School Network Staff Strategy Lead, Bridging (Program Officer)
Job Description
Strategy Lead, Bridging (Program Officer)
Einhorn Collaborative is seeking a Strategy Lead (similar to the “Program Officer” role at peer foundations) to drive our Bridging strategy and portfolio. The Strategy Lead will be responsible for advancing a long-term strategy to identify, fund, and support organizations that are helping members of Gen Z become more civic-minded and gain skills to build strong collaborative relationships across lines of difference.
Einhorn Collaborative is partnering with RCG Talent Solutions to support our search for the Strategy Lead position. Please direct all questions to the RCG team at openroles@rcgtalent.com.
About Einhorn Collaborative:
Einhorn Collaborative is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to addressing America’s growing crisis of connection. We work with a wide range of researchers, community leaders, cultural influencers, and funders to help Americans build stronger relationships, embrace our differences, and rediscover our shared humanity — so we can solve our most urgent challenges together.
To advance this mission, Einhorn Collaborative’s strategy focuses on four interconnected, mutually reinforcing areas of human connection:
- Bonding: Developing our capacity to nurture healthy relationships by fostering emotional connection between babies and their parents/caregivers.
- Bridging: Equipping young people with the skills and experiences to build relationships across lines of differences.
- Building: Building systems and institutions that strengthen social connection and cohesion.
- Belonging: Amplifying narratives that foster a culture of empathy, trust, collaboration, and belonging.
As a foundation, our approach is grounded in collaboration and collective impact. We believe in making impactful investments by bringing together field leaders and peer funders across varying ideological, racial, religious, socioeconomic, and geographic differences to listen, learn, and take on shared challenges and opportunities. We fuel the conditions for collaboration among these actors to harness collective wisdom and develop joint efforts to achieve more lasting outcomes.
More information about the foundation can be found here: www.einhorncollaborative.org.
About Einhorn Collaborative’s Bridging Strategy:
To help cultivate a more socially cohesive society, we need many more bridge-builders – people who have the motivation, skills, values, and behaviors to help others navigate divides and work together to address civic problems. Adolescence (12-25 years of age) is the ripest developmental stage where identity and values are formed. Young people have an openness to new people and ideas. By participating in high-quality bridging experiences, young people have the opportunity to become bridge-builders and gain the skill sets and lifelong habits needed to address community needs and repair our social fabric now and in the future.
Our current Bridging strategy seeks to increase the quality and quantity of bridging experiences in three key settings that reach young people:
- Civic learning as the universal preparation across middle and high schools, with an emphasis on New York State.
- Community-engaged learning (CEL) as an effective pedagogical approach in higher-education, with an emphasis on Einhorn Collaborative’s partnership with Cornell University as an exemplar institution committed to providing all students with high-quality CEL opportunities.
- National service as a high-dosage model to develop future leaders committed to bridge-building.
We also seek to shift American culture to incentivize, resource, and celebrate bridging as a critical component of positive youth development and recognize the need and opportunity to effectively elevate youth voice.
In the spirit of the collaboration we wish to see in the world, our staff seeks to engage a wide range of stakeholders including grantee partners, industry leaders, peer funders, community members, young people, and many others to shape and influence the approach we take with our work. We seek to build deep, supportive relationships with our grantee partners –offering resources, time, and networking opportunities to them in support of our shared work.
Candidates who advance to the semi-finalist and finalist rounds will receive more detailed information about the Bridging strategy.
About the Role:
Reporting to the Executive Director, the Strategy Lead will implement and refine our Bridging strategy and serve as an active participant in several collaborative efforts to provide more young people with high-quality bridging experiences. In future years, the Strategy Lead will have the opportunity to develop the next iteration of the Bridging strategy, informed by insights from Einhorn Collaborative’s current work.
In their first year, the Strategy Lead will assume leadership of our existing strategy as outlined above, build strong relationships across relevant ecosystems, and connect with our existing team and culture. In 2024, the Strategy Lead will take learnings from their first year in the role to set the long-term strategy for our Bridging work in partnership with our Executive Director and other staff members.
Given that Einhorn Collaborative is a very small and talented team of seven committed to effecting positive social change, we have established a culture and routine centered on advising and supporting each other. In addition to energy spent leading the Bridging work, the Strategy Lead will also spend substantial time collaborating across our team and will assume leadership and support roles in internal, cross-portfolio initiatives, and organization-wide priorities in a fully emergent way.
