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Requisitos
THE ROLE
The Director of Residential Life (House Director) will serve as an inspirational leader and culture-builder, shaping the residential program into a thriving, inclusive, and supportive space for our scholars, parents, and residential staff. The House Director will work alongside the Assistant House Director and AmeriCorps Residential Life Assistant/House-Sister(s) to oversee the day-to-day operations of the dorm, while fostering a culture rooted in our values of intentionality, empathy, and community.
Residential Life
Live on-site in the dorm, being available from 1:30 PM until the next morning and on-call throughout the night.
Cultivate a safe, collaborative and growth-focused culture, ensuring the dorm is a space where scholars can thrive academically, socially, and emotionally.
Build trusting relationships with scholars, encouraging their personal and academic growth through proactive communication and support.
Lead weekly house meetings with scholars, preparing meaningful agendas to address house dynamics, scholar progress, and set individual and shared goals.
Set and uphold high academic, social-emotional, and leadership expectations for all scholars.
Enforce policies and protocols, utilizing restorative justice practices to resolve conflicts and build community.
Plan and support engaging programming activities, house team days, and scholar-led initiatives.
Support volunteer workshop facilitators, ensuring sessions run smoothly and scholars actively participate.
Maintain detailed records of scholar medical needs, hygiene, and attendance, ensuring accountability at lights out.
Manage dorm operations, including safety drills, budgeting, programming, and major program event coordination.
Serve as a bus aide as needed, coordinating transportation schedules and communicating with schools about delays.
Collaborate with the COO and Program Director on strategic initiatives related to scholar success, house culture, family engagement, and more.
Academics
Lead study hall sessions, ensuring scholars receive necessary academic support and maintain focus.
Train and equip residential staff to effectively support scholars' academic progress, accountability, and engagement as cohort leaders.
Ensure scholars maintain high academic expectations, supporting scholars to achieve performance benchmarks and demonstrate consistent growth.
Cultivate a culture of academic excellence, curiosity, and resilience among scholars by fostering a positive and growth-oriented mindset.
Design, implement, and manage Academic Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) and assignment trackers to provide structured and proactive support for scholars facing academic challenges.
Monitor and assess scholar academic performance regularly, identifying individual needs and collaborating with cohort leaders, tutors, parents, teachers, and scholars to address concerns promptly.
Attend parent-teacher conferences as needed, fostering strong collaborations with educators to support scholar success.
Parent Engagement
Lead and manage all parent communication and relationships.
Conduct quarterly parent-scholar meetings to review scholars' academic, leadership, and social-emotional progress and address concerns.
Serve as lead coordinator for monthly parent meetings or community potlucks, including creating agendas and facilitating
Oversee the HomeWorks Parent Association (HPA), including serving as HPA treasurer and supporting their initiatives.
Develop and implement parent engagement strategies to foster strong parent connections.
Scholar Recruitment
Co-lead recruitment efforts, including presenting to partner schools, conducting parent/guardian calls, and interviewing prospective scholars and families.
Participate in admissions deliberations and follow-ups with applicants and their families.
Organization, Team, and Communication
Foster a team culture aligned with HomeWorks' mission, vision, and values.
Lead and manage the residential team, providing training, feedback, and communication to staff and program volunteers.
Oversee, coordinate, and delegate activities such as planning events, completing incident reports, maintaining daily logs, and managing administrative tasks.
Maintain strong working relationships and consistent communication with the Residential Team, Mental Health Counselors, and Administrative Team.
Stay up-to-date on house emails and ensure smooth coordination of house operations.
Coordinate transportation and house team logistics and schedules, arranging any substitutions needed for scholar travel.
Adapt to other projects as they arise and handle incidents in alignment with HomeWorks values.
Follow local and federal laws (i.e. drug & alcohol use, mandated reporting).
The House Director’s goal is to co-create a culture around HomeWorks values and build a healthy and safe learning and living environment for our scholars. The House Director will do this through working closely with the House and Admin team, as well as building relationships with scholars and parents. We will use tools like Asana, Google Workspace, Salesforce and Slack to amplify the work.
We hope the person in this role will have a passion for justice, education and community building, and is excited about the opportunity to lead the house, develop house culture that will ultimately equip high school girls in Trenton, NJ to be academically successful and become community leaders.
THE TANGIBLE GOODS
Location: Lawrence/Trenton, NJ
Typical Working Hours (Schedule Attached Below). Please note that times may be scheduled to change, and may vary if an emergency or unexpected situation occurs.
Sunday: 4:30pm-10pm
Monday to Thursday: 1:30pm -10pm
Monday to Friday: 6:00am-6:45am/8am (occasionally until 8am if on bus route in the morning; being on morning bus route is rare but a possibility)
Monthly Professional Development Meetings - 12:00pm-1:30pm
Salary range: HomeWorks Trenton values our employees highly and acknowledges the importance of salary in recognizing and compensating for the value that employees create. We are continually growing in our ability to compensate employees as highly as we want to, and are actively fundraising in order to do so. Joining HomeWorks means being part of a deeply mission-driven and community-oriented organization that invests in development of staff as both people and professionals. We are, however, a young non-profit, and want to be transparent about what you can expect. In your first year, expect a compensation package of $93,044-$103,044, with a salary between $70,000-$80,000, fully furnished housing valued at $22,000/year during the school year and daily dinners valued at $1,044/year when the program is in session.
Benefits:
Your own two-story residence (2 bed, 1.5 bath) in our new campus dormitory Fall of 2025, for the duration that you are employed with our organization.
