Portfolio Associate

About the Organization:

Common Era is a funder and an R&D platform working to make sure that the Jewish experience continually evolves to meet the present moment, today and in the future. Through our explorations and our collaborations with creators, builders, subcultures, and social movements, we're imagining and funding initiatives that offer the world a more expansive Jewish reality for new audiences.

At Common Era, we believe that the people and projects to inspire a new generation of Jews—the growing majority—are off the radar of mainstream institutions and funders. We work to identify inspiring people to collaborate with and design amazing projects, resource them, scale them, and, by doing so, cultivate stronger communities. To get there, we are growing a vibrant pipeline of projects and leaders that share our commitment - in 2026, Common Era launched 36 unique projects and partnered with 100+ collaborators in fields ranging from media and AI to psychedelics and spirituality. This effort to build and develop new projects, highlight out-of-the-box work, looks beyond probable geographies, groups, and institutions. We seek amazing, inspiring people and work that serve unlikely young people in uncommon and impactful ways.

About the Role:

The Portfolio Associate will work closely with Common Era's Senior Portfolio Leads to support both the development of this pipeline and the infrastructure that sustains it. This role blends project coordination, learning capture, and network communications — a unique opportunity for an early-career professional to gain hands-on experience in philanthropic R&D, social innovation, and interdisciplinary community building among Common Era collaborators.

The ideal candidate is highly organized, adaptable, and comfortable working across multiple, fast-moving streams of work. They are energized by making sense of complexity, synthesizing information from conversations, documents, and systems, and translating it into clear next steps. This role requires comfort with ambiguity, evolving priorities, and a high degree of ownership. As an R&D team, Common Era iterates in real time, which means roles and workflows continue to take shape as the work does. The Portfolio Associate should be excited to help build, refine, and improve systems that support people, projects, and learning while staying grounded, detail-oriented, and collaborative in a dynamic environment.

Who You'll Work With:

You will report to Common Era's Strategy Advisor & Senior Portfolio Lead.

You will frequently collaborate with the Senior Operations Associate on tools and systems internally, and will support onboarding, relationship-building, and communications with partners in the Common Era network.

Key Responsibilities:

Project & Portfolio Coordination (50%)

• Ensure projects move cleanly from idea to execution to learning by owning the coordination of projects across their full lifecycle
• Translate approved ideas into clear scopes, timelines, deliverables, and decision points
• Track progress across active projects, ensuring next steps, ownership, and deadlines are clear and current
• Coordinate with the Senior Operations Associate to move projects into contract or grant efficiently
• Maintain clean, reliable project archives including notes, deliverables, evaluations, and assets
• Support impact tracking by organizing metric-based data for dashboards and reporting
• Proactively surface risks, delays, or unclear ownership and help move projects forward
• Support project closeout by coordinating final materials and capturing key learnings for internal use and for training LLMs

Partner Network Support (50%)

• Support onboarding and relationship-building with new partners in the Common Era network
• Manage and moderate partner communications (e.g. Slack, newsletters, updates)
• Support coordination of virtual and in-person network gatherings
• Support Senior Operations Associate to maintain and improve CRM and internal systems that track partner activity and engagement
• Coordinate intake and tracking of evaluation forms, rubrics, and feedback tools
• Help gather and surface partner stories, milestones, and insights for internal and external sharing
• Collect and synthesize feedback from network members to improve offerings and experience

Required Skills and Experience:

• 2–4 years of relevant experience in a fast-paced, idea-rich environment (e.g. philanthropy, cultural production, social innovation, startups, media)
• Strong communication and synthesis skills, both written and verbal
• Highly organized and able to manage multiple workstreams
• Curious, motivated, and comfortable working with evolving goals and systems
• Strong interpersonal instincts and collaborative orientation
• Comfortable using and mastering systems like no-code solutions such as SmartSuite, Miro, Slack, LLMs, etc.
• Familiarity with Jewish life is welcome but not required

Additional Details:

This is a remote position, with a preference for the New York City area (though not required), and occasional travel (roughly 4–6 trips are anticipated annually, though exact numbers may vary based on project and convening needs).

Benefits:

• Employer-sponsored health insurance with 100% of premiums covered for employees
• Employer-sponsored vision & dental insurance with 100% of premiums covered for employees
• Up to 12% employer retirement contribution
• 20 days paid time off (PTO) in first year (increasing over time); 16 paid holidays; and 2 paid volunteer days
• Employer-sponsored life, short & long-term disability coverage

Equal Employment Opportunity:

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other protected status.