Senior Director of Investments, Lifecycle Capital
1. About the Role
The Senior Director of Investments is a foundational hire for Rhia Ventures’ new Lifecycle Capital strategy — a first-of-its-kind strategy designed to deploy catalytic and blended capital into the reproductive and maternal health (RMH) ecosystem with reproductive justice, health equity, and intersectionality at the center of every investment decision.
This hire will be a senior, full-time salaried Rhia Ventures employee who reports directly to CEO Erika Seth Davies and will be primarily responsible for building and managing the investment process and portfolio. Deep technical expertise in RMH is valued but secondary to investment excellence and mission alignment with the catalytic, impact-first, and ecosystem-building nature of this inaugural strategy. This person will sit within Rhia’s capital strategies pillar, but will work closely with senior members of the organization across all three of Rhia’s strategic pillars (capital strategies, systems change, and advising).
We plan to hire the Senior Director of Investments first; that person will then lead the hiring of an Investment Associate or Associate Director in 2027 — building a team whose culture reflects the strategy’s values from the ground up.
2. About Rhia Ventures
Rhia Ventures is a social impact 501c3 organization founded in 2018, dedicated to improving reproductive and maternal health (RMH) outcomes in the United States by reimagining and leveraging private capital. We work at the intersection of racial equity, women’s health, and capital to drive systems change, innovation, and financial and social returns. At Rhia, we envision a world where every woman and birthing person can thrive with full autonomy over their reproductive and maternal health.
Rhia’s strategic pillars include (1) systems change to build an inclusive women's reproductive and maternal health market that serves everyone who needs care; (2) capital strategies to leverage and influence private sector investment in women's health; and (3) advising to equip organizations, investors, and entrepreneurs to incorporate health equity and racial equity into their capital strategy. More detail on Rhia’s experience and activities within each of our programmatic pillars can be found here.
3. About Lifecycle Capital
At Rhia, we understand that RMH barriers (such as abortion restrictions, contraceptive deserts, and limited maternal care options) are causing catastrophic outcomes. Over the last eight years, Rhia played a central role in defining and building out an investable market for reproductive and maternal health. Through RH Capital (our $44M impact-first venture capital strategy), we discovered a stark capital gap for equity-centered, community-led, and early-stage RMH enterprises. These organizations are critical to shifting RMH outcomes, but face barriers to accessing current capital options (including philanthropy, public, and private capital).
With Lifecycle Capital, we will deploy capital to RMH enterprises that cannot access the capital they need today to seed, scale, and sustain. This includes community-led enterprises (doula collectives, midwifery practices, and birth centers that provide culturally rooted care) and equity-focused early-stage solutions (products across contraception, maternal care, and digital health that place equity at the core of their business model).
Rhia defines catalytic capital as patient, flexible, and risk‐open investment that accepts below‐market returns and/or disproportionate risk to unlock additional capital and impact, and goes where traditional investments avoid: underserved populations, unproven innovations, and areas shaped by historical bias.
