Who We Are:

FoodCorps believes every school should be a healthy school and every child – regardless of race, place or class – deserves to be well nourished and ready to learn. In underserved communities across the country, we teach students about healthy food through hands-on lessons, partner with farmers and food service workers to create nutritious and delicious school meals, and collaborate with communities to insure a long-term culture of health. Building on this foundation of direct impact, FoodCorps works with systemic strategies that will benefit all of our nation’s 100,000 schools.

What We’re Looking For:

The Director will be responsible for working with teams cross-functionally to develop and execute equity-centered, stakeholder-accountable, and systems-focused strategies to the organization’s most important undertakings. As an internal consultant, the Director of Strategic Engagement will channel frameworks, theories, and practices from multiple disciplines to build adaptable strategy development processes. The Director will work with teams from conceptualization to execution; customizing strategy processes to the questions at hand, while articulating FoodCorps’ overarching approach to strategy development. While internally facing, this role will regularly engage critical partners from community stakeholders to key funders in shaping FoodCorps’ future.

The Director of Strategic Engagement will report to FoodCorps’ Chief of Staff. This is a full-time position which can be based remotely, or at one of FoodCorps’ offices in New York City, Portland, OR, or Washington D.C.

Who You Are:

You are passionate about food, kids, and social justice. Equity, diversity and inclusion matter to you. A lot.  So much so, that you apply that lens to every aspect of your work. You have 5+ years of experience developing and executing strategic planning projects, whether internally or as a consultant. You are hungry to translate frameworks and concepts into actionable processes that yield discernable results. You make yourself accountable to people in regard to product and process and thrive in environments that encourage iteration and adaptation. You are adept at identifying trends without sacrificing nuance, and you understand the critical insight that those closest to the problem have to offer. You seek out opportunities to collaborate and flourish in the creative problem solving space. You are an exceptional verbal and written communicator. You know that data comes in many forms and speak all of those languages with fluency.

Primary Responsibilities:

·       Act as internal process lead for organization-wide strategic planning at FoodCorps

·       Work seamlessly with the Executive Team, Director of Equity and Inclusion, and key staff on adoption and implementation of plan, incorporating ongoing feedback loops

·       Serve cross-functional teams in developing additional supporting strategies for key organizational needs, as directed by the Chief of Staff

·       Ensure stakeholder voice is heard and incorporated into all strategy development processes

·       Integrate and communicate the critical interplay between impact, equity, organizational sustainability, and operational excellence in all strategy projects

·       Translate and apply cutting-edge and timeless strategy development frameworks to FoodCorps’ key questions

·       Support FoodCorps’ evolution as a systems entrepreneurship organization

·       Participate in conversations with Board of Directors, funders, program partners, and other key stakeholders

Skills of ideal candidate:

·       Excellent verbal and written communication skills, accessible to a range of stakeholders

·       5+ years of strategy development experience, specific experience with systems-focused strategic planning a plus

·       Strong ability to quickly build trust with individuals and groups, internally and externally

·       Able to incorporate and consolidate a wide-range of information without losing context

·       Process-oriented, methodically-minded, open to adaptation

·       Personal leadership skills, with demonstrated ability to both lead and support team projects

·       Comfort managing up and across

·       Ability and hunger to learn and implement new theories, frameworks, and approaches

·       Strong and demonstrated project management experience