Description
President & Chief Executive Officer
Independent Television Service (ITVS)
Location: San Francisco, CA | Hybrid
Compensation: ITVS anticipates a base salary of approximately $275,000, plus an annual performance incentive with a target opportunity of up to 20% of base salary, tied to achieving mutually agreed-upon organizational goals, with particular emphasis on fundraising and resource development.
Lead the next chapter of independent storytelling.
The Independent Television Service (ITVS) seeks an accomplished, visionary, and deeply collaborative President & CEO to lead one of the country’s most influential organizations supporting independent documentary storytelling.
For more than three decades, ITVS has helped independent filmmakers bring powerful stories and underrepresented perspectives to audiences nationwide. Through funding, co-production, partnerships, and public media distribution, ITVS has played a distinctive role in ensuring that independent voices have a place in the national conversation.
Today, that role is more vital — and more complex — than ever.
The media landscape is being reshaped by new technologies, platforms, audience behaviors, business models, and expectations about whose stories get told and who gets to tell them. At the same time, the need for trusted, independent storytelling that helps audiences understand one another and the world around them has never been greater.
The next CEO will have the opportunity to help define what comes next.
The Opportunity
Reporting to the Board of Directors, the President & CEO will provide the vision, leadership, and external presence to guide ITVS into its next era.
This is a uniquely multidimensional CEO role. The leader will serve as chief strategist, fundraiser, organizational steward, and national ambassador for ITVS—working across the worlds of independent film, public media, philanthropy, journalism, and the broader creative ecosystem.
The CEO will lead an organization with an annual operating budget of approximately $16 million, a talented and committed staff of 40, and an extraordinary network of filmmakers, funders, public media partners, and industry collaborators.
The next leader will build on ITVS’s considerable legacy while asking ambitious questions about its future:
- How can ITVS ensure independent storytellers continue to have the resources and platforms to tell the stories that matter?
- How can the organization expand its reach and relevance as audiences increasingly consume nonfiction storytelling across platforms?
- How can ITVS deepen its role as a champion of diverse and underrepresented perspectives?
- How can it strengthen and diversify the resources required to sustain independent storytelling for the long term?
- What should the future of public-interest documentary storytelling look like—and what role can ITVS play in shaping it?
- This is an opportunity for a leader who is excited not simply to manage a successful organization, but to shape the future of an essential field.
What You Will Lead
Set the vision for ITVS’s next chapter.
Develop and champion a compelling strategic vision that builds on ITVS’s legacy while positioning the organization for continued relevance, innovation, and impact in a rapidly evolving media environment.
Drive resources and sustainability.
Serve as ITVS’s chief fundraising ambassador, cultivating deep relationships with foundations, philanthropists, public media partners, and other supporters while identifying new opportunities for sustainable growth and diversified revenue.
Champion independent storytelling.
Provide strategic leadership across ITVS’s work, including major co-production and funding decisions, ensuring that the organization’s investments reflect its mission and commitment to distinctive, high-quality, independent storytelling.
Strengthen ITVS’s external presence and influence.
Represent the organization nationally and serve as a leading advocate for independent media, documentary storytelling, diverse perspectives, and the role of public-interest media in a healthy democracy.
Build powerful partnerships.
Strengthen relationships across public media, independent film, journalism, philanthropy, technology, cultural institutions, and other sectors to expand ITVS’s reach, influence, and impact.
Lead and inspire the organization.
Partner closely with the Board and staff to build a high-performing, collaborative, and inclusive culture grounded in trust, accountability, creativity, and shared purpose.
Steward ITVS for the long term.
Ensure the organization’s financial health, operational effectiveness, risk management, and organizational capacity are aligned with its ambitions for the future.
Who You Are
We are looking for a leader who combines vision with execution, mission with business acumen, and deep relationships with an entrepreneurial spirit.
