People Operations Specialist - Guiding Leadership Growth and Systemic Reform at San Quentin Skunkworks

San Quentin SkunkWorks is an incarcerated-led innovation lab that designs and tests justice reform from the inside. We partner with the Governor's Office, world-renowned artists like eL Seed and FaithXLVII, UC researchers, and senior professionals across policy, tech, and culture. Our work has been covered on the front page of the LA Times and profiled by CalMatters as a model for system-wide transformation.

We now have roughly 50 volunteers, active institutional partnerships, and programs that are drawing national attention. What we don't yet have is the HR infrastructure to match. We're scaling and that transition requires real systems that meet the importance of this work.

Your Role

You will build the systems she and the rest of the organization run on.

What you'll build — in phases:

Repeatable systems for how volunteers are brought in, supported, and transitioned across the organization.

Phase 1 focuses on the foundations — volunteer lifecycle processes, role descriptions, and the structural documentation that the organization currently runs without.

Phase 2 builds on that foundation as the organization is ready — performance frameworks, compliance and policy infrastructure, and the planning that moves key roles from volunteer to paid.

The pace is real, not aspirational. You'll start where the need is sharpest and build outward from there.

How Collaboration Works

You'll report to and work closely with our Head of People and collaborate directly with incarcerated leadership at San Quentin through weekly or biweekly meetings, (in person or over the phone) and occasionally with the Volunteer VP of Operations on organizational design decisions.

Most work is asynchronous — clear briefs, shared documents, structured review cycles. We use Monday.com to track projects and deadlines.

What We're Looking For

5+ years in people operations, HR, or organizational design — ideally in a scaling nonprofit, startup, or mission-driven organization

Direct experience building HR systems from scratch or during a growth transition (volunteer-to-staff, startup-to-scale, pre-to-post-funding)

Comfort designing frameworks that work under real constraints: limited budgets, hybrid/remote teams, institutional barriers

Strong documentation instincts — you build things that other people can run without you

Familiarity with nonprofit employment law, volunteer management compliance, or willingness to learn quickly

Experience with Monday.com or similar project management tools

Helpful but not required:

Background in restorative justice, education reform, or criminal justice environments

Experience supporting organizations through their first hires

The Impact

You're not writing policies for a filing cabinet. You're building the operational backbone that lets an incarcerated-led organization make its first hires — and do it right. The systems you create will shape how SkunkWorks grows, who it can bring on, and whether the infrastructure holds as the work as it scales.