Senior Field Strategist

About Us

Heavy industry is the foundation of modern society. We need materials like cement, steel, and aluminum more than ever to rebuild our bridges and roads, to construct wind and solar projects, and to manufacture electric vehicles and heat pumps that will undergird our future. But industry needs a new social contract with America. For all the good industrial progress brings, it also causes a lot of harm. It threatens our climate, reinforces environmental racism, it’s wasteful, and it has left workers and communities behind when convenient to industry’s bottom line. 

Addressing this challenge – and the opportunity it presents – is why Industrious Labs exists. With our partners, we’re reimagining the industrial sector as not only a source of good union jobs, but a climate solution where we make things responsibly, prioritize waste reduction, reuse, repair, remanufacture, and recycle. To do this we will have to change how our stuff is made and what we do with it when we are done with it. We see an America that is known again as a country of industry, where the best quality and greenest materials are made with American labor. In the future we build together, industry is a good neighbor to communities, the anchor of a healthy regenerative economy, and leading the world in addressing climate change.

About the Position

Guided by an inspiring vision, data-driven strategies, and significant financial investment, we are seeking a Senior Field Strategist to join our team. Industrious Labs is fully remote, and this role reports to Partner and Field Building Director Dominique Thomas. 

In this newly created position, the Senior Field Strategist is a highly strategic relationship builder with proven ability to establish, grow and sustain diverse coalitions of stakeholders. They are passionate about solving the climate crisis by focusing on the strategies that will make the biggest impact, including focused campaigns, research and analysis, cross-sector collaborations, and communications. The Senior Field Strategist is energized by the challenge of the climate crises, inspired to step into a new era of the movement, and has a strong track record of working with diverse groups such as organized labor and environmental justice advocates, policymakers and private sector leaders.

Industrious Labs’ field building strategy includes four components: coalition building; industry-specific campaign strategy and execution; consulting/advisory services; and regranting. The Senior Field Strategist works with the Field Building Director to identify and engage with new partners while building out the field of campaigners, communications pros, researchers and academics, policymakers and funders working on industrial decarbonization. This includes Industrious Labs’ field building initiative (The Arc) to map the landscape, which involves power analyses to identify strengths, current players, and gaps in preparation for investment. The Senior Field Strategist will also work with the Steel Campaign, helping support the growth of grassroots campaigns to clean up existing steel mills and support the transition to fossil free steel. The person in this position also contributes meaningfully to Industrious Labs’ earned revenue strategy (consulting and advisory services, mostly to foundations around their industrial strategy) and our role in moving resources equitably and efficiently to our community-based nonprofit partners.

This is a public-facing role for an equity-centered leader who has a solid track record of working in coalition with others and building capacity and collective vision across diverse perspectives and experiences. In doing so, the Senior Field Strategist further establishes Industrious Labs as a national leader on industrial decarbonization and a go-to resource for policymakers, policy influencers, climate advocates, and community leaders. The inaugural Senior Field Strategist holds key responsibilities that will evolve over time as the team grows and functions are distributed. During the first year, we anticipate a focus on the following:

Capacity Building, Convenings and Strategy Development

• Execute the field building vision and strategy, including executing short-, mid-term, and long-term goals and objectives related to Industrious Labs credibility and growth. There may be opportunities to help lead on pieces of work. 
• Build new organizational relationships and alliances that reflect our values and priorities around equity, diversity, and environmental justice. 
• Engage key leaders, organizations, and industry partners in strategy development to build institutional and community buy-in for general industrial decarbonization.
• With the Partner and Field Building Director, continually assess landscapes across industry and geography through community mapping and power analyses.
• Assist with the design and launch of industrial network/movement hubs, leveraging the findings of the community mapping and landscape and power analyses. 
• Work with other departments to support our research and analysis of the impact of heavy industry on environmental justice communities.
• Assist in the development of trainings and other skill-building opportunities to build power and leadership within the burgeoning industrial decarbonization field.
• Work with event coordinators and partners to develop a national convening for industrial decarbonization, currently projected for 2024. 

Campaign Support

• Work closely with campaign directors (initially North American Steel Campaign) to assist in developing capacity and collaboration within and across campaigns and to ensure continual environmental justice analysis. 
• Assist with the facilitation of state-level calls of the Steel Network and support the campaign director in building relationships with state groups and industrial facilities.
• Work with the Steel Director to locate and bring new voices to the Steel Network. 
• Assist with landscape mapping of key states with steel mills to decide where to build power.
• With the Steel Director and Field Building Director, assist with the development and implementation of a field building strategy in key locations.

Who You Are

The incoming Senior Field Strategist is driven by their belief and commitment to Industrious Labs’ vision, mission, and values. Through their track record and expertise as an organizer and convener – optimally within the climate or another social justice movement – the successful candidate will help steer our field building and capacity building to solidify Industrious Labs as a leader in industrial decarbonization. 