You may come from public media, documentary film, journalism, entertainment, philanthropy, technology, or another adjacent field. What matters most is the combination of leadership experience, strategic imagination, external credibility, and a genuine belief in the power of independent storytelling.
You bring:
- A track record of executive leadership and the ability to lead a complex mission-driven organization through change and opportunity.
- Fundraising and resource-development experience, with the credibility and relationship-building skills to engage major institutional and individual funders.
- Strong documentary and film business judgment, with the ability to assess opportunities, make strategic investment decisions, and balance mission with long-term financial sustainability.
- Financial and organizational acumen, including experience overseeing significant budgets, managing risk, and making thoughtful decisions about organizational resources.
- A sophisticated understanding of the media landscape, particularly independent film, documentary, journalism, public media, or related creative industries.
- Exceptional communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to build trust, communicate with clarity and transparency, and engage effectively with staff, filmmakers, funders, Board members, media leaders, policymakers, and other stakeholders.
- A collaborative and people-centered leadership style and a demonstrated ability to nurture strong teams, develop and mentor talent, and create healthy organizational cultures.A natural instinct for partnership, with the ability to connect people and institutions around shared opportunities.
- A deep commitment to diverse and independent voices and to ensuring that the media ecosystem reflects the breadth of experiences and perspectives in our society.
We are particularly interested in leaders who can bring curiosity, courage, creativity, and an expansive view of what ITVS can become.
Hybrid Work
Creativity, collaboration and building community are essential to ITVS’ long-term health and sustainability. Our goal is to provide a flexible hybrid model of in-person and remote work that supports individual productivity, teamwork, and an organizational culture fueled in part by being present with one another. To achieve this goal, in-office attendance, employees are required to work in our San Francisco office at least two (2) days a week, including an all-staff in-office day on Thursdays.
Compensation & Benefits
ITVS anticipates a base salary of approximately $275,000, commensurate with experience and qualifications, plus meaningful annual incentive compensation tied to the achievement of mutually agreed-upon organizational priorities, including fundraising and resource development goals.
ITVS offers a comprehensive benefits package, including employer-sponsored medical, dental, and vision coverage; life and disability insurance; retirement and financial wellness benefits; an employee assistance program; and generous paid time off.
Application Instructions
URL Media is leading the search for this position. Please apply directly at the link provided. Rather than a traditional cover letter, we invite you to respond to the following prompt: In no more than two pages, tell us about the leadership experience that has most shaped how you would lead ITVS at this moment in its history. Describe one consequential decision or inflection point in your career that required you to balance mission, audience or creative impact, financial sustainability, and organizational realities. What did you decide, what did you learn, and how does that experience inform the way you would approach ITVS’s next chapter?
We are less interested in a summary of your résumé than an understanding of how you think, lead, make tradeoffs, and create opportunities. Please ground your response in a specific experience from your own career and include one detail, observation, or moment that we would not learn from reading your résumé. Please use your own voice and do not simply restate language from this job description.
Why ITVS, Why Now?
There are moments when an organization is called not simply to protect what it has built, but to imagine what it could build next.
ITVS is at one of those moments.
The next President & CEO will inherit an extraordinary legacy, a strong platform, and a community of people deeply invested in the organization’s mission. They will also have the freedom and responsibility to ask bold questions, pursue new opportunities, and help shape the future of independent storytelling.
If you believe independent voices matter—and that the stories we choose to tell can change how people understand themselves, one another, and the world—we invite you to consider leading ITVS into its next chapter.
About ITVS
The Independent Television Service (ITVS) is a nonprofit media organization dedicated to supporting independent filmmakers and bringing distinctive, diverse, and underrepresented perspectives to audiences. Through funding, co-production, distribution, and partnerships, ITVS has helped make independent documentaries an essential part of the public media landscape.
ITVS is headquartered in San Francisco and works with filmmakers and partners across the country.
ITVS is committed to building an inclusive organization and strongly encourages applications from candidates with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.
ITVS is an equal opportunity employer.
