Program Associate, Engagement

Overview

The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) is seeking a systems-oriented professional to join our team as a full-time Program Associate, Engagement. This role will support the maintenance of a strong logistical system for our NACTO membership on the Engagement Team within NACTO.

The ideal candidate has experience with interfacing with and supporting the management of a lively and active membership network. This role is supervised by the Senior Manager, Member Experience and collaborates primarily with the engagement team, but is expected to engage in cross-collaboration across NACTO. The position will be remote with some travel to support NACTO events, such as the annual Designing Cities Conference, as needed. Interest in transportation and cities is required while at least foundational experience working in transportation and/or urban policy is helpful.

Who we are

NACTO is a nonprofit association of around 100 major North American cities and transit agencies (and counting), formed to exchange transportation ideas, insights, and practices and cooperatively approach national transportation issues. Our members include cities such as Philadelphia, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Houston, and transit agencies such as LA Metro and Chicago Transit Authority. Our mission is to build cities as places for people, with safe, sustainable, accessible, and equitable transportation choices that support a strong economy and vibrant quality of life. Our staff team is passionate, outcomes-oriented, and committed to challenging the status quo in transportation and raising the bar for city streets. Our values include fostering community, centering justice, striving for impact, and leading with imagination.

The Engagement Team at NACTO is composed of four core areas that touch all the work at NACTO: (1) Membership & Member Engagement (2) Capacity Building (3) Events (including the annual Designing Cities Conference) and (4) Field Building. As a membership organization whose goal is to build a connected, mutually-supportive community of professionals in city transportation departments and transit agencies, the Engagement Team supports our members by providing a member engagement platform that offers them information, resources, inspiration, and tools to make change in their communities. The Engagement Team works cross-collaboratively with the Policy & Practice team to convene, activate, and inspire members through working groups, peer networks, committees, learning/collaboration spaces and fellowship programs.

Who you are

You are a curious, proactive, and highly organized person who finds joy in creating a strong logistical backbone for a diverse and dynamic member network. You recognize that NACTO members have a myriad of different needs, backgrounds and identities, and geographical realities and are ready to field inquiries from both current and new members with confidence. With a membership of around 100 major North American cities and transit agencies and a community forum of over 2000 members, you recognize that members will consistently be reaching out with needs, questions, ideas, and insights. You see a full inbox of member inquiries as an opportunity to embody a strong customer service mindset and you provide answers, share resources, and pass off inquiries to appropriate team members when necessary. You embody this same intentionality around high-impact customer service as you support the application process and onboarding of new NACTO members and maintaining NACTO’s community hub of over 2000 members. You commit to thoughtful, responsive communication and excellent follow-through in order to keep our members feeling excited, included, and connected.

You have a keen eye for detail and are comfortable rolling up your sleeves to support and implement logistical systems that support NACTO’s members. You’re no stranger to a spreadsheet, navigating a database, utilizing project management software, or a Google Doc. You’re interested in staying on the cutting edge by learning technologies such as Forj and Hubspot that we use to support our members and always seek innovative methods to track, analyze, and communicate the trends that you’re seeing within our membership. You look for gaps in our logistical systems in order to strengthen your work and our connection to our members. You are energized by the prospect of creating membership-related materials, documents, presentations, and other informational formats that support your presentations to members. You come to this work with a holistic, people-first mindset that supports the vision of the Senior Manager, Member Engagement.

NACTO activates its members via in-person and virtual events and you’re excited to collaborate with your colleagues with events expertise to further engage our members through unique opportunities for gathering and connecting. Your colleagues rely on you to be an energetic, critical-thinking collaborator both in the planning and execution of in-person and virtual events. Whether you are supporting by communicating with a vendor, setting up a welcome table, running tech support on a Zoom webinar, or using Bizzabo to support event registration, you are reliable, collaborative, and use problem-solving skills when an alternative solution is necessary. You see challenges as opportunities and view a full room of members, on Zoom or in person, as an opening for connection.

You recognize that being a stellar project manager is the key to igniting your work and you’re committed to being an organized, clear, and consistent project manager for the sake of our members and your colleagues. You have experience using project management tools like Monday.com to help organize the day-to-day details of managing a growing and evolving network of members. You actively look for opportunities to apply automations and templates on Monday.com to ensure membership management details are consistently handled on time. You’re always willing to uplevel your project management skills in order to have a strong and meaningful impact that allows our internal team to feel clear on the trends and needs of our incoming and current NACTO members. You’re always keeping your finger on the pulse of how to strengthen your project management skills so that we can understand, track, and communicate with our members as thoughtfully as possible as an organization. You are excited to take advantage of the professional development resources that NACTO provides so that you can better serve our membership.

