About Splash

Splash is a global nonprofit organization founded in 2007, headquartered in Seattle, Washington, USA. Since 2007, we have completed more than 2,500 projects that serve over 1.2 million children each day. Currently focused on cities in East Africa, Splash delivers the clean water, clean toilets, and dignified menstrual health resources that every child deserves through comprehensive water, sanitation, hygiene, and menstrual health (WASH-M) services and behavior change programs across 100% of a city’s public schools.

Our distinctive model transforms entire cities, starting at the school water fountain, by shifting systems, infrastructure, and behaviors in partnership with local governments and communities. We start by building relationships with the local stakeholders responsible for education, health, and water management, and we negotiate financial commitments that support a full transition of operations and maintenance to local leadership.

Our vision is global impact without Splash, made possible through partnerships with national governments, co-creation with local communities, and replication far beyond our day-to-day involvement.

In 2019, we began testing and refining Project WISE (WASH in Schools for Everyone), a cost-effective and replicable blueprint designed to reach 100% of public schools in fast-growing, complex cities in partnership with local governments and community leaders. In five years, we achieved our goals in Ethiopia and India, and we began our next phase of expansion in East Africa in 2025 and aspire to continue in South Asia in 2027 and the Middle East in 2029.

Our core values guide everything we do, including every hiring decision we make. They are:

• People - People first. People second. People third.   
• Quality - Beautiful products that function and last.   
• Honesty - No drama, no surprises, no BS.    
• Joy - Kids at heart, seeing potential everywhere.   
• Mistakes - Make them, don’t repeat them.   

Splash values the unique skills and experiences everyone brings to the organization, and we are committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and accessible environment for everyone. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and qualified applicants for employment. To learn more, please visit www.splash.org.

The Job

Job Title: Chief of Staff 

Line Manager: Chief Executive Officer
Location: USA remote 

Employment Type: Full time, remote

Salary Range: $120,000 -$150,000 USD per year

Position Overview

Splash is at an inflection point. As we scale multi-country work with governments, we are creating a Chief of Staff to serve as an integrator across our leadership team, translating decisions into action, maintaining organizational rhythm, and ensuring strong cross-functional execution and follow-through.

This is a newly created, senior role reporting to the CEO and partnering closely with the entire leadership team. The Chief of Staff is a force multiplier for the leadership team: part strategic thought partner, part facilitator, part operating backbone. The Chief of Staff serves as an “integrator” across the organization, sitting between strategy and execution, driving strong cohesion and effectiveness of the leadership team and streamlined cross-functional execution and rhythm across the organization.  The right person brings systems thinking, sound judgment, high emotional intelligence, and a genuine doer orientation, and is motivated by building the ways of working that allow an organization to operate at its best.

Roles & Responsibilities

1. Leadership Team Cohesion and Effectiveness 

• Design, facilitate, and continuously improve the cadence of management team collaboration and communication including the weekly management meetings and quarterly in person retreats. 
• Own decision-rights frameworks and commitment tracking for the leadership team, ensuring clear roles, ownership, timelines, and follow through. When ambiguity arises, drive to clarity and resolution. 
• Monitor team health and dynamics, helping the leadership team live its leadership team charter and behavioral norms. 
• Foster a culture that balances agility and learning with focus, discipline and high standards

Cross-Functional Coordination & Organizational Rhythm 

• Maintain visibility across teams and projects, keeping a finger on the pulse and connecting dots up, down and across the organization. 
• Surface and address cross-functional challenges related to timing, ownership, scope, sequencing and coordination 
• Build and iterate processes and systems for effective cross-functional communication, collaboration and follow up. 
• Build and steward the organization’s planning, priority-setting, and review cadence.

Internal Communication & Culture Stewardship 

• Own internal communication across the leadership team, broader staff and key partners, ensuring decisions and clearly and consistently communicated.
• Establish a regular cadence for all staff forums, regular written updates, and leadership touchpoints in partnership with CEO and leadership team.
• Steward organizational culture by translating values into concrete rituals, practices and ways of working. 
• Bring change management lens to decisions, attending to their implications for people, systems, communication, and culture. 

CEO + Leadership Team Partnership & Special Initiatives 

• Serve as a trusted and strategic thought partner to the CEO and leadership team, brainstorming & identifying solutions to challenges
• Lead preparation and planning for Board of Directors; support CEO and leadership team in board management and development. 
• Lead and execute special projects and cross-functional initiatives as needed, including owning and planning M-Team and all team staff retreats.

Qualifications

What We're Looking For

You are a senior organizational leader who thrives at the intersection of strategy and execution. You build systems that people actually use, earn trust across diverse leaders and teams, and bring the judgement, facilitation skills and emotional intelligence to navigate complex leadership and team dynamics with steadiness and care. You are as comfortable shaping a strategic conversation with a leadership team as you are drafting the follow-up memo, building the tracker, and making sure things actually get done.

The Ideal Candidate

Required Experience

• ~10+ years of progressive leadership experience as a Chief of Staff, COO, or senior operations role in a mission-driven organization navigating growth and complexity; could include experience in consulting, start-ups or other high-performance environments too. 
• Demonstrated success translating strategy into execution, strengthening organizational effectiveness and driving cross-functional execution
• Experience leading teams through growth, change or increased complexity
• Experience working closely with a Founder/CEO and senior leadership teams
• Experience operating across distributed, multicultural and global teams
• Experience in global development, global health, or WASH sectors a plus

Key Strengths for Success

• Strong facilitation skills and judgement, including the ability to frame options, tradeoffs and recommendations, ask great questions, track complex threads, and drive to clear decisions and accountability
• Excellent systems thinking, operational instincts, and project management skills, someone who builds and evolves simple, effective systems and structures that people actually use and follows through to ensure they stick
• High emotional intelligence and the ability to build trust, influence others without authority, and  navigate ambiguity with steadiness 
• Strong, clear communicator verbally and in writing who synthesizes across audiences and ensures the right information reaches the right people
• Ability to balance agility and discipline in a fast-moving environment 

Compensation & Benefits

At Splash, we prioritize our mission by offering benefits to support our employees and their families.  Splash operates across time zones with flexible work schedules. Benefits include 18 days of paid time off, increasing by 2 days each year up to 28 days, 11 paid holidays, and Wellness Fridays (reduced hours on Fridays). Additionally, we offer two weeks of paid time off mid-year office closure in the first week of July and the end of the year office closure which falls in the last week of the year. Wellness Fridays (reduced working hours on Fridays); medical, dental, and vision; and a 401K plan with a 3% match.

How to Apply: Interested candidates should submit their resume and a cover letter outlining their qualifications and experience to Rippling.