Summary
Description
Executive Summary
Catholics for Choice (CFC) seeks a Co-President to serve as a collaborative organizational leader alongside the current Co-President. This role offers a unique opportunity to practice values-driven, shared leadership of an influential reproductive rights organization grounded in Catholic moral tradition, conscience, and social justice.
The new Co-President will bring an outward-facing presence, including engagement with media, donors, and external stakeholders, while also embracing the disciplines and responsibilities of co-leadership. This leader will model a deeply collaborative approach, supporting and empowering staff, to guide programs, fundraising, and communications across the organization.
Catholics for Choice occupies a distinctive space at the intersection of faith, reproductive rights, human rights, and religious liberty. The successful candidate will have deep understanding of and connections to the Catholic tradition, with a demonstrated commitment to bodily autonomy, moral agency, and pluralism within Catholicism. A strong understanding of theology and moral reasoning is highly valued as is experience advocating within the reproductive health space as CFC uniquely straddles these often-conflicting worlds.
This is a unique executive leadership role that offers a platform for leadership related to Catholic identity, conscience, and advocacy that can impact lasting and meaningful change for women and reproductive choice.
Opportunity
Reporting to the Board of Directors, the Co-Presidents will partner in providing executive leadership, vision, and management of Catholics for Choice. This is an opportunity to join an established and influential organization at a moment of profound political and religious complexity surrounding reproductive health, rights, and justice.
The Co-President model is new for Catholics for Choice, and there is enthusiasm for finding a leader who will bring a synergistic spirit and help realize full organizational impact.
This Co-President will:
• Share executive leadership responsibility for CFC’s vision, strategy, culture, and impact including a new strategic plan
• Lead and grow fundraising, communications, and programmatic initiatives.
• Serve as a visible public voice for the organization through press, media, and external engagements.
• Steward a collaborative leadership model rooted in trust, transparency, and shared accountability.
• Advance and promote CFC’s mission within faith-based, policy, human rights, and advocacy spaces.
Few leadership roles allow an individual to credibly engage theological arguments, public policy, human rights frameworks, and grassroots advocacy simultaneously. This role is well suited for a leader who is energized by compassionate engagement in polarized environments.
Leading CFC requires comfort with controversy, resilience under criticism, and a deep commitment to conscience. It offers the chance to evolve how Catholic authority is understood and promote the value of lived experience, social justice, and moral agency.
Organization
Catholics for Choice (previously Catholics for a Free Choice) was founded in 1973, the year that the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade.
With an operating budget of close to $3 million, and a professional multigenerational staff of sixteen, Catholics for Choice works in the United States to ensure that all people have access to safe and affordable reproductive healthcare. Committed to organizing and narrative change, the organization encounters, educates, and emboldens people of faith who support reproductive freedom. Catholics for Choice believes healthcare is a human right and that includes access to abortion.
Catholics for Choice challenges the idea that there is a single “Catholic position” on abortion and reproductive rights. As a recognized thought leader, the organization is an authentic voice for Catholics who, in good conscience, disagree with the dictates of the Catholic hierarchy on matters related to abortion, contraception, gender, and religious freedom while remaining faithful to core Catholic values such as conscience, social justice, and care for the vulnerable. CFC uses a clear, deeply informed, and compelling collective voice to speak on behalf of the Catholic pro-choice majority.
CFC’s mission is achieved through efforts to encounter, educate, and embolden people of faith who support reproductive freedom. This includes producing robust media resources and writing such as Conscience, the magazine of religious and reproductive freedom and The Overreach Monitor on Substack.
CFC is a resource and a convening force at the intersection of reproductive rights and religious conversations. The organization focuses effort on advocacy and organizing, including online, through events, and on college campuses with tools such as the Campus Organizing Toolkit. Given its singular position as a pro-choice Catholic voice, CFC is also uniquely positioned to support Catholic legislators and policy makers at the local, state, and federal levels.
Catholics for Choice (CFC) operates as a remote-first organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C. Staff can choose to live and work remotely from nearly a dozen states and territories.
