Leadership/Succession Planning + Mission Support SME

Overview
DRT Strategies delivers expert management consulting and information technology (IT) solutions to large federal agencies, state and local government and commercial clients in health care, technology, and financial services industries.

The three letters of our name, DRT, stand for Driving Resolution Together, which is the core philosophy on which the company was founded. That is, we collaborate with our clients to solve their most pressing challenges - together.

We are problem solvers dedicated to your success, combining Fortune 500 experience with small business responsiveness. We have established a reputation with our clients as a forward-thinking consulting firm with demonstrated success in implementing solutions that lead to meaningful results. Our world-class consultants unite people to work collaboratively to achieve project goals and make vision a reality.

Project Description:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for protecting and advancing the public health. Within FDA, the Office of Global Policy and Strategy (OGPS) and the Office of Policy, Legislation, and International Affairs (OPLIA) support the Agency's mission through global policy and strategy, policy development, legislative affairs, international engagement, organizational coordination, and related mission-support activities.

Job Summary:
DRT is seeking a highly experienced Organizational Effectiveness & Mission Execution SME to lead delivery of this two-phase Mission and Organizational Support engagement for FDA OGPS and OPLIA. The ideal candidate is a seasoned federal management consultant and program leader who combines rigorous program-management discipline with mature organizational judgment. This person will lead a compact multidisciplinary team through the six-month OGPS Section I effort and then guide the same core team into OPLIA Section II, preserving continuity while adjusting the staffing model as needed. The successful candidate must be comfortable advising senior federal leaders, leading hands-on delivery, facilitating sensitive organizational conversations, and translating complex qualitative and quantitative findings into practical, balanced, decision-ready recommendations. Success in this role requires more than keeping a schedule: the Senior Program Manager must understand how organizational assessments can affect staff confidence and stakeholder behavior, create a credible and respectful assessment process, protect the line between advisory analysis and federal personnel decisions, and deliver high-quality products on time within FFP constraints.

Responsibilities:

• Serve as the overall delivery lead across two sequential phases: first, the OGPS Organizational Redesign and Leadership Succession Planning effort; then, the OPLIA Mission Execution Support Services effort. Maintain continuity of leadership, methods, lessons learned, and team performance as the engagement transitions from Section I to Section II.
• Act as a trusted advisor and primary senior-level interface with FDA leadership and the COR; anticipate stakeholder concerns, navigate competing priorities and organizational dynamics, and communicate issues, tradeoffs, and decisions with discretion and professionalism.
• Mobilize Section I rapidly and establish the delivery approach, staffing model, governance cadence, master schedule, quality process, communications plan, risk registry, and clear ownership of deliverables and dependencies. Prepare the team for an efficient transition into Section II without loss of momentum or institutional knowledge.
• Manage a dense portfolio of tightly sequenced deliverables within each phase, maintaining traceability from current-state evidence to recommendations and ensuring that downstream products are built on validated findings. Balance near-term delivery demands with preparation for the next phase of work.
• Lead and oversee organizational assessment activities, including document review, structured interviews, surveys, workload analysis, FTE/capacity analysis, federal benchmarking, organizational structure review, functional mapping, decision-rights analysis, and identification of organizational strengths, gaps, duplication, fragmentation, and misalignment.
• Design and facilitate sensitive interviews, leadership retreats, cross-organizational working sessions, and roles-and-responsibilities clarity engagements in a manner that builds trust, reduces defensiveness, surfaces candid information, and recognizes that staff may be concerned about how assessment findings could affect their roles.
• Ensure assessment products are balanced, evidence-based, and constructive—clearly distinguishing facts, observations, risks, and recommendations; identifying strengths and capabilities to preserve as well as opportunities to improve; and avoiding unsupported, overly categorical, or unnecessarily harsh conclusions.
• Lead development and quality review of future-state organizational alternatives, organizational design principles and evaluation criteria, process and operating improvement recommendations, implementation roadmaps, leadership capability requirements, succession planning frameworks, workforce planning analyses, coordination protocols, and mission-positioning communications.
• Maintain strict boundaries between contractor advisory support and federal decision-making. Ensure the team does not conduct formal performance appraisals, determine personnel actions, direct federal staff, make workforce or organizational decisions, or otherwise perform inherently governmental functions.
• Own FFP delivery discipline by managing scope, level of effort, staffing, schedule, and quality against the agreed requirements; identify scope creep and resource pressure early; evaluate the feasibility of ad hoc requests; and elevate recommended tradeoffs before commitments create delivery risk.
• Oversee preparation and timely submission of the Program Management Plan, Monthly Status Reports, meeting agendas and minutes, action-item trackers, risk updates, executive briefings, and other required or ad hoc deliverables; manage Government review comments, revisions, and acceptance.
• Provide hands-on leadership and quality assurance to a compact, multidisciplinary team of approximately five staff during Section I, spanning organizational development, workforce/human capital, research/data analysis, facilitation, communications, and project management capabilities. Plan and execute the team's transition into Section II and support onboarding or integration of an additional team member if the staffing model expands.
• Ensure sensitive organizational, personnel, staffing, and PII-related information is handled appropriately and that all project activities comply with applicable FDA/HHS privacy, security, records-management, and confidentiality requirements.
• Support remote, hybrid, and on-site project activities at FDA facilities as required, including leadership sessions, interviews, organizational assessment activities, and cross-organizational engagements.

