Executive Director Interpreter Services

Description

Calling All Esteemed Leaders!

This role offers a unique opportunity to lead a systemwide transformation that directly advances health equity, patient safety, and operational excellence. The leader in this role will shape how Providence delivers equitable, culturally responsive care to patients who are Limited English Proficient (LEP), deaf, or hard of hearing-at enterprise scale.

The Role:

The Universal Language Access Plan (ULAP) initiative supports Providence's mission to deliver safe, timely, and equitable care for all patients. This role plays a critical leadership function in operationalizing a standardized, enterprise Language Access program-replacing a fragmented model of more than 50 vendors and inconsistent workflows with a unified, governed, and measurable operating framework.

The position contributes to systemwide improvements in patient safety, care experience, and caregiver workflow efficiency by supporting the design, implementation, and oversight of enterprise language access solutions. Responsibilities span strategy, governance, operations, technology, vendor management, and financial stewardship.

This role ensures Providence delivers equitable, compliant, and culturally responsive care while advancing enterprise transformation and operational excellence across hospitals, clinics, and health plans. This position requires some travel, but is primarily remote with options for being based out of our key, system locations: Lubbock, Irvine, Portland, Spokane, Santa Rosa or Renton.

What You'll Do:

• Enterprise Strategy, Governance & System Leadership
• Set the enterprise vision, strategy, and governance model for Language Access across the health system, ensuring alignment with Providence's Mission, system priorities, and longrange planning.
• Lead development of the enterprise Language Access operating model, including policies, standards, workflows, performance expectations, and accountability structures.
• Strengthen patient safety by defining standards and workflows that reduce communicationrelated risk and improve accuracy, documentation, and clinical decisionmaking.
• Establish enterprise performance monitoring systems and lead continuous improvement efforts to remove friction in caregiver workflows and patient experience.
• Serve as the primary executive leader for enterprise Language Access councils, governance bodies, and crossfunctional workgroups.
• Ensure alignment with Title VI, ADA/Section 504, CLAS Standards, Joint Commission requirements, and statelevel regulations.
• Team Leadership & Capability Building
• Provide full leadership accountability for modality managers, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and development.
• Establish competency models, quality expectations, and certification standards for interpreters and translators.
• Oversee enterprise strategy for interpreter certification and credentialing in partnership with HR, Compliance, Clinical Education, and Learning & Development.
• Model cultural fluency and inclusive leadership reflective of Providence's diverse communities, including highvolume Spanishspeaking populations.
• Change Leadership, Training & Adoption
• Lead enterprise change strategy to ensure consistent adoption of Language Access standards, tools, and workflows.
• Partner with HR, Learning & Development, Clinical Education, and ministry leadership to define training requirements, communications, and readiness plans.
• Improve caregiver experience by reducing access barriers, standardizing tools, and simplifying workflows.
• Oversee systemwide rollout of platforms, governance models, service standards, and quality frameworks.
• Serve as executive sponsor for Language Access Advisors and Champions across ministries.
• Modality Strategy, Standards & System Oversight
• Spoken Language Services
• Set systemwide strategy for onsite, video, and telephonic interpreting.
• Establish enterprise service standards, quality benchmarks, and performance expectations.
• Ensure operations support compliance, patient safety, and reliable caregiver workflows.
• ASL & Deaf / HardofHearing (DHH) Services
• Provide systemwide leadership ensuring ADA/504 compliance and bestinclass ASL/DHH services.
• Define service standards and partner with ministries and vendors to ensure equitable access.
• Translation & Continuous Improvement
• Lead enterprise strategy for translation governance, readability standards, and content lifecycle management.
• Establish expectations for accuracy, timeliness, safety, and compliance of written materials.
• Drive adoption of standardized translation processes across ministries and service lines.
• Platform, Technology & Data
• Define futurestate technology and data strategy for Language Access, including platforms, Epic integration, routing logic, automation, dashboards, and analytics.
• Provide direction for enterprise performance dashboards, data pipelines, and reporting governance.
• Lead evaluation and implementation of responsible AI and automation tools to enhance safety, efficiency, and interpretation/translation quality.
• Vendor Management, Governance & Performance
• Establish an enterprise vendor strategy optimizing quality, safety, performance, and cost efficiency.
• Lead seniorlevel vendor relationships across all language access modalities.
• Identify and execute opportunities to reduce unnecessary spend, streamline vendor portfolios, and optimize modality mix.
• Ensure vendor performance directly supports patient safety, documentation accuracy, and caregiver experience.
• Financial Stewardship & Budget Management
• Oversee annual budgeting for Language Access Shared Services, including forecasting, financial tracking, and resource allocation.
• Partner with Finance to implement costmanagement strategies and validate savings and performance improvements.
• Use data and analytics to identify opportunities to reduce waste and deploy lowercost modalities when clinically appropriate.
• Ensure financial decisions support Providence's Mission, patient safety, and operational excellence.

