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Policy Director 🔥


Role Overview: The Policy Director oversees the Voting Rights Lab's state and federal policy work to secure, protect and defend voting rights for all Americans, especially voters of color.
This role combines strategic political intelligence and guidance from the Advocacy Department with the expertise of our Law.
Role Overview:

The Policy Director oversees the Voting Rights Lab's state and federal policy work to secure, protect and defend voting rights for all Americans, especially voters of color. 

This role combines strategic political intelligence and guidance from the Advocacy Department with the expertise of our Law & Policy Department and outside thought leaders to design state and federal policy solutions that merge political feasibility with strong policy and strategically build towards VRL’s long term goals. The Policy Director must develop a deep understanding of voting rights policies and the impact of each policy and its variations -- and is responsible for ensuring that the policies for which VRL advocates are, and remain, designed to achieve their desired impact. The position is also responsible for building relationships with policy experts across the voting rights space, and related spaces, with a broad range of constituencies that will help ensure we can achieve our goals in various states across the country.

The Policy Director also oversees staff who are building and managing our policy work in the states. 


Responsibilities:

  • Work with staff on the Advocacy and Law & Policy departments identify and set the contours of the policies VRL works on in each state and political context, ensuring that these policies are  designed to achieve the desired impact for voters of color, and we are working on policies that will achieve that outcome
  • Collaborate with the entire Advocacy and Law & Policy Departments to break VRL’s long term policy goals into achievable programmatic goals and short term state and federal goals that make up VRL’s annual agenda to create incremental change
  • Anticipate policy needs and oversee the design and delivery of policy content for VRL’s state and federal offensive and defensive campaign work, ensuring consistency, clarity, and quality, including 
  • Draft legislation, amendments, executive actions, regulations, and guidance that merge strong policy with political reality
  • Internal documents translating complicated concepts into plain English, such as bill summaries and descriptions of policy impact
  • External documents (such as reports, talking points, and branded fact sheets) that concurrently persuade and inform a wide range of audiences. This requires an ability to work in a non-partisan /bi-partisan manner and create materials to speak to non-traditional audiences.
  • Adapting documents and policy arguments for a wide variety of audiences, including colleagues, partners, and elected officials and influencers from across the political spectrum
  • Develop deep expertise in voting rights policy, the impact of each policy, and how variations in the policy affect its impact
  • Build and cultivate long-term strategic relationships with voting policy experts and elected officials across the political spectrum  to further VRL’s mission and strategic objectives
  • Collaborate with our Communications department to ensure that we are communicating the policy intricacies accurately and effectively. As needed, serve as public facing policy expert in working with the media, elected officials, and in other public forums
  • Work cross-functionally with other staff and teams to design policy implementation strategies and ensure our legislative successes translate into real world change
  • Manage staff to performance and ground them in VRL’s values and theory of change

Qualifications:

  • A minimum of 10 years of relevant experience with a proven track record developing policy and legislation in a wide range of political contexts, including at least 5 years in a role where you were managing staff. Law degree preferred but not required 
  • Experience analyzing, interpreting, and drafting legislative language.
  • Ability to articulate legal concepts and other complex issues and to communicate them to a variety of audiences across political ideologies.
  • Familiarity with election laws and voting rights issues.
  • The ability to be flexible and work in a fast-paced campaign environment, managing multiple projects simultaneously and adjusting to frequently changing demands. You will need to make decisions in complex landscapes with multiple interdependent and shifting variables.
  • Experienced and adept staff manager and project manager who is organized, resourceful, and flexible 
  • Experience working with diverse communities and committed to acting on the belief that racial equity and social justice are critical components of our work.

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