Partnerships Lead

About Empower Work

Empower Work is a national nonprofit changing the lives of workers across the United States. We envision a world where everyone can thrive at work. When work actually works for people, an individual’s economic and emotional well-being increases. And there is a ripple effect: communities, companies, the economy, and our democracy, thrive.

Mission

Empower Work is on a mission to create healthy, equitable workplaces where people are valued, supported, and empowered in ways that support their economic mobility, emotional well-being, and career success.

How We Fuel Change

To achieve our mission, we take a three-pronged approach:

1. Direct service - our free, confidential text line improves well-being for historically marginalized workers through coaching and resources that support increased confidence, clarity, agency, empowerment, and economic security – all rooted in equity.
2. Training and community - we improve workplace skills, practices, and education through our training platform for both volunteers and community partners.
3. Policy and practice change - we root approaches to systemic workplace change in workers’ experiences through data and stories.

Since 2018, we've supported over 400,000 workers through our text line and digital content. Over 94% report improved mental health and over 80% report improved financial security. See more of our impact in our 2023 Impact Report. We overwhelmingly support workers with the least power and fewest resources. Over 54% of those our mission supports identify as a person of color, 76% identify as women, and 80% make less than $75K/year. The top industries served are health and human services, retail, service, education, tech (IT), and other (manufacturing, trucking, etc).

Joining the team as our new Partnerships Lead is a unique opportunity to lead us into a new era of impact. We’re looking for someone with strong relationship and operational skills to lead and expand our partnership work that will help us reach and change the lives of over 3 million workers. This includes workforce development and training organization, community groups, government partnerships, and more.

You’ll join a nimble, collaborative, creative, and “roll-up-your-sleeves” team as well as a community of driven, accomplished professionals who are passionate about making workplaces across the U.S. positive environments, rich in opportunity for everyone. Ultimately, every team member, advisor, volunteer, Board Member, and champion is driven by the goal of growing our impact by ensuring millions more people have the tools to thrive at work.

Our Culture

As a team, we have a shared purpose, prioritizing a healthy, equitable, welcoming work environment that includes a robust sense of belonging, flexibility to tackle what’s needed across life, support to grow and thrive personally and professionally, and meaning in doing this transformational work together towards big goals while having fun and finding joy. 

Our Values

We operate from shared values driven by our vision and mission. They are how we show up every day in our work as we make decisions, evaluate our impact, and assess how we can better serve workers.

• We put our community first. Human-centered service is at the core of how we approach our work. We’re committed to prioritizing the people we serve above all else, and striving to meet their needs through every aspect of our work.
• We improve ourselves and our impact with care. We’re committed to growing individually and as a team to achieve our mission. We build each other up to improve our individual and collective impact. With trust and empathy, we share and accept feedback often. We are hard on ideas to maximize our individual and collective impact, and easy on people to preserve a safe, trusting, and collaborative culture. When disagreeing, we do it early, create respectful space for exploring, then commit to the final decision. We know that challenging perspectives and being respectful are in harmony, not conflict.
• We hold ourselves accountable. We are accountable for the impact of our actions. We acknowledge and address any shortcomings, communicate proactively, and consistently deliver on our goals to achieve the impact we are committed to.
• We embrace curiosity. We are constantly curious to better ourselves, the community we serve, and our impact. We explore what’s working, what’s not, what we do and don’t know about the people we serve. We dig into those questions actively through quantitative and qualitative data analysis, asking into the community and testing iterative approaches to impact, and actively seeking feedback from our help seekers, partners, and advisors.
• We embody equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging. We share a commitment to creating an environment where everyone has an opportunity to thrive. As a team, we seek out, welcome, and value diverse experiences and perspectives knowing that makes our work, our team, and our impact stronger.

About the Role

We’re seeking a talented Partnerships Lead to manage the organization’s external relationships with community-based organizations, workforce and training organizations, and other strategic partners to enable impact at scale. The Partnerships Lead will play a critical role in relationship building and project management that enables Empower Work’s growth and impact. 

The ideal candidate for this role is a creative partnerships or program manager, ideally with experience in workforce development, who is warm, quick to connect with others, and has a network of like-minded folks that you’ve built throughout your career. 

Empower Work’s Partnerships Lead will be responsible for deeply understanding the needs of partners we work with (workforce development, community, channel, and others), ensuring those partnerships support with the workers we support, expand the outcomes we seek to impact through our work (economic security, emotional well-being, and equitable workplaces), and developing and executing partnership plans to meet those outcomes. 

This position will report to the Chief Program Officer and is fully remote, with travel to San Francisco required 1-2 times/year for team convenings and other travel as needed for partnership connections. 