Required Experience:

• Minimum 10+ years of progressively responsible experience in program management, management consulting, organizational transformation, or mission/organizational support, with substantial experience supporting U.S. Federal Government clients.
• Demonstrated experience leading federal organizational assessments, organizational redesign or operating-model efforts, workforce planning, succession planning, or comparable organizational transformation engagements.
• Proven experience managing complex firm-fixed-price (FFP) professional-services engagements with multiple tightly sequenced deliverables, fixed deadlines, interdependent tasks, and significant schedule, scope, quality, and resource risk.
• Demonstrated ability to enter a high-visibility engagement quickly, establish structure and credibility, and produce results in a compressed delivery environment with changing priorities and limited ramp-up time.
• Exceptional organizational and political acumen, professional diplomacy, and executive presence, with the ability to read stakeholder dynamics, navigate sensitive issues and competing interests, and maintain trusted relationships across leadership and staff levels.
• Demonstrated ability to conduct or lead sensitive employee and leadership interviews and facilitate organizational assessments in a neutral, respectful, and trust-preserving manner, particularly where workforce or organizational changes may create concern or resistance.
• Strong expertise in organizational design and assessment concepts such as functions and capabilities, management layers and spans of control, workload and capacity, role clarity, decision rights, operating models, process handoffs, organizational dependencies, and implementation sequencing.
• Experience with qualitative and quantitative assessment methods, including structured interviews, surveys, workload analysis, staffing/FTE analysis, benchmarking, synthesis of mixed evidence, and development of defensible recommendations.
• Experience facilitating senior leadership sessions, retreats, cross-functional working sessions, and roles-and-responsibilities discussions, including the ability to surface disagreement and move groups toward practical alignment without overstepping federal decision authority.
• Excellent executive-level writing, briefing, and presentation skills, with a record of producing concise, balanced, decision-ready reports, frameworks, recommendations, roadmaps, and briefings for senior government audiences.
• Proven experience leading small, high-performing multidisciplinary consulting or project teams, assigning work, managing dependencies, reviewing work products, coaching staff, and enforcing quality standards across fast-moving delivery cycles.
• Strong risk, issue, change, and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to identify emerging delivery risk early and present practical mitigation options and tradeoffs to client and contractor leadership.
• Working knowledge of the boundaries between contractor advisory services and inherently governmental functions, including appropriate handling of workforce, personnel, budget, organizational, and decision-making matters.

Preferred Experience:

• Direct experience supporting FDA, HHS, an Office of the Commissioner, or other senior federal headquarters organizations; familiarity with FDA's organizational environment and stakeholder ecosystem is strongly preferred.
• Experience supporting organizations responsible for policy, legislative affairs, international affairs, regulatory strategy, or other cross-agency coordination functions.
• Demonstrated experience developing organizational design alternatives/analysis of alternatives, implementation roadmaps, decision-rights or RACI-style frameworks, coordination protocols, and operating-model recommendations.
• Experience with federal workforce planning, leadership capability models, succession risk, knowledge continuity, staff development, cross-training, and role realignment within federal authorities and constraints.
• Experience conducting internal federal comparisons and external federal benchmarking using staffing/FTE data, organizational charts, budget/congressional justifications, performance plans, or other public and government-furnished sources.
• Experience developing mission-positioning or strategic communications frameworks and supporting products for senior leadership and internal stakeholder audiences.
• Change management, organizational development, human capital, or facilitation credentials (e.g., Prosci, SHRM, HRCI, IAF, or comparable) are a plus.
• Prior success leading rapid-start, time-limited organizational transformation or assessment engagements with a high volume of leadership-facing deliverables, including effective transition between sequential phases or workstreams.

Education & Training:

• Bachelor’s degree in organizational development, Business Administration, Public Administration, Public Policy, Management, Human Capital/Human Resources, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, or a closely related field.
• PMP certification or equivalent senior-level program/project management credential.
• Master’s degree in organizational development, Public Administration, Business Administration, Public Policy, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Human Capital, or related discipline.

Work Authorization, Clearance Requirement, & Additional Information:

• This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government Public Trust clearance. Due to contract requirements, candidates must be U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents (green card holders) to be eligible.
• No agencies, third parties, or Corp-to-Corp submissions.

Salary Range:

• $130,000 - $170,000
• Salary commensurate with experience.

DRT Strategies, Inc. (DRT) follows the guidelines outlined by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to provide all employees and qualified applicants employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related conditions, transgender status, and sexual orientation), national origin, age, genetic information, disability, protected veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under federal, state, or local law.

Reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities will be provided. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact Human Resources by emailing [email protected], or by dialing 571-482-2517.

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