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Operations / Administration Lawyers’ Advisory Council Fellow
Job Description
New York City Urban Debate League (NYCUDL)
The New York City Urban Debate League (NYCUDL) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding access to competitive debate across New York City, with a focus on teaching underserved students. To advance this mission, the NYCUDL provides comprehensive support for students, educators, and schools—including year-round instructional coaching for educators, student workshops, over 40 annual debate tournaments, four weeks of summer debate camps, and the development of original curriculum, including more than 100 lesson plans for educators each year. The League has experienced significant growth in recent years. Since the 2018–2019 school year, student participation has grown by nearly 80%, from 2,260 to just over 4,000 students annually. The number of participating schools increased by 60%, from 160 to 250, and the number of Title I schools served nearly doubled. With active partnerships in all five boroughs, the NYCUDL is proud to be the largest urban debate league in the country and remains deeply committed to teaching debate, fostering student voice, and supporting academic confidence and civic leadership across New York City.
NYCUDL Mission
We unlock the transformative power of debate for New York City public school students to develop the next generation of informed, compassionate, and courageous leaders.
Lawyers’ Advisory Council (LAC) Description
The NYCUDL Lawyers’ Advisory Council, founded in 2022, is an engaged, prominent group of lawyers from the judiciary, law firms, companies, and other organizations who share a common goal of youth development that leads to diversity in the legal profession. The LAC’s primary purpose is to provide career exploration opportunities to NYCUDL students and serve as ambassadors of the NYCUDL.
LAC Fellowship
The LAC Fellowship is an exciting two-year opportunity for someone who wants to take some time to give back to the community before going to law school or graduate school. The fellowship is a full-time support role that involves learning about non-profit management by providing day-to-day support to the Executive Director. In addition, the LAC Fellow will have the opportunity to explore the legal field, receive mentorship, and build their networks via monthly interactions with individual members of the LAC, who include partners at major law firms, in-house counsel, federal judges, and many other accomplished attorneys.
The LAC Fellow will work with the NYCUDL to help build organizational capacity across areas of nonprofit management including administration, development, communications, and programming. The position is intended for a recent college graduate interested in learning not only from their experience with the NYCUDL but from the lawyers on the LAC as well. LAC Fellows will have the opportunity to meet with each of these lawyers individually over the course of their two years in the position.
Former LAC Fellow Testimonials
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Sam Brumer 2022-2023 & 2023-2024 Rachel Heil 2024-2025
Job Responsibilities
- Administrative:
- Assist the League’s Executive Director
- Manage the Executive Director’s calendar and set up meetings
- Assist with planning the Lawyers’ Advisory Council, the Fundraising Committee, and other meetings; including developing meeting materials—agendas, slides, etc.
- Assist in executing meeting deliverables
- Organize annual holiday open house of staff and partners
- Develop systems and track follow-up and action items following meetings with external partners and internally
- Build institutional memory
- Development:
- Support the Executive Director in setting and executing the organization’s strategic priorities
- Assist with grant writing, government funding applications, event fundraiser planning
- Assist with annual gala fundraiser; including drafting and editing the gala program book, attending fundraising committee meetings, and other planning as needed
- Coordinate holiday fundraising letter-writing campaign
- Communications:
- Liaise with members of the Lawyers’ Advisory Council, potential funders, and other advisory groups and support partner relationships
- Streamline communications and act as a point of contact among management, board members, employees, clients, and external partners
- Manage information flow in a timely and accurate manner
- Format information for internal and external communication—memos, emails, presentations, and reports
- Assist with coordinating League staff
- Programming:
- Help run debate tournaments with other League staff
- Assist with student debate workshops
- Work alongside leadership and program staff at events, fundraisers, tournaments etc.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree required
- Experience with youth programs preferred but not required
- Experience with competitive academic debate preferred
- Experience with event planning, fundraising, and nonprofit management a plus
- Plan to attend law school a plus
Qualities
- Commitment to our mission
- Empathy, humility, flexibility and willingness to serve and lead teachers, students, volunteers and contract staff in an often-challenging and fast-changing urban education setting
- Positive, solution-oriented approach on a team working toward common goals
- Strong cultural competency in serving a diverse population of teachers and learners with a variety of needs and challenges and communication styles
- A responsible, detail-oriented self-starter and creative forward thinker with an ability to work and produce results in a fast-paced dynamic environment
- Self-aware, teachable, and eager to learn
- Must have the utmost integrity and an ability to process, protect and exercise discretion in handling confidential information and materials, including student data
Skills
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills across different audiences
- Experience in an education or nonprofit setting is a plus
- Outstanding organizational and time management skills, ability to develop and implement organizational systems where they are missing
- Ability to quickly synthesize large amounts of information into actionable next steps
- Familiarity with office equipment and applications (e.g. e-calendars and copy machines)
- Experience with major social media platforms
- Familiarity with Tabroom.com…, including tournament administration or a willingness to learn
- Proficiency with Microsoft Suite, Google Suite, Zoom and Microsoft Teams
- Experience with Canva, Adobe Suite and MailChimp or a willingness to learn
- Comfort with technology and ability to quickly learn new systems
Work Week
Employees are expected to work in-person, 5 days a week (a majority of Mondays & Fridays are remote in practice), including Saturdays when needed (not more than 2 per month throughout the school year). The expected work week is 40-50 hours. Comp time is offered for a full day of weekend work, with some stipulations.
Compensation
- $66,300 annually, depending on experience
- Comprehensive health coverage, including medical, dental, and vision benefits, with no employee contribution required for individual (non-dependent) plans.
- You are provided with 10 annual vacation days, 5 annual sick days, 5 annual personal days
Other Requirements
- Commitment to our mission
- Legal clearance to work with minors
- Must pass a background check
- Strong ethics, maturity, and appropriate boundaries for adult interactions with minors, including compliance with all NYCDOE and reporting requirements
- Physical demands include working at the computer but also carrying supplies (boxes up to 50 pounds, paper, printers, computer, t-shirts, food, etc.) for tournaments and events
Hiring Process
- Hiring decisions will be made on a rolling basis.
- 1st Round Zoom Interview
- 2nd Round: LAC Meeting
- Final Round: Live Interview
- Start Date: Sept 15th
- Finalists will be asked to submit 3 references.
- To apply, please submit a letter of interest and a resume to jobs@debate.nyc or fill out this google form.
- All inquiries are confidential
The NYCUDL is an Equal Opportunity employer.
