Senior Campaign Strategist

About Us

Heavy industry is the foundation of modern society. We need materials like cement, steel, and aluminum more than ever to rebuild our bridges and roads, construct wind and solar projects, and manufacture electric vehicles and heat pumps that will undergird our future. But we also need a new social contract with industry. For all the good industrial progress brings, it also causes a lot of harm. It threatens our climate, reinforces environmental racism, is wasteful, and has left workers and communities behind when convenient to the industry’s bottom line.

Addressing this challenge – and the opportunity it presents – is why Industrious Labs exists. With our partners, we’re reimagining the industrial sector as not only a source of good union jobs but a climate solution where we make things responsibly, prioritize waste reduction, reuse, repair, remanufacture, and recycle. To do this, we will have to change how our stuff is made and what we do with it when we are done with it. In the future we build together, industry is a good neighbor to communities, the anchor of a healthy regenerative economy, and leading the world in addressing climate change.

About the Position

Guided by an inspiring vision, smart strategies, and significant early financial investment, we are seeking an entrepreneurial Senior Campaign Strategist to join our team. Industrious Labs is fully remote, and this role reports to Partner and Campaigns Co-Director Nachy Kanfer.

In this newly created position, the Senior Campaign Strategist is a highly skilled relationship builder with proven ability to establish, grow, and sustain diverse coalitions of stakeholders. They are passionate about solving the climate crisis by focusing on the strategies that will make the biggest impact, including focused campaigns, research and analysis, cross-sector collaborations, and communications. The Senior Campaign Strategist is energized by the challenge of the climate crises, inspired to step into a new era of the movement and has a strong track record of working with diverse groups such as organized labor, environmental justice advocates, and policymakers.

Industrious Labs is poised to kick off a new global cement initiative. Working collaboratively with partners over the past year, we have identified an exciting strategy to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cement plants. Thanks to a visionary funder, we have received sufficient early-stage backing to begin campaign implementation, including hiring this role.

Our high level objectives for the campaign include (but are not limited to):

Pressure international financial institutions on their lending policies as they pertain to climate and cement;
Collaborate with other advocates and efforts already underway in climate finance campaigning, including The Big Shift ^[1] effort; and
Inspire, motivate and build toward consensus within the climate movement on the imperative of tackling global cement emissions.

The Senior Campaign Strategist holds key responsibilities that will evolve over time as the team grows and functions are distributed. During the first year of the role, we anticipate a focus on active and direct engagement with at least one international financial institution on adopting stricter climate lending policies toward cement; formal or informal coalition partnerships working together with external presence; and oversight of the strategic campaign timeline. Other core responsibilities include:

Strategy Development & Implementation

Work with partners to identify and implement new campaign strategies that accelerate decarbonization of the cement industry in line with the values we share with our partners.
Build new organizational relationships and alliances that reflect our values and priorities around equity, diversity, and environmental justice.
Engage key partners in strategy development to build institutional buy-in for the goals of the campaign.
Develop and execute work plans and track progress to ensure transparency and strong collaboration.
Stay apprised of industry trends, policy developments, and technology innovations that will inform the trajectory of the campaign.
Provide briefs and unvarnished analysis of these developments for partner organizations, including funders.

Coalition Building & Capacity Building

Recruit and build an aligned and powerful coalition of finance campaign specialists and other advocates around the vision of cleaning up the cement industry.
Assess the global cement industry landscape, identifying strengths, current players, and gaps in preparation for investment, engaging key leaders, organizations, and industry partners.
Collaborate in the development of comprehensive campaign plans, ensuring tight coordination and cohesion between convening, analytics, communications, and advocacy.
Design and implement trainings and other opportunities for stakeholders to collaborate, train each other, and build the foundational knowledge to develop and refine campaign approaches.
Identify partners with aligned efforts to accelerate action and leverage resources, relationships, and research.

Who You Are

The incoming Senior Campaign Strategist is driven by their belief and commitment to Industrious Labs’ vision, mission, and values. Through their track record and expertise – optimally within the climate or another social justice movement – the successful candidate will play a vital role in the development and execution of a burgeoning Global Cement Initiative.

The Senior Campaign Strategist joins a deeply committed team that brings a track record of success in campaign strategy, data analysis, and communications, with a particular focus on climate and clean energy. The successful candidate is entrepreneurial and excited about the prospect of building something new in the climate movement from the ground up. They have the experience of setting vision, establishing, and scaling successful programs with an ethos of creativity, humility, and an expectation of continual learning.

Despite enormous obstacles involved in decarbonizing heavy industry, the Industrious Labs team operates with a spirit of possibilities and seeks a Senior Campaign Strategist who shares the belief that we can all do things we’ve never done before and can stretch ourselves to achieve incredible results.

This role requires a deep commitment to the principles of environmental justice and climate justice, proven collaboration skills, and the ability to design and execute coordinated strategies that will generate change in a deeply entrenched and seemingly intractable aspect of the climate movement. The Senior Campaign Strategist demonstrates initiative by diving right in to take a concept from idea to implementation, navigating through internal and external barriers as they arise without getting stuck and finding and deploying resources creatively to solve problems. The selected candidate will also possess most of the following Core and Preferred qualifications:

Core

Strong commitment to the mission, vision, policies, and goals of Industrious Labs.
At least 5 years of increasing responsibility in the field, with a proven track record of finance campaigning and coalition building.
Strong collaboration skills to work effectively with colleagues who specialize in communications, organizing, policy, legal and analytics.
Emphasis on cultural competency and emotional intelligence -- this could be demonstrated by experience leading multicultural teams, experience building alignment across divergent viewpoints, etc.
Comfort in scrappy / entrepreneurial / resource-lean situations.
Excited rather than intimidated by the challenge of what's unknown about this role.
Mastery of relationship-building skills and strong existing relationships with a wide range of diverse external constituencies.
Proven leadership skills with clarity of vision and a commitment to the highest levels of integrity, quality, and collaboration, developing strong team cultures, promoting and enhancing equity, diversity, and inclusion, performance management, and professional development.
Demonstrated experience working across lines of race, class, gender, and geography and an analysis of how climate change intersects with historically oppressed and marginalized communities.
Experience in the climate movement or another social justice movement.
Outstanding oral and written communications skills that demonstrate an ability to:
Convey a compelling story about Industrious Labs’ mission and impact;
Translate complex data and analysis into persuasive narratives;
Communicate Industrious Labs’ strategies with accessible expertise (without jargon).
Proven ability to prioritize and be flexible in a fast-paced, constantly evolving, and collaborative environment, where working on a team and working individually are all required.
Commitment to continuous learning, hunger for knowledge, and willingness to ask questions and self-correct; an approach that is curious, self-directed, and entrepreneurial.
Openness to giving and receiving direct, compassionate feedback.
Highly collaborative work style with the ability to operate as a peer and thought partner to the co-founders and partners, other leadership team members, and advisors.

Preferred

Entrepreneurial drive to build an organization from the ground up; prior start-up experience as an early team member in a growing organization.
Desire to grow a skillset in financial management, fundraising and management.
International experience, particularly working with organizations based in the Global South.
Language competency in Hindi, Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, Vietnamese or Malay.

https://bigshiftglobal.org/