Job Highlights
The Director of Community Impact leads Houston Grand Opera’s efforts to deepen its connection to the city it serves—expanding awareness of HGO, access to opera, cultivating meaningful partnerships, and ensuring that HGO’s programs connect to the diversity, history, and spirit of Houston. As a senior leader within the Audiences Department, this role bridges company mission and civic engagement, shaping strategies and programs that bring opera into communities and schools across Houston. This position provides vision, strategy, and operational leadership for HGO’s community engagement, education, and access initiatives, aligning them with mainstage programming, audience development goals, and philanthropic priorities.

Join Us!
We are looking for talented, passionate, dedicated people who are eager to make contributions to our community and our mission. If you are excited about this position but your experience does not align perfectly, we encourage you to apply. You may be just the right candidate for this position or another role at HGO.

About the Houston Grand Opera
The mission of HGO is to enrich our diverse community through the art of opera. We do so by creating, curating, exploring, and producing outstanding experiences centered around the human voice. HGO has received a Tony Award, two Grammy Awards, and three Emmy Awards – we are the only opera company in the world to win all three honors.

Our strategic focus is two-fold: creating profoundly enriching experiences for our diverse audiences and clearly defining and positively promoting the HGO brand. We believe every team member enriches our organization by exposing a broad range of ways to understand and engage our community and discover, design, and deliver enriching experiences.

Compensation and Benefits
We offer robust benefits to full-time employees, including:
Comprehensive and affordable health benefits.
Generous paid time.
403b retirement plan with employer match.
Flexible work schedule.
Professional development fund and opportunities.
Discounted parking in the Theater District garage and nearby lots, plus easy access to Metro transportation.
Free tickets to our mainstage and community productions and events.

Key Responsibilities
Develop and lead a comprehensive community impact strategy that deepens audience connection to HGO’s mainstage productions and expands engagement across Greater Houston. Identify ways mainstage works, community programming, and special initiatives can resonate with diverse audiences and community partners.
Build and nurture strategic partnerships with schools, cultural organizations, social service agencies, and civic leaders to execute an outreach plan to extend HGO’s presence beyond the Wortham Theater Center. Expand free and subsidized programming for youth and families in parks, libraries, and community spaces.
Advance arts education and performing arts exposure through student matinees, in-school assemblies, classroom resources, and educator tools. Support partnerships with HISD and regional school districts to integrate classical music and opera into local education ecosystems.
Lead HGO’s participation in citywide cultural initiatives and neighborhood-based collaborations to help reach organization's audience-building and community connection objectives.
As the strategy develops and events and initiatives are created, work cross-departmentally to ensure seamless integration of community initiatives.
Collaborate closely with Marketing, Communications, and Philanthropy to ensure community narratives are authentically represented in messaging and materials.
Partner with Philanthropy to identify, cultivate, and secure contributed revenue supporting community impact initiatives.
Align community engagement efforts with audience development, ticket sales, and fundraising objectives.
Provide leadership, direction, and mentorship to the Community Impact team, ensuring clarity of purpose and alignment with strategic priorities.
Develop and manage the team’s annual budget.
Partner with Business Intelligence team to develop quantitative and qualitative metrics to assess community impact, participation, satisfaction, and contribution to revenue goals. Prepare reports, testimonials, and data visualizations for leadership, board members, coworkers, funders, and civic partners.
Ensure all community programming aligns with HGO’s artistic standards and institutional goals.
Serve as an ambassador for HGO at civic events, panels, and coalition meetings.

Qualifications
10–15 years of professional experience, with a strong emphasis on community impact, civic engagement, or education partnerships; at least 5 years in a team management role.
Proven ability to develop strategy, lead teams, and manage complex programs and budgets.
Deep knowledge of Houston’s communities, civic landscape, and cultural ecosystem.
Demonstrated success building and sustaining partnerships in the arts, education, nonprofit, or public sector.
Excellent communication, relationship-building, and collaborative skills.
Creative, inclusive thinker able to bridge artistic vision and social purpose.
Passion for the performing arts and their power to inspire connection, learning, and civic pride.

Physical Demands
The physical demands described here are representative of those we consider important for an employee to successfully perform essential functions of this job: extended periods of sitting and performing tasks such as typing and using a computer mouse, with strong visual and auditory focus, occasional lifting (not exceeding 25 pounds), reaching for items, effective communication skills, fine motor abilities, and mobility within the office for activities such as attending performances, events, and meetings. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

Equal Opportunity
Houston Grand Opera is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at HGO are based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion or belief, national, social or ethnic origin, sex (including pregnancy), age, physical, mental or sensory disability, HIV Status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital, civil union or domestic partnership status, past or present military service, family medical history or genetic information, family or parental status, or any other status protected by federal, state, or local laws or regulations. HGO will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. HGO encourages applicants of all ages. 

The orchestra is searching for a Music Director to work with the ensemble and the Associate Music Director starting in the 2027 – 2028 season. Finalist candidates will rehearse and conduct the orchestra during individual concert cycles of the 2026 – 2027 season.

The Program Manager plays a pivotal role in shaping, implementing, and evaluating the Foundation’s artistic and educational programming. This person will curate and oversee exhibitions, residencies, and cultural events while fostering
meaningful collaborations with artists, schools, and community organizations. The ideal candidate is an experienced arts
professional—creative, organized, and deeply committed to community impact—who believes in the power of art to shape
cultural identity and expand opportunity.