What You'll Bring:

• Education
• Bachelor's degree in Management, Linguistics/Interpretation, Public Health, or a related Health Sciences field.
• Master's degree (MPH, MHA, MBA, MA) in Linguistics/Interpretation, Public Health, or related field, or equivalent education/experience (preferred).
• Licensure / Certification
• Upon hire: Certified in Infection Control (CBIC) - Facility Managed.
• Required within two (2) years of hire: Fellow of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (FAPIC) - Facility Managed.
• Experience
• Ten (10) or more years of leadership experience in Language Access, Operations, CX, Clinical Support Services, or related domains within a multisite healthcare system.
• Eight (8) or more years leading highperforming teams, including managing managers and sharedservice models.
• Eight (8) or more years of deep regulatory expertise (Title VI, ADA/504, CLAS Standards, Joint Commission, and state interpreter certification requirements).
• Eight (8) or more years of experience in budget management, cost optimization, and financial stewardship.
• Proven experience leading enterprisescale transformation across multiple sites or regions.
• Preferred Qualifications
• Experience with Epic integration, analytics platforms, automation, or AIenabled technologies.
• Bilingual Spanish with demonstrated cultural fluency and experience engaging multilingual communities.
• Core Capabilities
• Enterprise leadership and system alignment
• Strategic planning and execution
• Operational excellence and continuous improvement
• Crossfunctional influence and executive communication
• Vendor governance and strategic negotiation
• Data literacy and analytics leadership
• Change leadership and transformation management
• DEI and health equity commitment
• Cultural fluency and multilingual engagement
• Responsible AI and futurestate innovation
• Financial stewardship and budget accountability

Why Join Us?

• Advance Health Equity at Scale: Lead an enterprise program that directly improves access, safety, and outcomes for diverse and underserved populations.
• System Level Influence: Shape policy, technology, and operations across hospitals, clinics, and health plans in one of the nation's largest health systems.
• Meaningful, Complex Work: Address regulatory, clinical, operational, and financial challenges through coordinated enterprise transformation.
• Build for the Future: Create a sustainable, governed Language Access framework that supports responsible innovation and longterm operational excellence.

Ready to Shape the Future of Healthcare?

If you are a senior leader with deep expertise in Language Access, health equity, and enterprise transformation-and the vision to lead change at scale-we invite you to apply. Join Providence in advancing equitable, safe, and culturally responsive care for every patient we serve.

At Providence we believe in the importance of human connection and the impact of in-person collaboration towards team cohesion and caregiver engagement. Further, we want our leaders to live in or near the communities we serve. Therefore, leaders applying for this role will be required to work a hybrid schedule, which consists of three days onsite, two days remote and live within a reasonable commuting distance to the ministry or service area they support and lead.

About Providence

At Providence, our strength lies in Our Promise of "Know me, care for me, ease my way." Working at our family of organizations means that regardless of your role, we'll walk alongside you in your career, supporting you so you can support others. We provide best-in-class benefits and we foster an inclusive workplace where diversity is valued, and everyone is essential, heard and respected. Together, our 120,000 caregivers (all employees) serve in over 50 hospitals, over 1,000 clinics and a full range of health and social services across Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas and Washington. As a comprehensive health care organization, we are serving more people, advancing best practices and continuing our more than 100-year tradition of serving the poor and vulnerable.

Posted are the minimum and the maximum wage rates on the wage range for this position. The successful candidate's placement on the wage range for this position will be determined based upon relevant job experience and other applicable factors. These amounts are the base pay range; additional compensation may be available for this role, such as shift differentials, standby/on-call, overtime, premiums, extra shift incentives, or bonus opportunities.

Providence offers a comprehensive benefits package including a retirement 401(k) Savings Plan with employer matching, health care benefits (medical, dental, vision), life insurance, disability insurance, time off benefits (paid parental leave, vacations, holidays, health issues), voluntary benefits, well-being resources and much more. Learn more at providence.jobs/benefits.

Applicants in the Unincorporated County of Los Angeles: Qualified applications with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with the Unincorporated Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act.

Requsition ID: 419248

Company: Providence Jobs

Job Category: Patient Services

Job Function: Clinical Support

Job Schedule: Full time

Job Shift: Day

Career Track: Leadership

Department: 4007 SS CC QLTY PATIENT SAF

Address: WA Renton 1801 Lind Ave SW

Work Location: Providence Valley Office Park-Renton

Workplace Type: Hybrid

Pay Range: $60.47 - $103.94

The amounts listed are the base pay range; additional compensation may be available for this role, such as shift differentials, standby/on-call, overtime, premiums, extra shift incentives, or bonus opportunities.