The ideal Strategy Lead is an experienced strategist driven by impact and relationships. The Strategy Lead will need to successfully communicate with and inspire partners at every level – from middle schoolers to University Presidents. Most importantly, the Strategy Lead will need a deep understanding of and passion for Gen Z and will bring a deep belief in their potential to be a bridge-building generation.
Role Responsibilities:
Manage and Evolve Bridging Strategy:
- Assume leadership of the Bridging strategy theory of action.
- Leverage an emergent strategic approach and an expansive learning orientation to support active investments and efforts in the Bridging strategy.
- After the first year or so in the role, develop recommendations for continuation and/or new partnerships that will most effectively advance the Bridging Strategy.
- Develop deep, collaborative, and reciprocal relationships with a wide range of peers, partners, researchers, and prospects to better inform the Bridging Strategy.
Identify, Manage, and Support Grantee Partnerships:
- Source, evaluate, recommend, and manage multi-year philanthropic partnerships to advance concrete projects that complement collaborative efforts.
- Establish and nurture co-funding partnerships with peer philanthropic organizations to aggregate capital toward collaborative projects.
- Create and execute impact measurement strategies to track progress at the project and strategy level while minimizing unnecessary reporting burden on grantee partners.
- Support grantee partners in meaningful ways that help them realize their impact goals including offering coaching, connecting them to resources, connecting them to people, and otherwise rooting for their success.
- Build connections across grantee partners, when mutually advantageous, in meaningful and efficient ways.
Thought Leadership:
In partnership with Einhorn Collaborative’s Belonging Lead,
- Raise the profile of Einhorn Collaborative, the Bridging strategy, and the work of grantee partners through traditional media, social media, and speaking engagements.
- Represent Einhorn Collaborative and effectively communicate Einhorn Collaborative’s core mission and vision and the Bridging strategy specifically to a wide range of stakeholders.
- Identify and participate in opportunities to connect with others in philanthropy to advance the Bridging strategy’s efforts and goals.
Cross-Portfolio Support:
- Design and lead organization-wide internal projects to advance Einhorn Collaborative’s commitment to connection, progress, and learning.
- Review peer funding recommendations from other strategies to support cross-portfolio emergent learning, due diligence, etc.
Who You Are:
You’re passionate about reweaving our social fabric: You are excited about being part of a small team that works with incredible nonprofits and stakeholders that are advancing the power and possibility of human connection to bridge our divides. This mission reflects your values and your own personal approach to working with others.
You’re an exceptional communicator, relationship-builder, and project manager: You are people-driven, ensuring internal and external stakeholders are engaged and informed at key moments across the arc of an initiative–knowing what is needed of them and when–to ensure high-quality, seamless execution and impact.
You believe in the power of young people: You are committed to helping young people thrive as critical assets in addressing society’s greatest challenges and opportunities.
You love big ideas and bringing people together to make them happen: You are exceptional at building vision, recruiting others to join, co-developing strategy, connecting the dots, and rolling out on-time execution.
You have excellent analytical skills and remarkable attention to detail: You enjoy setting goals and developing the analytics and metrics to assess effectiveness and performance in order to improve; you routinely identify gaps and opportunities for new projects and programs to ensure we achieve maximum impact.
You are always learning: You actively seek feedback, are intellectually curious and motivated to tackle new challenges, and contribute to the team’s continuous learning and improvement by modeling it in your own approach to professional growth and problem-solving.
You thrive being part of a small, tight-knit team: You work both collaboratively and independently and effectively create structures to manage ambiguity and deliver clarity and focus for our team and external partners.
You do what it takes to get the job done: No project or task is too big or too small; you are clever and nimble, helping find solutions, willing to roll up your sleeves and jump in when and where needed. You are a self-starter and have strong time management skills with the ability to prioritize tasks and coordinate multiple projects simultaneously in a fast-paced environment.