To be successful in this job, you will excel in the following core competencies:

• Member Engagement
  • You have at least foundational skills and experience engaging and interfacing with a diverse network of practitioners with a variety of different identities and needs who operate at different levels of their careers. You are comfortable being the first point of contact with NACTO members and prospective members, taking charge by connecting our members to the appropriate NACTO team members who can support with or respond to their request. You are highly responsive to messages from members, you value proactive, thoughtful communication, and you know how to follow up with members on their membership inquiries to ensure that they have the information, resources, and tools to seamlessly enter our membership network. You are comfortable collaborating deeply with the engagement team in order to embrace and embody the practices and values necessary to intentionally engage our members and create a network that is rooted in relationship-building and resource sharing, ensuring that our members feel valued, welcome, and well-resourced.
  • You take ownership of the logistics of NACTO’s new member recruitment process in order to ensure prospective members have a seamless, clear, and positive first experience with NACTO and can easily access their member benefits and plug into the NACTO network. You support the application process and onboarding of new members and project manage this process in a manner that is organized, explicit, and easy for other NACTO team members to plug into.
  • You have strong virtual communication skills, with the ability to engage effectively in NACTO’s online community forum of 2,000+ members. You proactively share relevant updates and opportunities that connect members to NACTO’s programs and resources, and you excel at structuring, organizing, and maintaining a public resource library in a manner that ensures easy access and clarity for all users. Since the community forum is the main hub for members to access NACTO’s resources and connect with each other, you are dedicated to making it easy to navigate—promptly reviewing join requests, resolving technical issues, and keeping the forum FAQ page up to date. You’re diligent about keeping up with multiple ongoing conversations in the forum and reviewing usage analytics, turning trends and data into actionable insights that help the team better understand and respond to members’ needs.
• Member Engagement Systems Implementation
  • You recognize that strong member engagement involves the maintenance of well-oiled internal systems and have at least moderate experience with providing logistical backbone support for a complex, ever-evolving member network. You maintain a comprehensive and up-to-date CRM database of member information that enables NACTO to manage our membership effectively. You effectively lead the annual process of updating key contacts for all member agencies and consistently maintain accurate contact information throughout the year as staffing changes occur. You build out a repository of information about what our members are doing so that their work can inform the programming that we offer at NACTO.
  • You capture and translate the information that you gather as you embark on your member engagement systems implementation in a manner that is clear, concise, and accessible for our NACTO team. You are excited to share your findings during weekly and monthly staff meetings to enhance understanding across the team, supporting the team in better serving our members.
• Event production and logistics
  • Events are one of NACTO’s primary modes of member engagement, and you have at least foundational experience in event production and logistics. You’re skilled and adept at supporting events, both virtual and in person, and seeing events through from inception to completion. By following the overall event vision of the Associate Director of Convening and the events team, you’re flexible, adaptable, and comfortable rolling your sleeves up to collaborate on event production and logistics. Whether it is the annual Designing Cities conference, a webinar, an in-person panel discussion, or a roundtable, you have a knack for supporting our dynamic, member-focused events at NACTO.
  • You have at least foundational experience with the core event services that bolster an event. This includes knowledge of and/or ability to learn event software programs such as Zoom for virtual events, Bizzabo for event management and registration, and Hubspot for tracking event participation data.
• Strong project management and collaboration skills
  • You use self-direction, self-motivation, curiosity, inquisitiveness, and organizational skills to drive your own workstream and schedule, completing your projects in a timely and thoughtful manner.
  • You support cross-cutting projects such as updating and contributing to the website, contributing to the annual report, making presentations at all-staff meetings and events, and helping to respond to member requests.
  • You implement and champion NACTO’s organizational infrastructure, including community principles and project management practices.
  • You participate in organizational projects as requested, ensuring that your collaborative efforts are aligned with the NACTO values and community principles.

Qualifications

NACTO does not have minimum requirements for education or professional experience. We encourage all candidates with relevant experiences and professional backgrounds to apply. Generally, we expect qualified candidates would have the following baseline experience for a Program Associate at NACTO:

Program Associate

• A proven track record and a few years of professional experience as a support or co-lead in at least two core responsibilities of the role.
• A proven track record and at least a few years of experience as a project manager on both short-term projects and large-scale, multi-year projects.
• A proven track record and at least a few years experience collaborating with a diverse team across varying career levels in a cross-functional, collaborative work environment.

NACTO engages in a negotiation-free practice for salaries and benefits that is aligned with our internal equitable compensation plan. We seek to offer competitive salaries and benefits that are aligned with market research and the requirements of the role. All salary offers are based on a combination of factors including years of experience and core competencies instead of a candidate’s ability to negotiate a salary.

NACTO is committed to workplace diversity and inclusion. We are equal opportunity employers and do not discriminate in hiring or employment on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender identity, marital status, sexual orientation, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. We offer competitive salaries based on a nonprofit scale and commensurate with experience. Benefits include accrued PTO and family leave; healthcare, dental and vision insurance; expanded disability and life insurance; retirement savings plan; and pre-tax commuter benefits.