The Senior Field Strategist builds authentic and lasting relationships with communities impacted by pollution from the industrial sector, as well as grassroots organizations, labor, industry representatives, policymakers, and others to engage them as partners in our mission. The successful candidate brings a mindset that considers capacity building and power building as the foundations of creating a shared future that transforms and dismantles systems of oppression. They also have a proven track record of enrolling people in a vision while balancing the speed of building trust within communities that have been historically marginalized and harmed. The Senior Field Strategist can hold space for nuance and difference of opinion while bringing people together and advancing shared objectives.

The Senior Field Strategist joins a committed team that brings a track record of success in campaign strategy, data analysis, and communications, with a particular focus on climate and clean energy. The successful candidate is entrepreneurial and excited about the prospect of working collaboratively internally and building new partnerships externally to create something new in the climate movement from the ground up. They have the experience of setting vision, establishing, and scaling successful programs with an ethos of creativity, humility, and an expectation of continual learning. Despite enormous obstacles involved in decarbonizing heavy industry, the Industrious Labs team operates with a spirit of possibility and seeks a Senior Field Strategist who shares the belief that we can all do things we’ve never done before and can stretch ourselves to achieve incredible results. The successful candidate is not afraid to fail but rather learns from experience and brings joy to this work in a way that uplifts collective power and makes what we are doing meaningful and relevant.

This role requires a deep commitment to the principles of environmental justice and democratic organizing, proven collaboration skills, and the ability to design and execute coordinated strategies that generate change in a deeply entrenched and seemingly intractable sector of the economy. The Senior Field Strategist demonstrates initiative by diving right in to take a concept from idea to implementation, navigating through internal and external barriers without getting stuck, and finding and deploying resources creatively to solve problems. The selected candidate will also possess most of the following Core and Preferred qualifications:

Core

• Strong commitment to the mission, vision, policies, and goals of Industrious Labs.
• 5+ years of increasing responsibility in campaign organizing, coalition development, and capacity building with a track record of accomplishment.
• Proven skill in facilitating the development of strategy/vision and action in coalition spaces with diverse groups of people and perspectives to build power centered around equity and justice. 
• Experience with community mapping/landscape analyses and the ability to design inclusive processes, listen deeply, and identify themes and recommended actions.
• Organizing experience at the state, regional and/or national levels.
• Experience using power building tools and setting movement building oriented goals internal and/or external to a campaign. 
• Strong relationship-building skills and existing relationships with a wide range of diverse constituencies, from big greens to environmental justice communities, labor, or other social justice movements. 
• Emerging leadership skills with clarity of vision and a commitment to the highest levels of integrity, quality, and collaboration, developing strong team cultures, promoting and enhancing equity, diversity, and inclusion, performance management, and professional development.
• Demonstrated experience working across lines of race, class, gender, and geography and an analysis of how climate change intersects with historically marginalized communities.
• Effective oral and written communications skills that demonstrate an ability to:
• Work with Industrious Labs’ communications leads to convey a compelling story about our mission, strategies, and impact with accessible language (without jargon);
• Work with Industrious Labs’ analytics leads to translate complex data and analysis into persuasive narratives.
• Ability to prioritize and be flexible in a fast-paced, constantly evolving, and collaborative environment, where working on a team and working individually are all required.
• Commitment to continuous learning, hunger for knowledge, and willingness to ask questions and self-correct; an approach that is curious, self-directed, and entrepreneurial.
• Openness to giving and receiving direct, compassionate feedback.
• Highly collaborative work style with the ability to work across functional areas and campaigns. 

Preferred

• Entrepreneurial drive to build an organization from the ground up; prior experience building something new or experience as an early team member in a growing organization.
• Content knowledge or familiarity with heavy industry or organized labor.
• Location based in or familiarity with regions of the US with concentration of industry (mining, processing, manufacturing) such as Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania.
• Experience working across sectors (public, private, nonprofit).

Salary and Benefits:

The salary range for this position is $90,000-110,000, based on experience and qualifications. Industrious Labs offers a competitive set of benefits, including 100% of comprehensive health care coverage for employees (medical, dental, and vision), work from home stipend, up to 5% employer match to 401k, and 11 paid holidays plus unlimited vacation, starting with a minimum of 15 business days.

Our Commitment to Racial Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Environmental Justice:

We believe that diversity in our team isn’t just a value but brings different lived experience and perspective that is essential to solving the climate crisis. If you’ve read this job description and are excited by it, if you can see yourself happily filling this role and making a difference on climate change, we really hope you apply. Industrious Labs is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to transparent and equitable recruitment, hiring, and promotion processes that foster inclusion and belonging. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application or interview process, please email Cathy Schreiber at cathy@industriouslabs.org.  

Application Procedure: 

To apply or refer a candidate, please submit your resume and cover letter answering the following:

1. What motivates you to spend your time, skills, and expertise working on climate change and more specifically decarbonizing heavy industry?
2. How do you define power? How have you built power with others in the past? What was your role in doing so?
3. Briefly share an advocacy campaign you played a key role in organizing people around, particularly a lesson learned that you would bring to Industrious Labs. How did you think about justice in that context?

This position is open until filled. Candidate review and phone screens begin immediately and will be conducted throughout the search.