What You’ve Done:
Required experience:
- Bachelor’s degree
- Work experience that includes organizational leadership or cross-organizational leadership
- Time spent working in one or more of these social impact contexts:
- Youth development with a focus on socioemotional development
- National service
- Civic education
- Secondary education
- Student life in higher education
- Workforce development that is focused on character development
- Experience interfacing with donors, ideally in a fundraising context
- Demonstrated experience in a role that required sophisticated strategic and tactical planning and execution at the organizational level or across an organization
- Demonstrated experience developing and stewarding external relationships and leveraging those relationships to work in concert towards shared goals
- Demonstrated experience gathering, analyzing, synthesizing, and effectively communicating key insights (in writing and presenting) from multiple sources to inform short- and long-term strategy evolutions
- Demonstrated ability to build meaningful and authentic relationships through interpersonal skills such as listening, engaging, seeking to learn from others with an assets-based approach, seeking to understand multiple and divergent perspective, and presenting ideas in ways that draw others into your thinking while also holding an openness and willingness to change your mind
Preferred Qualifications:
- Demonstrated experience facilitating and/or participating in collaborative or collective impact efforts
- Either:
- Grantmaking experience including evaluating, recommending, and stewarding partnerships
- Fundraising experience including work identifying, qualifying, pursuing, cultivating, securing, and stewarding funding opportunities
- Familiarity with advocacy, policy, and systems change best practices
- Demonstrated ability to work well with young people and effectively lift up and represent youth voice
Einhorn Collaborative Values:
- We’re driven by our mission: We’re a small and dedicated team who believe that addressing America’s crisis of connection is not only critically urgent, but possible. We believe the prevailing narratives of distrust and division are not only flawed, but reversible if we are willing to sit down, listen, learn, and share different perspectives.
- We put relationships first: We put human connection at the center of everything we do. We treat others with open-hearted curiosity, compassion, and dignity. We are relational, not transactional, because trust is at the heart of true partnership and collaboration.
- We believe we are better together: We actively seek opportunities to work among diverse groups of people to complement individual skillsets, knowledge, and expertise—both lived and academic. Working together, we find common ground and generate better ideas that can achieve more lasting outcomes.
- We practice what we preach: We bring a spirit of mutuality to our relationships with funding peers and nonprofit partners. We provide perspective, a vast network, and resources, while our grantee partners determine key actions, metrics, and the support they need to achieve outcomes we both care deeply about.
- We focus on a few key levers: We prioritize a few key levers that address critical aspects of today’s crisis of connection within a large, growing ecosystem. By providing targeted support, we believe we will make concerted advances toward our long-term vision.
- We seek transformational impact: We seek out opportunities with the potential for outsized impact. Our collaborators learn, adapt, and spread core insights about human connection and belonging across settings and institutions that together transform systems and communities.
- We’re always learning and improving: We define success for ourselves and our partners by what we learn together. We revisit assumptions, examine what’s working for whom and why, and pivot as necessary. We know even the best laid plans will change due to lessons learned on the ground.
- We’re committed to each other, the work, and the journey: In order to help build a culture of connection and belonging in America, we recognize the work we must do as individuals to be students of our nation’s history, reflect on our hidden biases, and routinely engage with perspectives different from our own, to help inform, shape, and guide our work and our worldview. Read more about our commitment here.
Working at Einhorn Collaborative:
Einhorn Collaborative is committed to providing a total rewards package (both base salary and benefits) that is competitive within the philanthropic sector. The base pay for this role is anticipated to be between $175,000 and $200,000. Actual compensation for successful candidates will be carefully determined based on a number of factors, including their skills, qualifications, and relevant work experience. Additionally, employees are eligible for a discretionary annual performance bonus.
We offer competitive core benefits, including fully paid medical and dental insurance premiums for employees and dependents, generous employer-paid retirement contribution after the first full calendar year of employment, $5,000 annual professional development funds, and three weeks’ vacation time plus the last week of the year off. Einhorn Collaborative requires all employees to live within a commutable distance from the office near Grand Central in New York City. Employees must work in the office at least three days a week (per current policy, subject to change). Perks of being in the office include an on-site gym, lunch, snacks, and a business casual dress code.
Equal Opportunity Employer:
Einhorn Collaborative is committed to equal employment opportunity and providing reasonable accommodations to qualified candidates and employees pursuant to applicable law. We value and encourage diversity and solicit applications from all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, gender, sex, age, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, medical condition, military and veteran status, gender identity or expression, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law. If you require reasonable accommodation as part of the application process, please contact openroles@rcgtalent.com.
