Job Description

About RootED

We’ve set an audacious goal: All Denver Public Schools students will attend a high-performing school that prepares them for what’s next — success in college, in careers, and in life.

At RootED, we believe students, schools, and communities thrive when they have the access, tools, and resources to drive change. That’s why we provide funding and strategic support to schools and organizations that authentically engage their communities to create world-class public schools for every student in Denver.

Reaching our goal requires a departure from the status quo. The lack of access to a quality education disproportionately affects students of color, low-income students, and students with disabilities. Many of these children, their families, educators, and surrounding communities are left out of efforts to improve their schools.

So, we’re investing in partners that ensure those voices are at the center of decision-making. Specifically, our funding priorities include:

• Empowering students, families, and educators by providing access, tools, and resources for traditionally underrepresented stakeholders to advocate for better educational outcomes
• Expanding high-quality schools — specifically those that successfully serve students who are low-income, students of color, and/or students with disabilities
• Recruiting, developing, and retaining strong teachers and leaders who reflect the diversity of the students they serve

RootED is an organization that utilizes a co-leadership partnership model where each Partner leads a key aspect of our work and where every Partner is involved in key organizational strategic decisions.

About the Role

As Director or Partner of Communications, you will play a leadership role on our team by developing and executing our communications strategy through network building, digital storytelling and earned media. Your role will focus on raising awareness of RootED’s work, elevating the impact of our grantee organizations, and ultimately influencing public attitudes around educational equity problems and solutions. This is a new role and includes responsibility for our organizational communications as well as coordinating our communications work across the Metro Denver education ecosystem, including identifying and amplifying shared messages aligned with our goals and values. This role provides opportunities for engagement with teams and senior stakeholders across the city, as well as the opportunity to manage our partnership with the communications firm that has laid a strong foundation for our work in this area thus far. Depending on our chosen candidate’s demonstrated readiness to step into full ownership of a complex communications strategy as well as co-ownership of broad organizational decision-making, this role may hold a Director or a Partner title. Major areas of responsibility include:

Strategy Development & Oversight

• Develop a strategic communications plan aligned to organizational goals
• Manage communications projects and campaigns, tracking metrics and reporting on progress to funders and other stakeholders as needed
• Manage communications consultants to ensure effective coordination of work and effective use of internal and consulting resources

Stakeholder Engagement

• Develop and maintain strong stakeholder relationships to gain an understanding of key initiatives and work, with an eye toward developing meaningful content
• Organize network events to foster collaboration and innovation among stakeholder groups, and to surface shared messages and narratives aligned to our strategies
• Lead or support meetings with key stakeholders, including grantees, policymakers, and community members
• Work with grantees on communications capacity-building and campaign management efforts

Storytelling

• Create core messaging that that effectively communicates RootED’s mission, core values, and priorities
• Plan, write, and design communications and marketing collateral on behalf of RootED, telling stories that promote current issues, successes, and the priorities of the leaders we support
• Work with communications consultants to draft, pitch, and deliver compelling stories about education innovation and excellence that inform, engage, and persuade a broad range of stakeholders across the Metro Denver ecosystem
• Plan owned and earned media content, including managing and moderating social media posts, blog posts, and op-eds 
• Collaborate with communications consultants and grantees to uplift grantee stories and build their capacity to share their successes with the community
• Lead graphic design process and provide creative direction on collateral

Key Qualifications

Strong candidates will have the following skills and experiences:

• 3+ years of experience in public relations, communications, public policy, education, community engagement, local government, and/or related field
• An unwavering commitment to community-driven change and advancing racial equity in urban communities 
• Experience developing, communicating and managing complex communications and marketing campaigns across a variety of diverse stakeholders, including establishing and meeting metrics of success
• Skilled in transforming complex problems and ideas into compelling oral and written communications, with a portfolio of work demonstrating effective storytelling across mediums and channels (particularly in education or relevant issue areas such as healthcare, workforce development, housing, etc.)
• Experience managing social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn), websites (WordPress), email marketing campaigns (Constant Contact), and graphic design efforts
• Access to an established media network and in-depth understanding of local media opportunities; successful track record pitching and placing stories
• Spanish language skills a plus

Team Orientation

Strong candidates will have the following qualities:

• Collaborative: Oriented toward flat team hierarchies and highly collaborative decision making that frequently requires working through varying points of view to reach consensus
• Adaptable: Skilled at pivoting approaches based on changing needs and contexts
• Scrappy: Action-oriented, and able and willing to jump into a wide variety of tasks that advance the team’s mission, including tasks beyond their official job duties and tasks they haven’t done before
• Responsive: Able to make themselves available and accountable to stakeholders and to the RootED team (including on evenings and weekends as needed)

• No Ego: Oriented toward supporting and empowering grantees and communities to lead rather than centering RootED 
• Growth Mindset: Comfortable regularly giving and receiving feedback and making changes based on feedback to support the collective growth of the team

Compensation and Benefits 

The salary range for this position is $100,000 – $130,000 (Director) or $130,000 – $165,000 (Partner), depending on our chosen candidate’s readiness to fully engage in all aspects of the organizational leadership, communications leadership and stakeholder engagement components of this role upon hire. We are mindful of market pay inequities and are committed to making an offer that is externally and internally equitable; our offer will be based on the demands of the role and the skills and experiences the candidate brings. RootED provides a comprehensive benefits package and opportunities for meaningful advancement for all team members.

RootED is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability status, or any other applicable characteristics protected by law.

How to Apply

Application  To apply, please submit a resume and a response to the prompt below to: rooted@rooteddenver.org. Please answer the following briefly and in a medium of your choosing (if you answer in written form, please keep to under 150 words per response; if you answer in video form, please keep to under 2 minutes per response).

1. What makes you a great potential fit for this role?
2. What does community-driven change mean to you? 
3. What is your proudest accomplishment when it comes to using storytelling to achieve tangible outcomes that advance racial equity (e.g. shifts in political attitudes, policy change)?  How would you apply your learnings from this to advancing racial equity in education as RootED’s Director/Partner of Communications? If you have one or more artifacts that capture this accomplishment, please attach them to your email response.

Bureaus: Colorado. Job Categories: Full-Time. Job Types: Marketing and Communications. Salaries: 100,000 and above.