Chief Executive Officer

The James Barry-Robinson Institute; Norfolk (VA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

The James Barry Robinson Institute seeks a proven CEO to lead a nationally recognized nonprofit delivering behavioral health, residential treatment, and foster care for youth.

Reporting to the Board, the CEO will advance mission, strengthen financial stability, grow partnerships, and uphold the Institute’s Christian heritage while guiding strategic growth and high‑quality care.

Job description

The James Barry Robinson Institute (JBRI or the Institute), a nationally recognized nonprofit providing behavioral health, residential treatment, and foster care services for youth, seeks a proven, enterprising, and people-centered leader to serve as its next Chief Executive Officer. Reporting to the Board of Directors, the CEO will inherit a trusted, financially stable, and deeply mission-driven organization and will galvanize internal and external support as JBRI boldly enters its next chapter of serving children and families and changing the trajectories of young lives.

This is a consequential moment for JBRI. For generations, the Institute and its affiliated programs have provided care, stability, treatment, and hope to children, adolescents, young adults, and families navigating some of life’s most difficult circumstances. Today, JBRI is especially distinguished by its national leadership in behavioral health services for military-connected youth and families—a commitment that is not merely a programmatic focus, but central to the organization’s identity, reputation, and operating model. Equally foundational is JBRI’s Christian mission and Catholic heritage, and its next leader will be expected to embrace and uphold the values and traditions that have long shaped the organization, regardless of their own faith tradition.

The next CEO will follow Robert E. McCartney, whose leadership has helped transform JBRI into the sophisticated and financially secure organization it is today. Under his stewardship, JBRI strengthened its operating infrastructure, rebuilt its financial foundation, sharpened its culture of accountability and care, and developed the all-military-connected youth model that now anchors its residential program and enables its distinctive focus on serving military families. He has also fostered a leadership culture marked by accessibility, warmth, trust, humor, and a genuine investment in employees. JBRI’s work is grounded in the principle: Bee Kind, Bee Competent, Bee Fun.

JBRI stands on firm footing, with meaningful opportunities to strengthen its national brand; explore fundraising opportunities; expand clinical offerings, and other mission-congruent programs; deepen government and military relationships; and prepare its next generation of leaders. The challenge will not be to invent a new identity or rescue a troubled enterprise. It will be to honor an exceptional legacy while guiding a complex, values-based organization toward a more resilient, visible, and strategically coherent future.

The Board seeks a CEO capable of holding several essential tensions at once: between mission and margin; compassion and accountability; clinical quality and enterprise discipline; culture preservation and thoughtful change; and a deeply local institutional presence and an increasingly national mandate. The successful leader will be an executive of character, maturity, sound judgment, and visible warmth—equally comfortable with a child and family, direct-care professional, clinician, trustee, military partner, public official, donor, and community leader.

Wes Yampolsky and Lionel Anderson of JM Search have been retained to assist with this recruitment.

For more information please visit: https://www.barryrobinson.org/about/ceo/#