Chief of Staff
Office of the President / CEO · Montgomery County Revenue Authority (MCRA)
Position Summary
The Chief of Staff extends the CEO’s capacity at a pivotal moment for MCRA, a period of major strategic opportunities, heightened public visibility around the Montgomery County Airpark, an active election cycle, and a growing portfolio. MCRA operates nine golf courses, a general aviation airpark, a winery with event and restaurant operations, and a finance division authorized to issue bonds for economic development, employing roughly 120 year-round staff and up to 500 in peak season.
The role has one purpose: multiply the CEO. The CEO owns strategy formation, board and County Executive relationships of record, and MCRA’s public face. The Chief of Staff owns the machinery that lets those things happen, the executive office’s coordination layer of routing, scheduling, follow-through, external-affairs execution, and initiative project management, so the CEO’s time goes to the work only the CEO can do.
Reporting Relationships
- Reports to: President / CEO.
- Executive Assistant: the Chief of Staff directs the Executive Assistant’s calendar, board, and executive-office work with direct tasking authority, in partnership with the CFO, to whom the EA reports for finance duties. The reporting relationship will be revisited once the role is established.
- Peers: CFO; Director of Agronomy; Director of Golf Operations; Airpark Manager; Revenue/IT & Marketing Manager. The Chief of Staff convenes and coordinates across these leaders and may drive enterprise initiatives on the CEO’s behalf, but does not supervise them and is not a sixth operating executive. Domain decisions stay with domain owners.
First-Year Priorities
1. Executive Operations & Board Support (primary)
- Thread ownership — Own multi-party threads (legal, tenant, county, vendor) to closure; the CEO receives a weekly one-page rollup and is engaged at decision points only.
- Calendar authority — Manage the CEO’s calendar with delegated power to decline, reassign coverage, enforce a daily meeting cap, protect recurring strategy blocks, and clear conflicts the week before they occur.
- Follow-up engine — Chase commitments across the senior team such as weekly check-in replies, approvals, meeting action items, so accountability pressure is systematic rather than personal to the CEO.
- Meeting lifecycle — Prep packets, briefing materials, notes, and action capture into MCRA’s task system for Senior Team, board, and external meetings.
- Systems oversight — Supervise the executive office’s AI-assisted operating system (automated briefings, check-ins, agendas, and reporting in): keep jobs running, surface failures within 24 hours, and continuously improve the toolset.
- Board support — Strengthen board meeting cadence, agendas, packets, minutes support, and post-meeting follow-through, directing the Executive Assistant’s board and executive-office work so the executive office functions as an integrated unit.
2. External Affairs & Government Relations
- Lead execution of MCRA’s response to community and political concerns regarding the Airpark — community engagement, coordinated outreach, and issues tracking — working with the Airpark Manager and counsel.
- Build and maintain MCRA’s stakeholder map and engagement calendar across county and municipal officials, civic associations, and business partners; support relationship-building with newly elected officials following the election cycle.
- Manage MCRA’s external marketing/PR firm on communications and crisis-communications work, in coordination with the Revenue/IT & Marketing Manager’s remit.
- Note — Guardrail: all contact with elected officials and board members on MCRA business occurs at the CEO’s direction and is read back to the CEO. The CEO remains MCRA’s public face; the Chief of Staff represents MCRA at public meetings when designated.
3. Strategic Initiative Execution
- Project-manage — in support of the CEO, who owns strategy and final decisions — MCRA’s major initiatives: the County Sports Tourism Taskforce engagement, the professional soccer club relocation effort, the White’s ferry partnership analysis, and strategic positioning for the upcoming payoff of existing debt obligations.
- Translate CEO priorities into plans with timelines, accountabilities, and deliverables; prepare decision memos and briefings; track risks and force follow-through.
4. Cross-Functional Coordination
- Convene the senior team on enterprise-level initiatives; surface and resolve cross-business issues before they reach the CEO; escalate cleanly when CEO involvement is genuinely required.
- Partner with MCRA’s external HR consultant on compliance remediation, performance-review rollout support, and seasonal workforce planning across MCRA’s operations.
- Support governance, policy execution, and risk mitigation across operating businesses.
Role Boundaries
The role is deliberately scoped. Operations belong to the operating directors; strategy formation and the board relationship belong to the CEO; marketing belongs to the Revenue/IT & Marketing Manager and the external firm. The Chief of Staff connects rather than gatekeeps, the senior team’s access to the CEO is preserved, and succeeds by making the CEO and the senior team measurably faster.
Qualifications
Required
- Bachelor’s degree in public administration, business administration, communications, political science, or a related field.
- Seven or more years of progressive experience combining senior public-sector or quasi-governmental leadership, executive support to a CEO/Executive Director/elected official, government or community relations, and/or significant cross-functional project leadership.
- Demonstrated experience working effectively with elected officials, county or municipal government, boards, and the public in politically sensitive environments.
- Excellent writing — executive correspondence, briefing materials, and public-facing communications.
- Proven follow-through: able to drive multiple concurrent workstreams to completion and hold senior people accountable without formal authority.
- Demonstrated personal adoption of modern productivity and AI-enabled tools, and comfort supervising automated workflows — not merely managing IT vendors.
- Discretion and sound judgment with confidential information.
Preferred
- Master’s degree (MPA, MBA, or related).
- Direct experience at a quasi-governmental authority or in county/municipal government; board governance and open-meetings (OMA) familiarity.
- Crisis communications or government-affairs background; experience with multi-site, seasonal, or revenue-generating public operations.
- Working knowledge of public finance, economic development, hospitality, recreation, or aviation.
Success Metrics
First 90 days
- CEO email relay traffic on delegated threads reduced by half.
- Zero calendar conflicts surviving into the meeting day; CEO daily meeting cap and protected morning blocks held at least 8 of 10 weekdays.
- Weekly senior-team check-in cycle runs to completion without CEO chasing.
- All scheduled automations monitored; failures surfaced within 24 hours.
- Weekly one-page rollup replaces live-CC traffic on owned threads.
First 12 months
- Documented progress on each major initiative: Sports Tourism Taskforce, soccer club relocation, ferry analysis, post-debt-payoff strategy.
- Improved community and political relationships around the Airpark, evidenced by engagement outcomes, elected-official feedback, and media tone.
- Working relationships established with newly elected officials within their first 90 days in office.
- Board meeting cadence, materials quality, and follow-through strengthened, as evaluated by board members.
- Measurable increase in CEO time on strategy, partnerships, and relationships that only the CEO can do.
Position Details
Full-time, exempt. Based in Montgomery County — on-site with regular travel across MCRA properties and to county/community meetings. Compensation commensurate with experience within MCRA’s executive compensation framework.
Montgomery County Revenue Authority is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.
Pay: $125,000.00 - $155,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Dental insurance
- Employee assistance program
- Employee discount
- Flexible spending account
- Health insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Retirement plan
- Tuition reimbursement
- Vision insurance
Work Location: In person
