Board of Directors – Open Seats

About Us

The Narrative Project is a Houston-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2025 at the intersection of trauma-informed storytelling, narrative justice, and systemic reform.

We create structured spaces where Black and Brown communities, LGBTQ+ people, youth, and justice-impacted communities reclaim authorship of their own lives, through healing circles, advocacy, media, and community partnership.

In 2026 we completed our first pilot with Harris County Juvenile Probation Department, producing a +33 point shift in emotional and identity-based measures in a single session with zero behavioral escalations. Our policy framework is currently being considered by the Texas Senate Committee on Criminal Justice as part of an interim study on youth and emerging-adult review. We also maintain an active relationship with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice at the executive level.

We are not a startup with a dream. We are an organization with traction, looking for the right people to grow with us.

Why Join Our Board

This is a founding board. You won't inherit someone else's structure, you'll help build it. For the right person, that's rare and meaningful work.

You'll govern alongside people who are serious about impact, accountable to community, and committed to doing this well. You'll have direct visibility into legislative and institutional relationships most nonprofits spend decades trying to build. And you'll be part of an organization whose work is already moving systems.

Open Seats

We are building a five-person board with intention. Each seat exists because the organization needs something specific, not to fill a chair, but to fill a gap. Here is exactly what we are looking for and why.

Legal Background: Criminal Justice Adjacent

A law student, young attorney, or retired judge who understands how institutions work and can protect the organization structurally while adding immediate credibility to our legislative and policy relationships. You don't need to be a criminal justice specialist, you need to understand governance, risk, and the law well enough to ask the right questions.

Clinical or Research Credibility

A social worker, psychologist, counselor, or academic who can speak to the neuroscience and intervention methodology behind our work. Our pilot outcomes are strong. We need someone who can help us measure, document, and defend them to funders, legislators, and institutional partners.

Community Roots in Houston

Someone whose name means something in Houston's Black, Brown, and justice-impacted communities. BIPOC, ideally with direct connections to the people we serve, not just familiarity with them. This seat exists because our governance must reflect our community, not just represent it from a distance.

Nonprofit Operations Experience

Finance, compliance, HR, grant management, the unsexy infrastructure that keeps organizations alive and out of legal trouble. If you've run operations for a nonprofit or know what a 990 looks like and why it matters, we need you. This is the seat most founding boards skip. We're not skipping it.

Political or Institutional Access

Someone with relationships inside Houston's civic, legislative, or institutional infrastructure. You may already be connected to a city council office, a state agency, a foundation, or a legislative committee. This seat turns individual relationships into organizational ones, and helps us move faster when doors need to open.

What We're Looking For

We're not looking for resume collectors. We're looking for people who show up.

Specifically, we want board members who bring one or more of the following:

• Professional background in law, policy, social work, public health, finance, or communications
• Direct experience with criminal justice, reentry, or youth development systems
• Established relationships in Houston's Black, Brown, and LGBTQ+ communities
• Nonprofit governance experience or willingness to learn it seriously
• Personal conviction that narrative, healing, and systemic change belong together

Spanish language skills and lived experience with systemic injustice are strongly valued.

Board Expectations

• Attend quarterly board meetings (monthly during Year One)
• Participate in at least one program or community event per year
• Support fundraising at your individual capacity, no minimum ask required
• Complete annual training in trauma-informed practice and organizational values
• Uphold confidentiality and act in the best interest of the communities we serve

What You Gain

• A founding board seat at an organization with active legislative and institutional relationships
• Training in trauma-informed, healing-centered governance
• Direct impact on Black and Brown communities, youth, and system-impacted families in Houston
• A community of serious, mission-aligned leaders committed to long-term change

To Apply

If this work calls to you, we want to hear from you.

Send a brief introduction: who you are, what draws you to this work, and what you'd bring to the board — to:

jacob.newsome@powerofthenarrative.com

No formal application required. A conversation is the starting point.

• The Narrative Project — Houston, Texas Stories that heal. Power that transforms.

Website: https://lnkd.in/gCv5kBec