Deputy Executive Director

Overview

The Deputy Executive Director serves as the operational backbone of MSF Canada, ensuring strategy translates into action across all departments while maintaining organizational health, accountability, and cohesion. This role amplifies the Executive Director's capacity and strengthens MSF Canada's credibility.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day operations and drive organizational effectiveness across departments.
• Manage senior leaders in Finance and Administration, IT, Human Resources, Strategy and Planning, building team capacity.
• Oversee risk and compliance, including critical incident preparedness, risk registry management, and mitigation of legal and data privacy obligations.
• Ensure compliance across Finance, HR, and IT, including data privacy, legal obligations, and safeguarding casework.
• Act as the ED’s strategic partner, ensuring alignment between internal operations and external/movement-facing priorities.
• Provide operational insight for governance reporting, Board engagement, and organizational health monitoring.
• Support the Executive Director in representing MSF Canada internally and externally.
• Prepare the organization for engagements with the movement and the public.
• Connect internal teams, the Association, and governance bodies to strengthen MSF Canada's cohesion, credibility, and networks.

Required Experience

• Demonstrated senior leadership experience in a complex, multi-stakeholder organization - nonprofit, humanitarian, or similarly mission-driven environment.
• Proven track record managing cross-functional teams and executive level direct reports.
• Ability to lead and develop high-performing teams, with a coaching and accountability-oriented approach.
• Extensive experience bridging departments and creating conditions for collaboration across an organization.
• Comfortable holding both strategic and operational responsibilities simultaneously.
• Strong organizational and process management skills, with experience running planning and reporting cycles.
• Ability to identify, assess, and mitigate organizational risk.
• Familiarity with financial oversight, IT governance, and/or legal and compliance functions.
• Good communicator in both internal leadership and public contexts where needed in support of the organization’s leadership.

Other Details