Senior Director, Compliance & Program Fidelity

As Senior Director of Compliance & Program Fidelity , you will own the compliance architecture that governs delegate performance across the Acelero network. This role operates at the system and strategy level: designing the compliance infrastructure, translating regulatory requirements into organizational standards, managing federal and state compliance relationships, monitoring the fidelity and quality of monitoring and compliance implementation across Acelero delegates, and supervising three direct reports. Why Acelero? Our mission is bold: To design and deliver research and evidence-based approaches to eliminate the gaps between young childrenʼs inherent potential and their achievement in school and life. With our partners, we accelerate child and family outcomes that honor all of the aspirations and cultures of the communities we serve.  Our values: Data-Informed Learning; Transparent & Open Communication; Growth Mindset; Championing Equality; Caring Teams & Communities. Your Role: As a Senior Director , you will design the system in which that monitoring occurs, synthesizes what the Directors of Implementation surface into network-level intelligence, and ensures the compliance and quality infrastructure is coherent, legally sound, and operationally sustainable. What You’ll Do: Compliance Architecture & Standards Design and maintain the compliance infrastructure across the delegate network, including policy frameworks, the Individualized Service Plan (ISP) system, corrective action protocols, and implementation standards. Translate federal Head Start Performance Standards, state regulations, and organizational policy into clear implementation standards and monitoring frameworks. Build organizational policy in collaboration with HR, fiscal, and legal — ensuring cross-functional policies are coherent, defensible, and consistently translated into delegate practice across all states of operation. Own the corrective action framework: protocols, timelines, escalation pathways, and documentation standards. Maintain ownership of centralized checklists, standard operating procedures, and guidance materials that inform compliance-related operations — directing and overseeing the Content & Knowledge Systems Manager in the development, version control, accessibility, and continuous improvement of these tools. Oversee the completion of root cause analysis for incidents that are potentially reportable or considered significant, ensuring findings inform updated standards and corrective action protocols. Monitor federal, state, and local regulatory changes and lead the organizational response, including adapting tools, policies, and frameworks accordingly. Delegate Compliance Leadership & Network Oversight Establish and maintain network-wide standards for the Director of Monitoring & Compliance (DMC) role — defining minimum requirements, competencies, and performance expectations for DMCs across all delegate organizations, while allowing delegates the flexibility to exceed those standards where local capacity supports it. Lead a cross-network DMC community of practice that builds shared understanding of compliance monitoring methods, organizational standards, and implementation expectations — ensuring DMCs across six states are working from a common framework regardless of local variation. Stay abreast of local adaptations to the DMC role and function, assessing whether those adaptations are consistent with organizational standards, require intervention, or warrant network-wide adoption. Synthesize compliance and quality implementation intelligence surfaced by the two Directors of Implementation — identifying network-wide patterns, systemic risks, and emerging regulatory pressures — and translate those insights into updated standards, corrective action protocols, and policy infrastructure. Integrate implementation fidelity data from both Directors of Implementation into a unified compliance and quality picture for the VP, ensuring that program quality and compliance dimensions of delegate performance are never reported in isolation from each other. Serve as the senior decision-maker on cross-functional policy questions that exceed the authority or scope of the Directors of Implementation, adjudicating how HR, fiscal, and legal policies apply across diverse delegate contexts and ensuring coherent translation into network-wide practice. Maintain regular engagement through at least two visits per delegate annually.  Fidelity & Quality Monitoring Monitor the fidelity and quality of compliance implementation across all Acelero delegates, ensuring that delegate-level compliance operations meet organizational standards and are executed with consistency and rigor. Establish clear expectations and measurable standards for effective compliance monitoring at the delegate level, and create the tools and frameworks that enable the Directors of Implementation to assess and report against those standards. Analyze compliance data trends surfaced through the Directors of Implementation to identify systemic risks, delegate-level gaps, and opportunities for policy or infrastructure improvement. Work with the Data & Performance team to ensure dashboards and reporting systems reflect compliance fidelity indicators and enable centralized tracking of policy adherence, health and safety monitoring, and other compliance metrics across the network. Co-create with Delegate Vice Presidents and Directors of Monitoring & Compliance internal Corrective Action Plans to ensure compliance and mitigation of further risks from previous incidents, as warranted by severity or pattern. Federal & State Relationships Serve as the organizational lead on federal and state compliance interpretation for programmatic matters, including Head Start Program Performance Standards and applicable state licensing regulations. Monitor the regulatory landscape for chan