Salary:  $145,000–$175,000, commensurate with experience, plus benefits.

Travel:  No regular travel expected

About Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center

Nestled within the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center (SEEC) is a model early childhood program that places children at the center of every experience. Since 1988, SEEC has drawn on the Smithsonian's extraordinary collections and resources to create meaningful learning experiences for young children.

SEEC is a separately incorporated 501(c)(3) housed at the Smithsonian Institution. Its mission is twofold: to provide a high-quality educational program for young children and to advance educational opportunities for children more broadly by sharing SEEC's expertise and contributing to the Smithsonian's educational mission.

SEEC's museum-based approach encourages children to wonder, explore, ask questions, and make connections across art, history, culture, science, and the world around them. Its work extends beyond its classrooms through professional learning and engagement with educators, families, museums, and schools.

At the heart of SEEC are its educators, children, families, and a distinctive educational model built over decades. The next Executive Director will inherit an organization with a deeply valued educational foundation and the opportunity to enhance the organizational infrastructure that will allow that foundation to thrive for years to come.

SEEC at a Glance

Three centers serving children and families across SEEC locations.

Maximum functional capacity: 125 students 

Current Staff: 50

Current Parents: 176

The Executive Director will work with an existing leadership and administrative team, including a Family Engagement Manager supporting enrollment and family engagement.

About the Role  

SEEC is seeking an Executive Director to lead the organization into its next chapter, building on its distinctive educational foundation while setting up the organization for long-term sustainability and impact.

The next Executive Director will join SEEC in a changing early childhood and enrollment landscape. They will provide strategic and organizational leadership across SEEC’s educational mission, financial sustainability, people and systems, enrollment, and external relationships. They will also deepen SEEC’s visibility and partnerships within and beyond the Smithsonian and amplify its role as a leader in museum-based early childhood education.

The Executive Director will set clear priorities, empower a strong team, and establish the accountability, systems, and resources needed to execute effectively. They will balance respect for SEEC’s history and educational model with the judgment and decisiveness to lead thoughtful change.

The Executive Director reports to the SEEC Board of Directors and serves as the organization’s senior executive and external ambassador.

Key Responsibilities

Champion SEEC's Educational Mission

• Serve as a steward and champion of SEEC's museum-based early childhood education model.
• Ensure that organizational decisions support high-quality experiences for children, families, and educators.
• Ensure child safety, health, licensing, and regulatory compliance are treated as core operating standards, including sound leadership through incidents and emergencies.
• Foster an organizational culture in which educators and staff are valued, supported, and empowered to meaningfully contribute their skills and expertise.
• Support continued learning, reflection, innovation, inclusion, and excellence across SEEC's educational programs.
• Help articulate and advance SEEC's contribution to the broader fields of early childhood and museum-based education.

Lead Strategy and Organizational Priorities

• Partner with the Board and staff to establish a compelling vision and priorities for SEEC's next chapter.
• Assess competing organizational needs and sequence priorities into realistic, appropriately resourced plans.
• Translate strategy into clear goals, responsibilities, measures of progress, and accountability.
• Lead organizational change thoughtfully, communicating the rationale for change and engaging staff in its implementation.
• Balance respect for SEEC's history and culture with a willingness to question practices or structures that are no longer serving the organization.

Strengthen Enrollment and Financial Sustainability

• Treat enrollment as a core strategic priority and lead the development of a proactive enrollment and retention strategy.
• Increase SEEC's visibility and value proposition with current and prospective families.
• Provide executive leadership for budgeting, financial planning, revenue strategy, risk management, and long-term sustainability.
• Work effectively with staff, the Board, financial partners, and external advisors to ensure strong financial stewardship.
• Explore opportunities to diversify revenue in ways that align with SEEC's mission and capacity.
• Use data to understand enrollment, financial performance, organizational trends, and emerging risks and opportunities.

Build Strong Organizational Systems and Accountability

• Clarify roles, responsibilities, decision rights, and accountability across the organization.
• Ensure that SEEC has effective systems and processes supporting enrollment, finance, communications, human resources, technology, administration, and other core functions.
• Identify where systems can be simplified or modernized.
• Establish clear expectations for performance and follow-through while creating an environment in which staff have the authority and support to succeed.
• Strengthen organizational capacity, role clarity, and continuity across teams and functions.
• Ensure appropriate oversight of external vendors and partners.

Lead and Develop People

• Lead with warmth, empathy, transparency, and consistency while maintaining clear expectations and accountability.
• Build and support an effective leadership team.
• Delegate thoughtfully and empower staff rather than centralizing decisions or becoming the organization's chief doer.
• Develop staff capacity, support retention, and create opportunities for leadership and professional growth.
• Address performance, conflict, and organizational challenges directly and constructively.
• Facilitate communication across teams and locations and help create a shared sense of purpose across SEEC.