Mandate
The Co-President being hired will bring skills, energy, and experience related to externally facing organizational priorities including programs, communications, and fundraising.
The Co-President already in place at Catholics for Choice will be a strong collaborative partner in management and oversight. As currently defined, the existing Co-President will maintain primary responsibility for budgeting and operations, complementing the skills and experience being prioritized for the Co-President opportunity being hired.
The Co-President being recruited will share responsibility for the core leadership domains:
Co-Lead Strategic Direction
• Develop, articulate, and execute organizational strategies.
• Shape long-term vision and near-term priorities.
• Steward CFC’s role as a moral and intellectual leader at the intersection of faith, human rights, and reproductive justice.
• Model collaborative leadership practices that center trust, transparency, active listening, and shared accountability.
• Establish Catholics for Choice as the best place to work in reproductive rights.
Co-Leadership Partnership
• Be a true partner in shared executive leadership.
• Consistently communicate and align in joint decision-making with the Co-President.
• Build a leadership culture grounded in mutual respect and institutional integrity.
• Foster an organizational culture that supports, engages, and empowers staff.
• Streamline, simplify, and focus CFC’s work.
Lead Fundraising
• Take primary leadership role in major donor engagement and external relationship-building.
• Develop comprehensive fundraising strategy for effective donor stewardship and foundation relationships.
• Sustain and grow donor trust by consistently demonstrating impact and integrity in an inspiring and compelling way.
• Inspire philanthropic support with tenacity, innovation, outcomes, and perseverance.
Lead Program Strategy
• Lead high-level programmatic direction and mission alignment.
• Partner with senior staff to ensure coherence across advocacy, theology, communications, and engagement.
• Bring a theological and moral lens to program development where relevant.
Lead Communications
• Develop CFC’s platform and serve as a visible external spokesperson for CFC.
• Engage with press, media, and public forums as a skilled and dynamic spokesperson
• Build messaging strategy and storytelling to strengthen CFC’s niche of supporting and changing hearts and minds.
• Counter narratives that weaponize religion in public life.
This is the first time the organization will be led by Co-Presidents. As such, there is an expectation that the roles will evolve to meet organizational needs and best leverage skill sets and expertise. That said, the skills most required of the incoming candidate are related to exceptional leadership in the areas of program, fundraising, and communications.
Candidate
The Co-President will be a confident, dynamic, and engaged advocate for reproductive rights and understand the power and importance of the religious and specifically Catholic narrative in this effort. Successful candidates will demonstrate humility, integrity, and an orientation that fosters and empowers staff and teams.
Skills and experiences must include:
• Strong understanding of Catholicism, most likely from lived experience and/or strong ties to the Catholic tradition.
• Deep commitment to reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, religious liberty, and moral agency and the ability to advocate and organize for these issues with empathy, authenticity, and understanding.
• Demonstrated alignment with CFC’s mission and values.
• Comfort serving as a public-facing leader and experience engaging with press and media.
• Fundraising experience, including developing revenue through strategy and soliciting stewarding and growing philanthropic support.
• Team-driven orientation and enthusiasm related to shared leadership and collaborative governance.
• Demonstrated people-centered leadership style and commitment to supporting a multigenerational staff.
• Comfort operating in polarized and contested public environments.
Expertise in Catholic theology, moral theology, and social teaching is preferred but not required. Lived experience as it relates to both reproductive health and Catholicism will be deeply valued.
Relationships
The Co-President:
Partners with: The Co-President
Reports to: Board of Directors
Supervises: Programs, Communications, Development
Direct report: Vice President of Organizing and Engagement
Collaborates with: All staff, External partners and allies, Thought leaders, Elected and appointed officials, Donors and supporters
The Compensation
The Co-President compensation is set at $198,000. CFC offers generous benefits including 4% retirement match and open PTO policy.
The Location
The Co-President must be based in the United States or its territories and must be able and willing to regularly travel to Washington, DC, and elsewhere as needed. Preference for candidates in locations already supported for remote work: FL, IL, OH, NC, NY, MD, MA, MN, Puerto Rico, VA, and Washington, DC.
