Director, Humanitarian Health Services

Title: Director, Humanitarian Health Services

Employee Working Location: Partially Virtual / Hybrid (Canada)

Employment Status: Temporary Full-Time

The Canadian Red Cross (Red Cross) - an inspirational not for profit organization, helps people and communities in Canada and around the world in times of need and supports them in strengthening their resilience. As a Canada's Best Employers 2026 , we are committed to having an accessible, diverse, inclusive, and barrier-free work environment.

The Director, Humanitarian Health Services is responsible for providing direction and oversight to the design, planning, development, implementation, evaluation, and evolution of domestic and international emergency health readiness and response, ensuring alignment with the service line direction and the organization's overall strategy and vision. They lead Domestic Emergency Response Unit and international emergency health operations in delivering high-quality health services, achieving key objectives, and continuously improving operations.

The Director manages and develops a team, setting service objectives, ensuring service quality and impact, and fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement. They are accountable for identifying and addressing opportunities, risks, and challenges, implementing best practices, and ensuring efficient resource utilization. They foster cross-functional collaboration and engage with internal and external stakeholders to drive innovation, enhance service delivery, and promote a culture of excellence and continuous improvement. By creating a positive and inclusive team environment, they support staff development, operational effectiveness, and long-term program success.

In this role you will:

• Provide strategic leadership for Humanitarian Health Services (HHS), translating organizational priorities and evolving humanitarian health needs into scalable, deployable, and sustainable health services.
• Lead the planning, execution, and evaluation of key HHS priorities, including achieving WHO EMT certification, evolution of HHS services, and strengthening domestic and international health response capacity.• Ensure HHS services and capabilities are effective, sustainable, scalable, interoperable, and adaptable to evolving humanitarian needs and operating environments.
• Oversee budgeting, financial planning, and resource allocation across HHS readiness, workforce, training, assets, and response activities, balancing operational readiness with long-term sustainability and cost-effectiveness.• Build strategic partnerships across CRC, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, governments, health authorities, National Societies, funders, and other partners to strengthen, mobilize, and integrate humanitarian health services domestically and internationally.
• Strengthen and sustain the HHS workforce, including staff, delegates, roster/register members, through workforce planning, competency development, learning pathways, exercises, and deployment readiness.
• Oversee the evaluation of outcomes and impacts, ensuring that KPIs are defined and data is collected, relevant program/service reports reviewed, analyzed accurately and acted on.
• Drive innovation, efficiency, and quality across HHS, including advancing mobile and modular health models, digital health, diagnostics, telehealth, interoperable equipment and systems, and other approaches that strengthen humanitarian health delivery.
• Ensure compliance with CRC policies, clinical governance requirements, applicable regulations, WHO/EMT standards, and recognized humanitarian health best practices.• Identify risks strategic, clinical, operational, workforce, and readiness risks, and implement mitigation strategies to protect service quality and deployment capability.
• Maintain and strengthen readiness of scalable, interoperable HHS capabilities, including personnel, assets, equipment, systems, and partnerships, using cost-effective strategies that enable timely domestic and international mobilization.
• Collaborate with Domestic Operations, International Emergency Response, Supply Chain Management, and other operational partners to design, mobilize, and adapt health services for domestic and international emergencies.
• Establish appropriate governance, standards, and quality frameworks for HHS services, aligned with CRC policies, Movement approaches, WHO EMT standards, and relevant clinical and humanitarian best practices.

What we are looking for:

• Qualifications include a minimum of 8-12 years experience in humanitarian health, emergency health, health systems, or a related field and a university degree in clinical and/or public health and/or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and experience. A graduate degree and/or relevant professional designation is considered an asset.
• Requires advanced knowledge of humanitarian and emergency health, including service design, readiness, response operations, and health system integration.
• Leadership and management experience, with the ability to provide strategic vision, drive innovation, and inspire and motivate teams to achieve program objectives.
• Ability to develop and manage program budgets, monitor expenditures, and ensure financial accountability.
• Ability to address complex, abstract, and evolving problems and develop unique, precedent-setting solutions, while assessing and mitigating strategic risks.
• Communication, influence, persuasion and negotiation skills to build consensus, influence senior stakeholders, and navigate complex, sensitive, political, and cross-cultural environments.
• Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, evaluating, and continuously improving complex health services or emergency response capabilities.
• Ability to establish and maintain strategic partnerships with government agencies, NGOs, Red Cross Movement Partners, donors, local communities, and to navigate complex political and cultural contexts.

Working Conditions:

• No unusual physical requirements.
• Requires significant attention to detail and concentration and ability to mentally process large amounts of information.
• The work pace is often unpredictable with significant time pressures.
• Ability to adapt to frequent and often urgent changes in priorities, and make decisions under pressure, work at an unpredictable pace.
• The majority of work will be conducted from an office-like setting.
• International travel to unsafe or high-stress environments affected by major disaster or conflict requiring a significant and continuous need for personal safety management.
• Work requires the ability to work to multiple, business critical, and conflicting deadlines.
• Work requires interactions in difficult, emotionally charged situations.
• Work requires interactions and support to clients who are experiencing traumatic situations.
• Periodic travel to country operations may be required. Field deployments may involve working in unstable environments with limited access to basic services, often in emergency contexts. These settings require strict adherence to security protocols.
• Candidate must be medically cleared for travel in accordance with established Canadian Red Cross medical criteria, where applicable.
• In a large scale emergency, where staff numbers are compromised or additional resources are required provide disaster relief and/or emergency field operational support.
• As we work with and support people (managers, colleagues, beneficiaries/customers, volunteers, donors and external partners) and communities in Canada and around the world, applicants whose first language is not English may be required to perform the responsibilities of the role in English.
• Eligibility to work in Canada: At this time, we welcome applications from candidates eligible to work in Canada. If you are not a citizen or permanent resident of Canada, we encourage you to carefully review your visa to find out whether you are eligible to work in the job you are considering applying for. Refer to our FAQ for more information.
• If you are selected for this role, you will be required to complete a successful pre-employment screening process which includes a satisfactory Enhanced Police Information Check (E-PIC).