Impact You’ll Have

In the first 3 months, you will…

• Develop strong working relationships across the organization and quickly build trust and credibility with the team
• Become well-versed in the Empower Work program model and our existing partnership strategy to deeply understand our desired impact with our partners
• Begin building relationships with our various partners, with an emphasis on eight community-based organizations that are part of an exciting new initiative at Empower Work 
• Own the project management of all partnership work, supporting both the Executive Director and the Chief Program Officer in effectively advancing partnership work, including developing materials, coordinating across internal stakeholders, and scheduling, meeting prep, leading meetings, and follow-ups to provide a high level of support and service 

In the first 6 months, you will…

• Assume full ownership of all relationships with community-based partners, ensuring that we are cultivating and growing the partnerships while providing value 
• Begin to assess and surface opportunities for additional partnerships with community-based organizations, corporate philanthropic partners, channel partners, or others who can support us in reaching more workers 
• Become the in-house expert on workforce development organizations and other community organizations that are providing programming, support, and resources to vulnerable workers to help us reach a broader audience 
• Begin defining the criteria by which Empower Work identifies, vets, and secures new partners 
• Managing the cross-functional to get things done to meet partner needs 

In the first year, you will…

• Execute against existing partnership strategy and start to design a longer-term partner strategy 
• Create really smooth, seamless processes internally for ensuring that partners have what they need. As we’re learning a lot - what are the partner pain points, how are we addressing them quickly and how can we take that and apply it to the best way to structure our work and how team is working best 
• Ensure our partners have extraordinary appreciation, excitement, and outcomes in addressing their community’s pain points 
• Understand the full partner community member lifecycle and identify opportunities for driving improvements and efficiencies at every stage through redesigning processes, systems, training, or other elements 

To be successful in this role...

• You have led programs and partnerships aimed at enhancing social impact, ideally in the workforce development space 
• You’re knowledgeable about the workforce development landscape
• You believe that all people are capable of reaching their full potential and are passionate about helping them get there  
• You gauge your success in measurable impact and know how to rigorously prioritize 
• You are service-minded, flexible, detail-oriented, and energized by solving problems and sparking solutions 
• You know how to match vision with execution. You have experience thinking strategically as well as demonstrated success executing with strong attention to detail 
• You love using data to inform decisions and getting others on board
• You have a bias towards action and are not afraid to test unproven ideas to surface the great ideas
• You are known for your ability to create inclusive team environments that foster trust, and you know how to enable other leaders to do the same 
• You excel at organizing, managing, prioritizing, and completing multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment

Important Details

• Location: Empower Work’s HQ is in San Francisco. Strong preference for Bay Area candidates. If outside the Bay Area, travel 1-2 times a year to the region for team building along with national travel 1-3 times a year for potential conferences or other convenings. 
• Time: Full time. 
• Compensation: Dependent on location and experience. This role pays $90,000-$100,000 for candidates in the Bay Area. We adjust final salaries based on location and experience. More information on salary based on your permanent location will be discussed in the interview process. This position is exempt. We also offer benefits including QSEHRA health reimbursement, a monthly workplace stipend, 401K, professional development funds, and generous time off including 3+ weeks of paid office closures, paid PTO, and paid leave for life needs such as parental, health, and bereavement.
• Reporting: This role will report to the Chief Program Officer.

What’s the application process and timeline?

Our goal is to bring a new team member on board by October. We’ll be moving through this process quickly.

• Applications Open: This application should take about 20 minutes including submitting your resume and a few questions.
• Phone Interviews (30 minutes)
• Zoom Interviews with Executive Director (1 hour):  The Zoom interview will dig into the details of your professional experience in relation to this role.
• Project (1 hour): If moving to the project phase, you will receive a project scope which will take 1 hour to complete. 
• In-Person Final Interviews (2.5-3 hours): These will be with members of the team including the CPO and colleagues, as well as potential members of the Board that you can learn more about the organization and we can dig into any final questions to ensure mutual alignment. These will likely be in person in San Francisco.
• Reference Calls: Final candidates will share 3 professional references and we will reach out to them for 15 minute phone calls.
• Final Offer Made in late October or early November.   

Is the full team remote? Will it stay that way? 

When we started Empower Work, our staff were all located in the Bay Area. Since the beginning, our volunteers have been across the country - and the world. We are now a remote team with people in the Bay Area, Illinois, Georgia, and Tennessee. This position can be based anywhere in the United States with strong preference for the Bay Area. We will gather 1-2 times a year, likely in the Bay Area. 

Importance of Inclusion and Belonging

Hiring, supporting, and empowering a diverse, inclusive, collaborative team is at the core of our mission. We strongly encourage people of color, first-generation Americans, first in their family to pursue higher education or join a new industry, people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and women to apply.   

Empower Work is an equal opportunity employer. This means all qualified applicants will receive consideration and will not be discriminated against because of race, ethnicity, sex, age, religion, national origin, marital status, pregnancy, personal appearance, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, family responsibilities, or political affiliation. 

Ready to apply?

If you share our values and our enthusiasm for empowering people to thrive at work, we’d love to review your application! Instead of a cover letter, we ask you to submit your resume and answer three questions to share a bit more about you.