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Director 🔥


Are you passionate about corporate sustainability and driving progress toward companies’ environmental and social goals? Do you want to tackle challenging issues like climate change, plastic pollution, water stewardship, and social and environmental justice? Are you comfortable deeply engaging with environmental and social stakeholders with contrary perspectives, some of whom you may personally disagree with—from corporate executives to grassroots activists? Do you have experience building and leading partnerships across organizations, with groups in conflict, or leading internal change within a big organization? Do you like the culture of a small organization where you have freedom to try different things to build your skills? If so, read on.

Future 500 [1], a non-profit consultancy specializing in stakeholder engagement, is seeking a dynamic and driven mid-career professional to lead projects and external engagement in support of our mission—to build trust between companies, advocates, investors, and philanthropists to advance business as a force for good.

A small, nimble team of seven, we provide strategic counsel to some of the world’s most influential corporations—from major brands and retailers to heavy-emitting sectors like chemicals, mining, forestry, and oil-and-gas—to change corporate practices for the better. As such, the Director position is an opportunity to lead and develop dynamic client and internal projects, build and deepen a strong personal network across the non-profit and corporate responsibility sectors, grow your public profile as a sustainability expert, take leadership on key organizational priorities, provide mentorship, and gain wider expertise in the fields of sustainability and stakeholder engagement.

*Note: Please submit ONE PDF document including your cover letter (answering questions indicated below) and resume to info@future500.org [2]. See more details below

In partnership with our team, your responsibilities will include:

  • Proactively engaging with heavy industry, consumer brands and retailers, NGOs, philanthropic foundations, and activist organizations to build relationships, understand theories-of-change, explore areas of conflict and common ground, and spot opportunities for Future 500 to be of service or to develop project work that can lead to social and environmental impact.
  • Speaking at sustainability conferences and events, and networking with other professionals, to help build Future 500’s brand and reputation externally and deepen your personal networks and Future 500’s organizational networks.
  • Leading client-facing stakeholder engagement and sustainability services projects, in partnership with our team and funding partners. 
  • Providing thought-partnership and mentorship within Future 500 to help build our internal community of expertise, and develop junior staff as empowered leaders.
  • Leading business development by proactively cultivating leads, identifying project opportunities, reviewing and crafting project proposals, and helping develop new organizational workstreams.
  • Assisting in the production of key deliverables, such as:
  • Stakeholder inventories, maps, and decks: Identify stakeholders relevant to environmental topics and analyze opportunities for engagement.
  • Competitive benchmarking decks: Compare how different companies approach sustainability topics in order to provide a “best-in-class” baseline for developing new sustainability initiatives with companies.
  • Materiality assessments: Help companies gather feedback on sustainability issues from internal and external stakeholders and graphically present findings to better inform decisions. 
  • Facilitating and leading engagement processes between companies and their critical stakeholders.
  • Supporting the development and facilitation of Future 500-hosted events, such as our corporate working groups and annual multi-stakeholder summit.
  • Administrative duties in support of your assigned projects and partners such as executing within budget and on time, ensuring timely invoicing and project updates as needed.

You ideally possess the following professional characteristics:

  • Genuine desire and capability to work constructively on projects with individuals from diverse and conflicting political, environmental, and social perspectives—some of whom you may deeply personally disagree with. Examples include: an oil-industry executive, an environmental justice advocate, a partisan political donor.
  • Passionate about our mission to build bridges between “odd bedfellows” and developing trusted relationships between individuals in organizations as different as Greenpeace and ExxonMobil. Ability to hold trust and confidences across all sides.
  • Recognition that corporate change is often incremental and that there are many more “small wins” rather than big ones that lead to corporate social and environmental impact.
  • Eagerness to build Future 500’s brand externally through speaking and stakeholder engagement.
  • An ability to thrive in a dynamic and fluid work environment with a small, virtual team, and to take initiative with limited oversight or direction.

 We also require the following skills, expertise, and characteristics:

  • Bachelor’s degree, preferably in an environmental, social impact, or business field (graduate degree preferred and can substitute for work experience).
  • Approximately 7-15 years of professional sustainability experience in a corporate, NGO, philanthropic, or consultancy setting, with a track-record of delivering on increasing responsibilities.
  • Deep knowledge of one or more environmental and social issues challenging the corporate sector today (e.g., deforestation, environmental justice), with insight into managing internal corporate change and/or ESG implementation in a corporate setting, a strong plus.
  • Strong sense of personal integrity, and a demonstrated capability to hold trust and confidences when engaging across all sides of an issue.
  • Excellent project and time management skills, with the ability to manage and prioritize multiple concurrent projects.
  • Strong research, writing, verbal, and interpersonal skills; capable of communicating professionally with corporate and NGO executives.
  • Seamless proficiency using Microsoft Office Suite and Google Suite.
  • After Covid-19 subsides, willingness to travel to events and partner offices (approx. 2-4 days per trip, 7-10 times per year).
  • A commitment to advancing equity in our organizational priorities and thoughtfully through the counsel we provide our partners.
  • A comfort and interest in jumping in to fill needs, sometimes with little direction, as they fluidly arise.

Think you would be a good fit but you’re not sure if you meet all these requirements? We encourage you to apply! Make sure to create ONE PDF document including a cover letter and resume (please see detailed instructions below.)

About Future 500:

We are a 501(c)3 non-profit consultancy specializing in stakeholder engagement around social and environmental issues. We work to build bridges between parties at odds—most often, corporations and activists—to advance solutions to sustainability challenges. Sometimes, this involves advising companies on how to better engage with their stakeholders or develop sustainability strategies; other times, it means collaborating with NGOs and foundations to highlight key issues or promote bipartisan policy measures.

We also provide a number of sustainability services to our partner companies, including benchmarking and stakeholder analyses, materiality assessments, and deep dives on important issues and emerging trends. 

Our small staff of seven is a mix of professionals with experience across the corporate and NGO spectrum. Together, we work on a wide range of issues—everything from climate change, plastic waste, green chemistry, and social and environmental justice. Regardless of the project at hand, we aim to earn and maintain the trust of all parties while striving for common ground.

The majority of our team is in San Francisco, where Future 500 was founded in 1995. We also have staff in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, and a network of Senior Fellows and affiliate consultancies located around the globe. This position will be remote and can be located anywhere in the United States.

Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion:

At Future 500, our mission is to advance business as a force for good. Core to realizing our mission is building a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture inside our own organization, and advancing a more just world through the counsel we provide our partners. A diverse team—with a range of lived experiences, backgrounds, and viewpoints—underpins our ability to respectfully challenge each other and our partners with new and often overlooked priorities. And we think building an inclusive workplace, where anybody can thrive, is just the right thing to do. For that reason, all applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.


  1. http://future500.org/
  2. mailto:info@future500.org

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