bank chartered under the laws of a foreign country. In addition, employees (and their spouses/domestic partners, and minor children) may not own shares of mutual funds, unit investment trusts or ETFs that have a policy, as stated in the prospectus, of concentrating in the financial services industry and that have underlying investments in banks or other depository institutions.  If you or your spouse/domestic partner or minor child own such securities and would not be willing or able to divest them if you accepted an offer of Bank employment, you should raise this issue with the recruiter for this posting.

In addition, as a condition of employment, candidates must undergo a background check and will be tested for all controlled substances prohibited by federal law, to include marijuana, prior to hire and for certain safety sensitive positions during employment.  

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Full Time / Part Time

Full time

Regular / Temporary

Regular

Job Exempt (Yes / No)

Yes

Job Category

Executive Family Group

Work Shift

First (United States of America)

The Federal Reserve Banks are committed to equal employment opportunity for employees and job applicants in compliance with applicable law and to an environment where employees are valued for their differences.

Always verify and apply to jobs on Federal Reserve System Careers (https://rb.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/FRS) or through verified Federal Reserve Bank social media channels.

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