[CLOSED] We’re on the search for our new Co-Executive Director

The Engine Room Board
20 October 2023

Deadline: Applications close 28 November 2023, midnight EST
Total compensation package: $120,000-$145,000 USD.
Generous benefits for leave, health, wellness, and flexibility to working hours.

Background: Co-leadership

At the end of this year, The Engine Room’s Executive Director, Julia Keseru, will be leaving after being at the organisation for the last eight years. The Engine Room’s Board of Directors is excited to announce that going forward The Engine Room will formally adopt a model of co-leadership based on the learnings and work of the current leadership team. 

The Engine Room is a non-profit organisation with a distributed global team of experienced and committed activists, researchers, technologists and community organisers. Working alongside frontline organisations, we use the power of technology, data and research to advance our vision. We build evidence, strengthen capacity, and connect movements.  Learn more about us and our work at theengineroom.org. 

Co-leadership looks different for every leader and every organisation. While the norm is still the single-leader model — whether in a corporate setting or small local NGOs — we believe that for The Engine Room, a shared-leadership approach can be more responsive to context, leverage the skills and capacities of individuals, and result in a more resilient organisation. 

After a formal process, The Engine Room’s Board of Directors has offered one of the co-ED positions to Paola Mosso, a Deputy Director at TER. Paola has been with The Engine Room for eight years. She is embedded in various local and global activist communities and has deep expertise in digital ecosystems, online infrastructures, emerging and justice-focused technologies and feminist approaches to digital resilience. She brings a journalistic eye to how we talk about our work and is an integrator of approaches when it comes to creating local change. She is deeply committed to the co-leadership model and championed its implementation at TER.

Role Description

The Engine Room is soliciting applications for a Co-Executive Director. If you apply, we will want to engage with you as a person and hear your vision as it connects to our mission and our defining measures of success. For us this is more important than a list of characteristics and skills. In addition to our core mission and current work, a few key issues are important to our future:

  1. The intersection of research and social justice is important to us. TER is looking to shift its approach to research so that it is tied more closely to its community work and honouring a strong local point of view. 
  2. Our latest approach to fundraising is working for us. We are committed to balancing project-specific, fee-for-service funds and grants, program funding, and unrestricted support for the organisation.
  3. It is  fundamentally important for us to align organisational development with shared leadership, and to document  and share the learning that comes with this approach, for both ourselves and our partners. 

To grow and thrive, it is critical that the new co-ED possess these qualities: 

  • Brings academic-level research skills, and writes and thinks beyond disciplinary silos.
  • Experience and connections for business development, and capacity for fundraising.
  • Defining fields of interest and experience, such as  environmental justice or emerging technologies. Relevant experience can be as a social activist, writer, researcher, campaigner, or networker in the given area.
  • Experience in any capacity with social justice and community building in the majority world.
  • Experience working with or for US-based nonprofits.

At The Engine Room, we prioritise care, well-being, flexible collaboration and clear communication. We look for colleagues who bring:

  • A constructive and opportunistic approach to confronting challenges and building strategies for the future.
  • A commitment to our values of making space, thinking critically and acting intentionally, embracing complexity, and holding everyone high.
  • A readiness to experiment, especially as we navigate journeys of shared leadership, and adapting the ways our teams collaborate and define areas of interest.

Please apply via this application form (incl. CV and cover letter). Applications close 28 November 2023, midnight EST

Photo by Yuriy Kovalev on Unsplash

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