Beyond capital, the Lifecycle Capital strategy will include four elements at its core, all of which will need to be integrated with the investment processes created by this new hire, but which will be primarily implemented and managed by other senior members of Rhia’s team:
- Rhia’s proprietary HEART Framework to embed health equity at every stage of investment
- Participatory Design approach to tangibly shift power in the decision-making process
- Technical Assistance to increase both enterprise and ecosystem resilience and impact
- Impact Measurement and Management to ensure accountability for effecting outcomes
4. Position Description
Core Responsibilities
Investment Process & Portfolio Management
- Lead end-to-end deal execution of impact-first investments in reproductive and maternal health: sourcing, diligence, structuring, closing, and ongoing monitoring and repayment
- Manage an evolving portfolio of community-based and early-stage RMH enterprises
- Deploy blended capital instruments in alignment with investee needs, including: recoverable grants; low-cost or convertible debt; revenue-based financing; and flexible/redeemable equity
- Track portfolio performance; lead investor reporting and portfolio reviews
Impact-First Strategy Design
- Design and maintain investment policies, underwriting frameworks, and risk management processes, with impact and health/racial equity at the core of the strategy
- Test and assess which investment terms and flexible instruments maximize successful outcomes across different RMH enterprise types and stages (i.e., seeding, scaling, and sustaining)
- Develop and implement an impact measurement and management (IMM) framework with attention to equity outcomes, power shifts, and disparity reduction, in partnership with Rhia’s Systems Change team and leveraging Rhia’s health equity HEART Framework
- Navigate the distinct risk/return expectations of philanthropic, impact, and institutional investors (across PRIs, MRIs, guarantees, and grants) while prioritizing investee needs
Stakeholder & Ecosystem Engagement
- Support fundraising and capitalization of the $50M strategy across funders and investors, in partnership with Rhia’s senior leadership and staff, during the launch phase of Lifecycle Capital
- Build and maintain relationships with investees, co-investors, and ecosystem field partners over the life of the strategy
- Represent Rhia and the first-of-a-kind RMH catalytic strategy externally at convenings, conferences, investor forums, and sector events/spaces
- Uphold the strategy’s intended participatory investing approach — centering community voice and practitioner wisdom in investment design, terms, and portfolio management
- Work with Rhia’s Systems Change team to identify investees’ technical assistance needs and ensure they are comprehensively addressed over the life course of the investment
Team Building and Collaboration
- Lead the hiring and management of an Investment Associate/Associate Director in 2027
- Build a team culture that is rigorous, relational, and equity-centered
- Partner with other teams at Rhia to ensure a successful, holistic strategy, including robust integration on the implementation of Technical Assistance pre- and post-investment that will be led by Rhia’s Systems Change team
Qualifications & Background
Core Qualifications
- 10–15+ years of experience across impact investing, community development finance, lending or debt investing, venture/growth investing, or a closely related field
- Demonstrated experience independently managing a total portfolio and deploying capital across multiple instrument types (not just equity or just debt)
- Strong financial modeling and investment analysis skills at the deal level, from sourcing through structuring, terms, closing, and ongoing monitoring
- Deep technical knowledge and creativity to set terms that are right-sized to each enterprise’s unique needs, while balancing achieving a portfolio-wide goal of “capital preservation-plus”
- Hands-on experience with blended capital structures and impact-first investments. This could include receiving grants, PRIs, and MRIs; and deploying instruments like low-cost concessionary or flexible debt, recoverable grants, revenue-based finance, convertible debt, or redeemable equity
Mindset & Values
- Deep personal alignment with reproductive justice, health equity, and intersectional frameworks, as these are the lenses through which investment decisions are made, not an add-on
- Comfort operating in complexity and ambiguity; this is a first-time strategy in an emerging field that Rhia has helped to build and grow, and this person should be excited to build something together while taking ownership over investment processes and decisions
- Genuine commitment to community-centered and participatory approaches. At Rhia, investees and practitioners are partners, not recipients
- Ability to hold financial rigor and deep mission integrity together, not as trade-offs
Nice to Have (Not Required)
- Familiarity with the RMH landscape: enterprise types, payer dynamics, or policy environment
- Experience in health equity, community health, or adjacent social sectors
- Prior experience in a first-time fund or emerging manager context
- Familiarity with Rhia Ventures’ HEART Framework or similar health/racial equity integration tools
5. Compensation & Benefits
Salary Range for Senior Director of Investments: $150,000 – $190,000
Full Benefits Package
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Please note that Rhia will not be taking informational calls as a policy to mitigate bias and manage our team's bandwidth, but we will be progressing eligible candidates to a phone screen where they can learn more. In addition, if you have any questions that are not addressed in the posting, you can send them to [email protected].
This posting will be open until Sunday, July 19, at 11:59 pm ET. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. We encourage interested candidates to apply early.