Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a leading nonprofit environmental group with more than three million members and online activists. We have offices in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Montana, and Beijing, and a staff of 600+ including lawyers, scientists, and policy analysts-- all working to protect the environment and public health. NRDC tackles a wide array of health and environmental issues, including food. NRDC’s Food and Agriculture Initiative focuses on protecting the food supply from unsafe pesticides, reforming industrial livestock practices, reducing overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture, promoting more plant-based food, making school food healthy and sustainable, conserving precious soil resources, and slashing the amount of food that goes to waste. Over the last decade the Initiative has grown from a small project at NRDC into a cross-department initiative engaging dozens of NRDC staff.
We now seek a seasoned leader to take this work to the next level. The Director will be a thought leader on key sustainable food issues, manage a diverse team of six to ten staff, and help lead fundraising for this work.
This position will be based in the San Francisco, Washington, DC or New York office.
Areas of Responsibility
- Management of the NRDC food team staff and consultants, including project management, decision-making, team-building, mentoring and support.
- Long-term planning, strategy development, goal setting, and workplan management; collaboratively creating a vision for future work.
- Working with NRDC’s Development Department to help raise money to support this work; building and maintaining relationships with key funders.
- Representing NRDC externally through speaking engagements, policy advocacy, corporate outreach, and media interviews.
Educational Background
A graduate degree in a related field is preferred but not required.
Skills/Experience
- Ten years or more of experience working to advance the sustainability of food systems, particularly around policy development, adoption and implementation. Extensive knowledge in one or more issues related to sustainable food is required.
- Proven management ability, and skill at leading a team in a collegial work environment.
- Demonstrated success in fundraising; strong current contacts with funders preferred.
- Ability to juggle multiple projects simultaneously.
- Strong networking ability.
- Excellent strategic thinking skills. An established track record for creating and executing new strategies is desired.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Must enjoy working collaboratively, and be comfortable with managing a heavy and diverse workload and independently executing duties.