NCAA

Background:

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is one of the most influential governing bodies in sport, serving as the national steward of intercollegiate athletics for more than 500,000 student-athletes and approximately 1,100 colleges and universities. As a member-led association, the NCAA exists to ensure that college athletics remains a safe, fair, and educationally centered experience while supporting the lifelong success and well-being of student-athletes.

For more than a century, the NCAA has played a critical role in shaping the landscape of collegiate athletics, balancing competitive excellence with academic achievement, student development, and institutional integrity. Through its national office in Indianapolis, the NCAA oversees 92 national championships in 24 sports, supports governance and policymaking across all three divisions, and administers programs designed to advance student-athlete success both on and off the field.

The NCAA's mission extends well beyond competition. The organization has led several landmark initiatives that have helped define modern standards for student-athlete welfare. Over the past decade, the NCAA has led national efforts related to concussion management, mental health support, catastrophic injury prevention, emergency action planning, and evidence-based sports medicine practices. Its Sport Science Institute and partnerships with leading medical organizations have driven research and policy advancements that have become benchmarks across amateur and professional sports.

Today, the NCAA operates within an increasingly dynamic and complex environment shaped by evolving legal, regulatory, financial, technological, and reputational considerations. As college athletics continues to transform, from athlete benefits and governance reform to safety, cybersecurity, and event operations, the NCAA remains committed to its core purpose: governing competition in a fair, safe, equitable, and sportsmanlike manner while ensuring that the educational experience of the student-athlete remains paramount.

NCAA Mission

Core Values

• LEADERSHIP | Actively listen and continually strive to provide vital solutions, counsel and advocacy for student-athletes and intercollegiate athletics.
• INCLUSION | Seek and incorporate different perspectives and experiences to drive innovation and impact.
• COMMUNICATION | Commit to an environment of openness to build trust and make timely decisions.
• COLLABORATION | Work together, based on mutual respect, to lead and serve stakeholders.
• ACCOUNTABILITY | Take ownership for actions and results to add value every day.

Any interested candidates should contact ZRG directly. Contacting NCAA will only delay consideration of your qualifications.

Position Summary

The Vice President of Enterprise Strategic Risk serves as a senior advisor, responsible for building enterprise-wide visibility into financial, operational, and reputational risk exposure related to the NCAA’s litigation, regulatory, and business functions. This executive will focus on translating legal and policy uncertainty into financial analysis, scenario planning, and executive decision support. Reporting to the SVP, Administration and Chief Financial Officer and working closely with the Office of Legal Affairs, this executive will help leadership assess, quantify, and act on the financial and strategic implications of material risk.

The Vice President will support senior leadership, the President, and the Board of Governors in evaluating emerging opportunities and risks, understanding their potential financial, operational, and reputational implications, and presenting data-driven recommendations to inform decisions that advance the NCAA’s long-term mission and strategic objectives.

This position focuses on translating uncertainty into actionable business intelligence—particularly where legal, regulatory, policy, insurance, and financial considerations intersect—and ensuring that risk-informed analysis is incorporated into strategic and financial decision-making across the organization.

Duties and Responsibilities

Enterprise Risk Leadership

• Provide leadership and oversight for the NCAA's strategic risk agenda, including coordination with enterprise risk management, sports betting integrity initiatives, corporate safety and security, internal audit, and analytics capabilities, while driving enterprise-wide visibility into litigation and financial exposure.
• Assist with the identification, assessment, and monitoring of legal, regulatory, operational, financial, governance, and reputational risks. Legal risk evaluation will be performed at the direction of the Office of Legal Affairs.
• In collaboration with the Office of Legal Affairs, maintain litigation and strategic risk dashboards, exposure analyses, decision trees, and present risk scenarios and mitigation strategies to leadership.
• Serve as a key member of the internal Enterprise Risk Management Control Group.

Litigation Risk Analysis & Financial Modeling

• In collaboration with the Office of Legal Affairs, develop and maintain financial exposure models that quantify current and emerging litigation risks, including potential settlement ranges, defense-cost implications, insurance recoveries, and reserve consideration.
• Conduct scenario planning and decision-tree analysis to translate legal, regulatory, and policy developments into financial, operational, and strategic insights.
• Partner with Finance and Accounting, Legal, Insurance, and outside advisors on reserves, insurance recovery assumptions, financial reporting implications, and risk-adjusted recommendations.