Medical, Dental, Vision plan offerings
Life Insurance
Employee Assistance Program
401k plan
Paid Time Off
During the school year - Following our partner school holiday schedules, which is approximately 22 days.
During the summer - 10 days
Please Note: residential staff are unable to take vacation time off while our program is in session and our scholars are staying overnight in the dorm during the academic year.
Smartphone and fully paid wireless plan through Mint Mobile
Work laptop
Professional development and leadership growth opportunities
A rewarding career that positively impacts our amazing scholars
Start date: March/April 2025
Application Deadline: Rolling
Application Link: https://form.jotform.com/241196228036152
Physical Demands: Walking up and down stairs, moving furniture and boxes during Move In and Move Out Day.
Sobre el rol
THE PERSON
The person we would be over-the-moon to work with is excited to add to our culture based on a deep belief in our mission and a deep commitment to intentionally build our organization alongside a team with differing personalities, cultures, experiences, backgrounds. The House Director will see themselves in the examples below:
Culture Builder. You are an educator and community builder at heart, and thrive being in community with other folks. You are excited and knowledgeable on how to curate experiences, guidelines and activities that build our culture of intentionality, empathy and community. You go above and beyond to build a safe, healthy and fun community for our scholars.
Dynamic, Inspirational Leader: You are a motivating leader who excels at guiding teams, delegating responsibilities, and coaching individuals to reach their full potential. By fostering a shared vision and empowering your team, you inspire them to work with purpose and passion. You balance collaboration and autonomy, ensuring your team feels valued and driven to achieve both personal and organizational goals, knowing when to step in and when to let them thrive.
Growth Mindset: You view every challenge as an opportunity for growth, both for yourself and your team. You are open to feedback and actively seek ways to improve, learning from both successes and setbacks. Your growth mindset drives your professional development and fosters an environment where others feel empowered to grow as well. You create space for experimentation and learning, encouraging innovation and agility in the face of change.
Efficiency and Organization. You organize your time in an efficient and productive manner. You have and can further develop your own systems and tools and know how to leverage those tools to hold yourself accountable, and help lead others. You are efficient and effective in your work.
Initiator. You take initiative to solve a problem on your own. You understand how you best absorb information and will take proactive steps to do what you need to do to learn something new even if your manager or boss is not presenting the information in a way that is most helpful.
Detail oriented. You do not let important details fall through the cracks and use tools (e.g. pen and paper, video notes, Asana, google docs, etc.) to keep yourself and others on track.
Follow through on commitments. You live up to your professional and personal commitments and do not miss deadlines. You are reliable - in showing up in the work space and in following through what you commit to leading and creating.
Honest Communicator. You communicate honestly and with transparency. You are willing to engage in courageous conversations.
THE QUALIFICATIONS
Experienced educator, residential life expert, mental health counselor, or leader in community engagement, coaching, youth development, or similar roles.
Experienced culture-builder with the ability to create and sustain positive, collaborative, and inclusive environments that reflect the organization’s values.
Proven leadership experience, including training, managing and motivating staff to achieve organizational goals.
Strong relationship-builder with the ability to inspire and connect with scholars, parents, and staff.
Highly organized and detail-oriented, with a proven track record of successfully managing programs or events.
Committed to cultivating a growth mindset and fostering a positive, inclusive environment.
Experience working with high school students of similar demographic in Trenton, NJ.
Passionate about inspiring young people and building communities centered on empathy, intentionality, and collaboration.
Sobre la empresa
HOMEWORKS TRENTON
HomeWorks Trenton, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that runs a free, community-based, after school residential program for high school girls in Trenton, New Jersey. We provide a space where scholars can authentically express themselves while developing academic and social-emotional tools to thrive despite living in a systemically unjust society.
Our scholars live in the HomeWorks house from Sunday evenings to Friday mornings and are transported to and from their Trenton Public Schools every day to ensure timeliness. After school, scholars engage in daily activities focused on academics and identity-driven leadership, eat a family-style meal, and stay overnight in our dorm with two full-time staff members. Our HomeWorks model decreases chronic absenteeism and improves scholars’ academic performance and social-emotional skills while celebrating the power of sisterhood. By providing a space to explore and define their experiences, cultures, and identities, HomeWorks offers our scholars a chance to see that their ideas, visions, and presence are valid and relevant in this world.
Founded in 2016, HomeWorks has built a diverse team of full-time and part-time staff, board members, and volunteers. Together, we have run five programs and built a HomeWorks community. The HomeWorks team has been recognized by The State of New Jersey, Princeton University, McKinsey & Company, Echoing Green, Comcast, Hollister, TRESemmé, Camelback Ventures, Barclays, Vital Voices, The Rachael Ray Show and more.
THE CULTURE
Every organization has its particular brand of crazy. We just try to be up-front about ours.
We are passionate, determined and Type A folks.
We work efficiently, are ruthless in getting things done.
We will roll up our sleeves and get down to sweep the floors.
We are obsessive about documenting everything so that we can replicate and scale what we are doing to expand our impact. Everything– from lesson plans to field trip procedures– will be added to manuals, put in the shared drive, documented on Salesforce, Asana and more.
We believe that everyone on our team is a leader.
This means that we take ownership for our own projects.
We are deeply committed to a growth-mindset culture and take accountability when we make mistakes.
We believe that our biggest strength comes from having a team with a rainbow of personalities, working styles, backgrounds, experiences, and cultures — and the ability to challenge one another while ensuring everyone feels heard and valued.
We are intentional in living our values of intentionality, empathy and community in all we do.
This work– from picking up scholars from school, to construction management for our new campus, to building house culture and planning our development strategy– is more than just work. It is our fight for justice.
We show up fully in the work. Every day.