EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT CENTER (EDC)

EDC is one of the world’s leading nonprofit research and development firms. EDC designs, implements, and evaluates programs to improve education, health, and economic opportunity worldwide. Collaborating with both public and private partners, we strive for a world where all people are empowered to live healthy, productive lives.

EDC is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Women, minorities, people with disabilities, and veterans are encouraged to apply.

EDC’s approach to equity, diversity, and inclusion is grounded in EDC’s commitment to respect the dignity of each individual. EDC has a commitment to promoting equity and access to high quality education and health services that contribute to thriving communities where people from diverse backgrounds learn, live, and work together. EDC expresses its commitment to increasing equity through its strategies, services and products, which contribute to building capacity and transforming lives.

EDC is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer committed to enhancing the diversity of its workforce and ensuring an equitable and highly inclusive work environment. EDC is a smoke-free workplace, and offers a supportive work environment, competitive salary, and excellent benefits.

EDC has an exciting opportunity for an engaging Director of Communications whose storytelling, media savvy, and staff management skills can take us to the next level by increasing the external visibility of our work in the U.S. and abroad.

We are looking for someone who shares our commitment to promoting equity and access to high-quality education, health, and workforce development services that contribute to building communities where people from diverse backgrounds learn, live, and thrive together.

The Director will bring a sense of urgency and a “can do” mentality to the Communications team. The successful candidate will be a hands-on leader and a skilled, mission-driven problem-solver, comfortable developing strategy and then rolling up their sleeves to implement it.

EDC’s Director of Communications will be the leader in conveying who we are and why our work has relevance and impact both in the U.S. and abroad. We want to achieve this by

•  Cultivating press relationships with and increasing our representation in top-ranked media outlets
• Expanding and strengthening our strategic use of social media
• Partnering with programmatic staff across EDC to drive communications initiatives that will help us attract new donors and partners
• Promoting a cadre of discipline-specific experts as external thought leaders

The Director of Communications will report to EDC’s Senior Vice President, who helps coordinate strategic business development and visibility-raising within the organization’s leadership team.

Essential Duties

The Director of Communications will

• Work with EDC leadership to develop and implement a strategic plan that aligns our communication and public initiatives with EDC’s strategic goals, both in the U.S. and International Development Divisions.
• Make recommendations and provide technical assistance to program leaders and subject-matter experts to build and implement the voice of their work to achieve programmatic goals. This may include developing communications for a range of online and offline channels, including written materials, media pitches, social media, speaking engagements, and other activities as needed.
• Manage, mentor, and expand EDC’s Communications team, which is responsible for the organization’s media presence, website content, stakeholder newsletters, social media platforms, and organizational materials.
• Increase the organization’s visibility among potential funders and partners, as well as with journalists, peer organizations, and other influencers in education, health, and workforce development sectors.
•  Coach and mentor key subject-matter experts to become public-facing thought leaders.
•  Build and implement a metrics framework to drive our communications and marketing investments.

Location

Flexible; some preference for the position to be based at EDC’s headquarters in Waltham, MA.

• A minimum of 10 years of directly relevant experience, including 3–5 years leading a global communications effort.
• Demonstrated results in public relations, corporate communications, social media, and news media cultivation.
• Clear storytelling capabilties. Proven experience extracting ideas and using them to shape stories.
• Skilled at identifying newsworthy stories across a large organization, with proven track record of successfully pitching stories and subject-matter experts to journalists and external audiences.
• Experience partnering on business development and fundraising efforts.
• Knowledge of U.S. and/or international media landscape, and established networks with relevant media organizations.
• Thorough understanding of changing communications landscape, including strong facility and proven knowledge of media research tools, SEO strategies, and digital platforms for publishing, listening, engaging, and analyzing (e.g., social media platforms and tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TweetDeck, SproutSocial, SoundCloud, YouTube; email platforms; CRMs such as Zoho and Salesforce; CMS such as Drupal and WordPress; media databases and monitoring tools such as Cision and Meltwater; marketing automation tools such as Marketo and Hubspot).
• Proven “agent of change” who has inspired positive culture changes in other organizations.
•  Excellent leadership skills and proven ability to build trusting relationships across the organization.
• Ability to inspire and mentor colleagues to be organizational spokespeople and champions of EDC’s work.
• Solid experience defining and using metrics to measure performance and impact.
•  Ability to convey complex ideas concisely and compellingly to a range of external audiences.
• Ability to operate as an effective tactical as well as strategic thinker.
• Ability to interact and advise international field staff, ensuring the communications team is providing the necessary support to highlight work done by international projects.
• Ability to juggle competing, time-sensitive priorities.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience in non-profit, philanthropic, university, or mission-driven environment.
• Experience or knowledge of key practice areas within the international development and humanitarian assistance sectors, such as education, public health, youth engagement, and workforce development.
• Experience balancing domestic and international portfolios.
• Familiarity with the constraints and opportunities in a soft-money environment (government grants and contracts, philanthropic partnerships).

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.