Operational Excellence & Cost Management

• Assess legal, operational, and administrative processes to drive visibility, decision quality, efficiency, and cost discipline.
• In collaboration with the Office of Legal Affairs, establish KPIs and reporting mechanisms related to litigation portfolio management, legal spend, outside counsel performance, insurance recoveries, operational effectiveness, and enterprise risk mitigation.
• Support modernization of litigation reporting and case tracking software and related business processes.

Strategic Advisory & Governance Support

• Advise senior leadership on the assessed financial, litigation, governance, and operational implications of emerging NCAA policy and strategy issues, including governance reform, NIL initiatives, media rights, revenue-sharing structures, conference realignment, and other emerging issues.
• Evaluate strategic initiatives to identify risks, opportunities, and potential organizational impacts.

Regulatory & Legislative Intelligence

• Monitor legislative and regulatory developments affecting intercollegiate athletics.
• Proactively partner with Legal and Government Affairs to assess legislative and regulatory developments to assist in quantifying potential organizational and membership impact.

Risk Financing & Insurance Strategy

• Develop a thorough understanding of the NCAA's insurance portfolio, captive insurance structure, and risk-financing mechanisms.
• Evaluate opportunities to mitigate enterprise exposure through insurance and reserve strategies.

Crisis Legal Preparedness

• Develop playbooks for high-probability crisis scenarios
• Serve as a key voice in crisis response teams with the ability to articulate the impact of decisions via data and economic impact.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Partner with Legal, Accounting, Insurance, Finance, Communications, Championship Operations, Government Affairs, Procurement, IT, and Enterprise Risk to bring the right information together and embed risk thinking into day-to-day decisions.
• Serve as a member of the President's Cabinet.
• Help non-legal leaders understand the financial, operational, and reputational risks associated with proposed legal and policy decisions.
• Assist with the modernization of technology and processes across the NCAA that provide visibility into the litigation portfolio and broader strategic risk exposure.
• In collaboration with Legal and other critical stakeholders, maintain best-in-class legal and operational processes to effectively manage internal and external costs while continuing to mitigate organizational risk.

Qualifications, Skills and Education Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree strongly preferred (J.D., MBA, Master's degree in Risk Management, Finance, Public Policy, or related field).
• Legal experience or experience supporting litigation modeling preferred.
• Minimum 10 years of progressive leadership experience assessing, quantifying, and managing complex enterprise risks. Litigation risk modeling preferred.
• Deep expertise in developing financial risk models, scenario analyses, decision trees, forecasting tools, dashboards, or other frameworks supporting executive decision-making.
• Experience advising senior executives and boards on strategic, legal, financial, regulatory, or operational risk matters with the ability to translate complex information into clear options and recommendations.
• Strong understanding of legal cost drivers, risk financing, insurance structures, reserves, scenario analysis, and enterprise risk management principles.
• Proven success leading organizations or teams through significant change and complexity.
• Strong political acumen and ability to navigate diverse stakeholder groups.
• Demonstrated ability to handle highly sensitive and confidential matters.

Key Competencies

Effective Communication

• Can exchange ideas, thoughts, opinions, knowledge, and data so that the message is understood with clarity and purpose.

Strategic Agility

• Sees ahead clearly, can anticipate future consequences and trends accurately, has broad knowledge and perspective, is future-oriented, can articulately paint credible pictures and visions of possibilities and likelihoods, can create competitive and breakthrough strategies and plans.

Executive Presence

• Has the ability to inspire others to be assertive in their roles through the consistent demonstration of confidence and clear leadership, has self-awareness and the ability to present oneself in a disciplined yet engaging manner.

Vision and Collaborative Influence

• Communicates a compelling picture of the vision and strategy that motivates others to action by: Talking about future possibilities in a positive way. Creating milestones and symbolizing support behind the vision. Showing personal commitment to the vision.

Stakeholder Focus

• Is dedicated to meeting the expectations and requirements of internal and external stakeholders, gets first-hand stakeholder information and uses it for improvements in products and services, acts with stakeholders in mind, establishes and maintains effective relationships with stakeholders and gains their trust and respect through honesty, integrity, authenticity, and inclusivity.

ZRG’S Commitment:

At ZRG, we do not just accept differences—we celebrate and support it. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, genetic information, marital or partnership status, military or veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. ZRG is an equal opportunity employer and workplace, and we encourage applicants of all backgrounds & communities to apply.