Description:
Description:Title: General Counsel & Enterprise Compliance Lead
Employee Status: Full-Time Exempt
Salary: Grade 11
Starting range of $210,000– $274,000 | Chicago | Detroit | Milwaukee
Starting range of $195,000– $255,000 | Grand Rapids | IN | OH | MO
Reports to: President and Chief Operating Officer
Department: Enterprise Operations – Risk, Compliance & Legal
Location: Any IFF Office
Hybrid: In office: T/W | WFH: M/Th/F
Department Function: Risk, Compliance & Legal helps the organization understand and manage risk in a way that supports strategy and execution. It brings visibility to potential risks, helps teams navigate compliance requirements, and ensures legal and governance considerations are addressed early in planning rather than after problems arise.
The Organization:
IFF is a mission-driven lender, real estate consultant, and developer that helps communities thrive. Key to our success has been a deep sense of purpose, a broad perspective, and a relentless focus on achieving positive results. Across the Midwest we help clients from every sector, including human service agencies, health centers, schools, affordable housing developers, and healthy food grocery operators. Staff contribute extensive business experience and an unrivaled connection to the mission of IFF to the clients we serve.
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Partnering to create thriving communities is at the heart of everything we do. We leverage knowledge, capital, and resources to advance equitable and transformational outcomes in under-resourced communities, guided by our commitment to be an inclusive, anti-racist and anti-oppressive institution that honors communities as asset-rich and as experts in their own stories.
Basic Job Function
The General Counsel & Enterprise Compliance Lead (General Counsel) provides practical, strategic legal guidance while ensuring the organization matures our enterprise compliance and governance capabilities. The General Counsel serves as the organization's chief legal officer and principal advisor to executive leadership on legal, governance, enterprise risk, regulatory, reputational, and strategic matters; owns the development and execution of IFF's legal, governance, and enterprise compliance strategy and ensures these functions support long-term organizational objectives; participates directly in enterprise strategic planning and major organizational initiatives, ensuring leadership evaluates legal, regulatory, governance, and reputational implications before significant decisions are made; and ensures legal and compliance considerations are incorporated early into planning, decision-making, and enterprise initiatives rather than addressed reactively after issues arise.
The General Counsel is a leader who can balance legal rigor and risk management with operational partnership and practicality. This role is intentionally designed to operate as a strategic legal partner rather than a purely transactional legal function and is structured as both a legal leadership role and an enterprise coordination role within Enterprise Operations. The role requires strong legal expertise alongside emotional intelligence, operational awareness, and enterprise-level thinking.
IFF is looking for candidates with a commitment to the work we do who can demonstrate their creativity, diligence, enthusiasm, growth-mindset, thoughtfulness, and passion to make meaningful change in the areas of economic and racial justice.
Requirements:
Core Responsibilities:
Executive Leadership, Strategy & Enterprise Risk – Serves as a key member of the Executive Leadership Team and provides forward-looking strategic counsel concerning organizational risk, governance, growth initiatives, external partnerships, and enterprise decision-making, including:
- Advising the CEO, President & COO, Executive Leadership Team, and Board of Directors regarding material strategic, regulatory, governance, legal, and reputational risks.
- Anticipating emerging legal, regulatory, political, market, and reputational developments that may affect organizational objectives.
- Identifying second-order and long-term risks associated with strategic initiatives and major organizational decisions.
- Contributing to enterprise strategic planning and organizational design discussions.
- Supporting leadership through significant organizational changes, restructurings, crises, investigations, and other sensitive matters.
- Presenting recommendations and tradeoffs to executive leadership and the Board regarding complex organizational decisions.
- Advising executive leadership on legal implications of strategic and operational decisions.
- Supporting interpretation of laws, regulations, and contractual obligations affecting the organization.
- Providing legal review and guidance related to partnerships, contracted services agreements, enterprise initiatives, and organizational risk.
- Advising executive leadership on strategic alternatives, associated risks, and recommended courses of action for complex organizational decisions.
- Ensuring legal, governance, compliance, and enterprise-risk considerations are integrated into all major organizational initiatives.
- Serving as a confidential advisor to executive leadership concerning sensitive organizational matters, executive issues, significant disputes, regulatory exposures, and reputational concerns.
- Supporting escalation and resolution of sensitive organizational matters requiring legal judgment.
- Directing organizational understanding of regulatory and compliance obligations, including overseeing adherence to CDFI Fund rules, federal lending laws, grant agreements, and tax-exempt/non-profit requirements.
- Overseeing compliance considerations across departments and enterprise initiatives.
- Establishing consistent approaches to policy management and governance documentation.
- Advising the development and maintenance of enterprise policy frameworks and meta-policy structures.
- Leading the development and ongoing improvement of governance structures, board processes, and enterprise accountability structures.
- Serving as principal governance advisor to the Board and Board committees.
- Advising Board members regarding fiduciary obligations, conflicts of interest, ethics, and governance best practices.
- Overseeing governance policies and enterprise decision-making frameworks.
- Ensuring governance practices support organizational transparency, accountability, and strategic objectives.
- Providing guidance and support to IFF's board of directors and committees on corporate governance best practices, fiduciary responsibilities, conflict of interest, and ethics.
- Leading identification, assessment, prioritization, and reporting of significant enterprise legal, compliance, governance, operational, and reputational risks.
- Establishing enterprise risk escalation protocols.
- Providing periodic risk assessments to executive leadership and the Board.
- Ensuring emerging organizational risks are identified and addressed before material business impacts occur.
- Establishing legal review standards, delegation protocols, contracting frameworks and risk thresholds for agreements across the organization.
- Providing direct leadership of only the organization's most strategically significant, financially material, or enterprise-risk agreements.
- Advising operational leaders on vendor, technology, employment, and regulatory risk considerations.
- Identifying and escalating enterprise risks that may create operational or reputational exposure.
- Partnering with Enterprise Operations leadership to strengthen internal controls, governance rhythms, and organizational accountability.
- Ensuring leadership preparedness related to audits, compliance reviews, investigations, or governance inquiries.
- Overseeing sensitive internal investigations involving ethics, compliance, governance, executive conduct, or regulatory concerns.
- Advising executive leadership regarding business continuity, regulatory response, and reputational management.
- Directing legal strategy related to significant
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