Senior Strategist

Position Summary

We are seeking a Senior Strategist to join our team. Reporting to the Director of Strategic Foresight, the Senior Strategist will play a crucial role in supporting and leading core bodies of work in Future Currents’ programmatic verticals. This role will conduct research; design scenario exercises and tools; provide project and people management, facilitation, and convening leadership; and build and maintain relationships among key stakeholders in (and beyond) the progressive movement to help shape Future Currents’ work.

About you

The ideal candidate will have a proven ability to foster coordination and cooperation among diverse groups and to manage large, complex projects or programs. This position is a good fit for extremely reliable candidates with a demonstrated facility handling competing priorities across multiple projects with aplomb, and a history of launching new projects that advance the organization’s work and executing them beautifully. The ideal candidate will have experience successfully managing both programs and people in a variety of relationships to the organization, such as staff and consultants. This position is a good fit for candidates with a variety of expertise, including in learning cohort design and facilitation, organizing, and managing coalitions to measurable impact. This position is an excellent opportunity to engage with power-building organizations across the progressive movement to help prepare for the opportunities and crises we might face in the future.

About Future Currents

Future Currents creates the spaces for movement organizations to build resilient relationships, tackle pressing challenges, prepare for possible conditions, and map our way to the just and joyful future we deserve. We focus on the knotty, chronic, systemic, and often scary obstacles in our daily lives, whether they be authoritarian threats to our democracy, the shifting economic paradigm, or the need within movements to retool and reshape our infrastructure to meet changing conditions.

Future Currents encourages movement leaders and organizations to operate outside the dominant modes of thinking that currently limit the scope of possibility. We use a mix of creative methods — including facilitated immersive group convenings, scenario planning exercises, and resources that build the muscles of preparation and imagination — to spark new understandings, analyses, and strategies that open up the potential for long-term change. Future Currents is a project of New Venture Fund (NVF), a 501(c)(3) public charity that incubates new and innovative public-interest projects and grant-making programs.

Responsibilities and Tasks

The Senior Strategist reports to the Director of Strategic Foresight and is responsible for the following:

• Developing and carrying out project work, including:
  • Exploration, research, and project development: This role will conduct landscape research and maintain relationships across the progressive ecosystem to better understand the needs of the field and then propose roles and interventions appropriate for Future Currents. This role will be responsible for project development from idea to execution, including developing objectives, timelines, targets, indicators/benchmarks, process improvements, engagement, and recommendation to ensure the work remains aligned with the needs of the field.
  • Designing & facilitating scenario-planning exercises, learning cohorts, and other strategy & relationship-building convenings: This role will be responsible for developing the arc of engagements that will push movement leaders’ thinking further into the future, prepare them for conditions outside their control, and help build their relationships as they practice responding to crisis and opportunity together. This will include identifying key pivot points relevant to the needs of the field and crafting new exercises and tools to help prepare partners to meet those key moments.
  • Wrapping projects up and handing off for implementation of strategies and plans: This role will be responsible for debriefing projects and project phases and pulling forward lessons to inform future phases of the work as well as other Future Currents projects. It will also be responsible for creating pathways for the implementation of needed strategies identified in our projects through the relationships that the Senior Strategist builds and maintains.
• Building and maintaining strategic relationships throughout the progressive movement and nurturing relationships between key actors in the progressive movement.
  • Working with those partners to identify scenarios and scenario tools that will shape our goals and strategies across organizations and issues.
• Communicating with clarity, timeliness, and a balance of levity and gravity.
• Demonstrating the utmost in reliability and follow through.
• Proactively anticipating challenges and addressing them.
• Collaborating with and potentially managing Future Currents staff, fellows, and consultants on bodies of work, fundraising, and special projects.

Education, Experience, Knowledge, Skills, and Ability

We’re seeking candidates who excel in building relationships, are both process- and results-oriented, and are ambitious for the progressive movement. You should have:

• A strong track record developing and maintaining collaborative relationships across organizations, communities, sectors, and movements.
• A demonstrated commitment to meeting a high bar and a history of getting things done even in the face of obstacles.
• A strong ability to work independently and collaboratively in an environment that requires juggling competing priorities.
• 5+ years progressive leadership experience and an established track record of effective project and people management.
• A deep commitment to advancing social and economic justice, and a demonstrated understanding of the missions and cultures of movement groups.
• Experience organizing is highly desirable.
• A highly developed sensibility around strategy, play, and flexibility.
• A track record of effective written and verbal communication for various audiences and in various contexts.
• Ability to travel.

Hiring Statement

Future Currents is a project of New Venture Fund (NVF), a 501(c)(3) public charity that incubates new and innovative public-interest projects and grant-making programs. NVF is committed to attracting, developing, and retaining exceptional people, and to creating a work environment that is dynamic, rewarding, and enables each of us to realize our potential. NVF’s work environment is safe and open to all employees and partners, respecting the full spectrum of race, color, religious creed, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, political affiliation, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, and all other classifications protected by law in the locality and/or state in which you are working.

Benefits

Comprehensive benefits package that includes 100% employer-paid health, dental, and vision insurance for employees (and their families). Employees are able to enroll in 401k retirement plan and are eligible for a 3% automatic contribution and up to a 3% employer match on 401k contributions. Employees are also eligible for pre-tax transportation benefits. Employees will receive 160 hours of vacation time, 80 hours of health leave, up to 2 days of casual leave, and 20 hours of volunteer leave annually. Employees will also receive 13 paid holidays throughout the calendar year. Employees are eligible for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave after 90 days of employment.

E-Verify

NVF participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with employees’ Form I-9 information to confirm authorization to work in the United States. Job candidates and employees authorized to work may not be discriminated against on the basis of national origin or citizenship status.

Comprehensive benefits package that includes 100% employer-paid health, dental, and vision insurance for employees (and their families). Employees are able to enroll in 401k retirement plan and are eligible for a 3% automatic contribution and up to a 3% employer match on 401k contributions. Employees are also eligible for pre-tax transportation benefits. Employees will receive 160 hours of vacation time, 80 hours of health leave, up to 2 days of casual leave, and 20 hours of volunteer leave annually. Employees will also receive 13 paid holidays throughout the calendar year. Employees are eligible for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave after 90 days of employment.