Strengthen Communication, Responsiveness and Trust

• Establish clear expectations for timely, transparent, and responsive communication.
• Ensure that questions and concerns from families, staff, and other stakeholders are acknowledged, appropriately addressed, and followed through to resolution.
• Create reliable channels for information to move across the organization.
• Communicate clearly during moments of ambiguity, challenge, or change.
• Build confidence among staff, families, the Board, and institutional partners that issues are being handled thoughtfully and appropriately.

Serve as SEEC's External Champion

• Serve as a visible and compelling ambassador for SEEC with the early childhood field, the Smithsonian, DC education and civic partners, current and prospective families, and the broader community.
• Articulate what makes SEEC distinctive to prospective families, partners, supporters, and the broader community.
• Build relationships that support enrollment, partnerships, fundraising, visibility, and SEEC's broader educational influence.
• Enhance SEEC's presence within the Washington, DC region and the early childhood and museum education communities.
• Identify opportunities to extend SEEC's expertise and impact consistent with its mission and capacity.

Navigate and Build a Stronger Smithsonian Relationship

• Serve as a trusted senior representative of SEEC within the Smithsonian ecosystem.
• Develop productive relationships with Smithsonian leaders, museums, facilities, security, administrative partners, and other stakeholders, while encouraging and facilitating strong relationships between SEEC senior leaders and their Smithsonian counterparts.
• Navigate shared responsibilities and institutional processes with diplomacy, persistence, and sound judgment.
• Recognize the Smithsonian relationship as both an operating context and one of SEEC's greatest strategic and educational assets.
• Identify opportunities to deepen collaboration among SEEC's connection to Smithsonian collections, expertise, and educational resources.

Partner Effectively with the Board

• Keep the Board appropriately informed about organizational performance, risks, priorities, and strategic decisions.
• Provide timely, useful information that enables the Board to fulfill its governance responsibilities.
• In collaboration with the Board, establish and maintain clear boundaries between governance and management while welcoming appropriate Board partnership and expertise.
• Work with the Board to maintain focus on long-term strategy, organizational sustainability, and mission.
• Build confidence that day-to-day management and organizational concerns are being addressed effectively.  

Qualifications and Experience

SEEC recognizes that strong leaders arrive through different professional pathways. Candidates do not need to bring every experience listed below. The strongest candidates will demonstrate a combination of the following:

Leadership Experience

• Significant senior leadership experience in early childhood education, education, nonprofit leadership, museum or cultural institutions, or another mission-driven organization.
• Demonstrated experience leading people and organizations through growth, transition, or change.
• Experience translating organizational strategy into priorities, systems, and measurable execution.
• Evidence of building strong teams, developing leaders, delegating effectively, and establishing organizational accountability.
• Experience reporting to or partnering closely with a nonprofit, institutional, corporate, or comparable governing board.

Educational and Mission Leadership

• Professional experience in early childhood education is required.
• Deep understanding of early childhood education and how organizational leadership can support and strengthen excellent educational practice.
• Ability to engage credibly with educators while allowing educational professionals to lead within their areas of expertise.
• Commitment to culturally responsive, inclusive, and equitable learning environments.
• Appreciation for object-based, experiential, inquiry-driven, or museum-based learning is highly valued.

Business and Financial Acumen

• Demonstrated ownership of organizational financial performance, including responsibility for a budget, P&L, statement of activities, or comparable financial results, and the ability to use financial information to make strategic decisions.
• Experience with budgeting, revenue strategy, financial planning, risk management, and organizational sustainability.
• Ability to understand and act upon enrollment, financial, operational, and organizational data.
• Experience improving business operations or organizational systems without losing sight of mission and people.

Organizational and People Leadership

• Demonstrated ability to create clarity around roles, responsibilities, priorities, and decision-making.
• Strong judgment in navigating complex personnel, family, organizational, and stakeholder matters.
• Experience building and deepening organizational systems and leading change in ways that build staff understanding and ownership.
• Strong emotional intelligence, communication, conflict-management, and relationship-building skills.
• A leadership approach that combines empathy and collaboration with accountability and decisiveness.

External and Institutional Leadership

• Demonstrated ability to build relationships across diverse stakeholder groups.
• Experience representing an organization externally and communicating its value to multiple audiences.
• Ability to navigate complex institutions, partnerships, or multi-stakeholder environments.
• Experience working within or alongside a museum, university, government institution, host organization, or other complex institutional partner is valued but not required.

The Leader SEEC Needs 

SEEC's next Executive Director will be someone who can hold several important leadership tensions at once:

Vision and execution.

Warmth and accountability.

Preservation and change.

Internal leadership and external visibility.

Collaboration and decisiveness.

Educational excellence and organizational sustainability.

This leader will recognize that SEEC does not need to become a different organization in order to move forward. It needs leadership capable of protecting what is extraordinary about SEEC while strengthening the organization itself.

COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYMENT POLICY

SEEC believes that diversity makes us stronger and challenges us to think differently every day. SEEC is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all qualified individuals and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, marital status, veteran status, pregnancy, parental status, genetic information or characteristics (or those of a family member) or any other basis prohibited by applicable law.