Head of Health & Safety

Responsibilities

• Global Risk Intelligence & Destination Strategy
• Lead a proactive, intelligence-driven approach to global risk monitoring across geopolitical, environmental, health, and security domains
• Translate complex global developments into actionable insights and recommendations for executive leadership
• Establish enterprise-wide risk thresholds, decision frameworks, and escalation protocols
• Oversee approval processes for higher-risk travel and chair the Travel Review Committee
• Partner with product and operations teams to enable responsible expansion into new destinations
• Leverage third-party intelligence providers and internal data to continuously enhance situational awareness
• Crisis Leadership, Incident Response & Business Continuity
• Own and evolve the enterprise crisis management and business continuity framework
• Serve as the executive incident leader during high-impact global events, personally engaging in real-time incident management and escalation handling
• Lead real-time decision-making in ambiguous, high-pressure situations
• Work directly alongside team members during active incidents, providing hands-on leadership and support
• Coordinate cross-functional crisis response across operations, legal, HR, and communications
• Review, triage, and support escalated incidents as needed
• Drive post-incident recovery, including traveler support and business continuity planning
• Conduct after-action reviews and strengthen organizational resilience
• Emergency Communications & Stakeholder Engagement
• Oversee emergency communications strategy across stakeholders
• Ensure timely, clear, and consistent messaging during crises
• Partner with communications teams on high-visibility situations
• Strengthen communication tools and preparedness
• Support development of emergency manuals and safety materials
• Draft or review critical communications during high-priority incidents
• Policy, Governance & Duty of Care
• Establish and maintain global health and safety policies aligned with industry standards
• Embed a culture of safety and accountability across the organization
• Partner with Legal and HR on compliance and risk mitigation
• Ensure alignment with insurance programs and duty-of-care expectations
• Collaborate on inclusion, accessibility, and responsible travel initiatives
• Track and report key safety and risk metrics
• Apply policies in real-time scenarios and resolve complex safety situations
• Leadership & Operational Oversight
• Lead, coach, and develop the Health & Safety team in a player-coach capacity
• Remain actively engaged in frontline activities and escalated issues
• Oversee departmental budget and resources
• Manage external vendor relationships
• Represent the organization externally as needed
• Participate in on-call rotation and real-time incident response

Requirements

• Required:
• 10-15+ years (Sr. Director) or 15+ years (VP) experience in global safety, risk, or crisis management
• Demonstrated experience leading global incident response
• Strong business acumen and executive stakeholder engagement
• Deep understanding of global risk and duty-of-care responsibilities
• Preferred:
• Experience in travel, education, or global mobility
• Familiarity with risk intelligence platforms
• Experience with ESG or enterprise risk frameworks
• Leveling Distinction
• Sr. Director:
• Leads execution of strategy with strong operational ownership
• Growing enterprise influence
• VP:
• Sets enterprise-wide vision and strat

Benefits

Additional Information

Company Introduction WorldStrides is the global leader in educational travel and experiential learning. The company was founded in 1967 to provide middle school travel programs to Washington, D.C. and has grown to provide a wide range of programs for more than half a million students annually to over 100 countries around the world. WorldStrides offers experiential learning programs in educational travel, performing arts, language immersion, career exploration, service-learning, study abroad, and sports. Each of these experiences helps students to see beyond the classroom and to see the world - and themselves - in new ways. Position Summary The Head of Health & Safety is an enterprise leader responsible for shaping and advancing a global, forward-looking approach to risk management, traveler safety, and crisis response. This role goes beyond traditional compliance to proactively identify emerging risks, enable business growth in complex environments, and safeguard the organization's people, operations, and reputation. Serving as a trusted advisor to senior leadership, this role integrates real-time global intelligence, cross-functional coordination, and decisive crisis leadership to ensure the organization operates confidently and responsibly worldwide. Given the size of the team, this role operates as a hands-on leader who actively engages in incident response, directly supports escalated situations, and works alongside the team during high-impact events.

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