Job Description

About Us

Climate Lead empowers philanthropic leaders everywhere to take immediate and far-reaching climate action. By serving as an impartial guide, Climate Lead equips new climate philanthropists with the information and insights they need to drive transformative solutions. We cut through the complexity by curating roadmaps, in partnership with a diverse network of experts, to help philanthropists make a bold impact on climate.

The Director will lead key team operations, including planning, budgeting, and project distribution, and will manage the team responsible for the Knowledge Management System (KMS) of climate solutions in order to expand the Global Climate Strategies team’s capacity to deliver high-impact solutions, expertise, and advisory services for new climate philanthropists.

Managerial Responsibilities

This role has two direct reports:

• Assistant, Knowledge Management System (KMS)
• Analyst, KMS

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Team operations (55%)

• Serve as a senior member of the GCS team (5%)
• Together with the Managing Director, Deputy Managing Director, Directors and the Associate Director of Partnerships, foster a collaborative GCS team environment
• Providing proactive mentorship and leadership for new and existing teammates.
• Support the MD and DMD in socializing and implementing organizational priorities and conducting special projects, as needed.
• Lead hiring and onboarding for GCS (10%)
• Lead GCS team onboarding plan development and implementation
• Lead recruitment and onboarding of GCS operations staff
• In collaboration with People team, support the onboarding of other Climate Lead staff
• Lead team planning and tracking (10%)
• Lead development and tracking of annual budget
• Develop and implement processes to set the team's strategic objectives
• Lead tracking and review of team objectives and reporting.
• In close partnership with the MD, update the Leadership Team and cross-team peers on progress, challenges, and any changes needed to achieve priority goals.
• Lead team meetings, retreats, and communication (15%)
• Plan team meetings to advance priorities and foster learning.
• Lead planning and execution of team retreats to drive alignment, innovation, and team unity.
• Partner with MD on team communications and strategically share with the broader organization as needed.
• Oversee systems, processes, and data (15%)
• Design and deploy tools, systems, and processes that enable the work to flow within and across teams, partnering closely with Salesforce counterparts on other teams.
• Advance the team’s capabilities to leverage data in decision-making and prioritization by sharpening definitions of priority metrics, simplifying data collection and cleaning, and strengthening analysis and dashboards.
• Oversee optimization of Salesforce and the team’s knowledge management system, including new development, protocols, trainings, and driving adoption.
• Oversee risk management for GCS systems and data, and coordinate with the Climate Lead Operations team to share learnings and best practices.

Management responsibilities (20%)

• Hire, train, and supervise a team of two individuals focused on the organization’s knowledge management system.

Cross-Team Operations (25%)

• Strategic cross-team collaboration (20%)
• Partner closely with Philanthropy and Communications teams to promote strategic alignment and a strong culture of collaboration.
• Work with the Philanthropy and Communications teams to help organize project teams for specific donor touchpoints/products. Spot and lift bandwidth trade-offs to ensure prioritization of the highest-impact work.
• Cross-team collaboration on specific projects (5%)
• Contribute to Climate Lead organizational goals and culture through active participation in cross-team workshops and working groups (e.g., Values Working Group, X-team process workshops, etc).

Success Criteria

Embraces collaborative teams: Help build, lead, and coach high-performing and highly collaborative teams; bring a genuine respect for Climate Lead's collaboration model, working in a participatory way across the organization.

Systems Orientation Excited by opportunities to create or improve existing systems and processes to effectively meet organizational demands and promote operational excellence, while simultaneously planning for future growth needs that will allow the GCS team to scale their capabilities and bandwidth. Focused on solutions that put human users at the center and align with the organization’s culture.

Entrepreneurial: Self-starter with a strong entrepreneurial orientation thriving in new, fast-paced ventures; energized by helping to build something new and innovative; objective approach to the full breadth of climate strategies and solutions will be essential in order to work effectively across a wide spectrum of networks, partnerships, and funder groups. Capable of being both a strategic contributor and a tactician, comfortable with hands-on implementation and administration.

Servant leadership: Active inquiry and learning; thrive by creatively synthesizing ideas and input from multiple sources, and an ability to recognize excellence; pinpoint key questions, distill frameworks, weigh competing points-of-view, and synthesize actionable findings with rigor and speed. Appreciates working in an advisory or consultative setting.

Emotional Intelligence: Comfortable considering multiple points of view and encouraging constructive feedback.

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• Minimum of BS or BA in a relevant field
• 10+ years experience leading and managing teams
• Experience scaling processes and operational functions, ideally in a philanthropy or non-profit
• Experience with Salesforce or other relational databases
• Ability to help define and support the growth of the team and the organization with vision, creativity, and commitment.
• Demonstrates broad climate experience and expertise working across sectors and ideally brings an ability to think globally and have an international network.
• Demonstrates an understanding of how philanthropies function, ideally in the climate space
• Outstanding writing, editing, and verbal communication skills with an emphasis on clear, compelling presentation for audiences new to climate change.
• Understanding of and experience with knowledge management systems and using data for decision making
• Passion for and belief in the importance of creating a team and work environment in which people from diverse cultural, social, and ethnic backgrounds can thrive.
• Exhibits strong ethics, judgment, and discretion required when working with and supporting high-profile philanthropists.

Salary Range: $198,000- $221,000

Work Environment

Climate Lead is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. This position operates in a hybrid environment and is based in our San Francisco, CA, office. Staff in the San Francisco Bay Area currently work in the office Tuesday through Thursday each week and typically work from home the other days.

At the Climate Lead, we value diversity and always treat all employees and job applicants based on merit, qualifications, competence, and talent. We do not discriminate on the basis of or traits historically associated with race, color, religion, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, veteran and/or military status), domestic violence victim status, political affiliation, and any other status protected by state or federal law.