Location: Washington DC, New York City, or San Fransisco 

Background: The Global Development Incubator (GDI) builds startups and partnerships to address some of the world's toughest global development challenges. We play a mix of the strategist and implementer role to spin out new initiatives over 24-36 months. Throughout each stage of our process, we bring together the right partners across sectors – including corporations, nonprofits, governments, and foundations – to help game-changing ideas scale their impact and prepare them for long-term success. GDI has offices in Washington DC, New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Nairobi. 

Application Deadline: August 21, 2019 – we will review applications on a rolling basis so encourage interested candidates to apply early.

Since our founding in 2013, GDI has built a significant track record in our field, having now shaped over 40 social impact initiatives, including designing, building, launching, and graduating nine new initiatives that now stand as independent organizations. We’ve also grown as an organization to over 50 staff members with a diverse depth and breadth of experience building new social impact startups.

Today, we’re looking for an entrepreneurial Brand, Marketing, and Communications Lead to play two major roles: 1) Elevating GDI and its brand as the leading organization building new startups and partnerships to address the biggest challenges in global development and 2) Directing GDI’s brand, marketing, and communications support for our incubated initiatives as they go to market. As a foundation beneath both of these roles, the Lead will play an important part in driving community and knowledge sharing across GDI and incubated initiative teams. 

The Brand, Marketing, and Communications Lead will deploy their talents and expertise towards global development issues ranging from refugee entrepreneurship, to smallholder finance, to forest carbon credits – and everything in between. The ideal candidate for this position is a creative leader with extensive brand, marketing, and communications experience and a passion for social impact who’s looking to play both strategic and executional roles at a leading social enterprise. This person will have significant responsibility and a high degree of autonomy to chart GDI’s path forward.

This role will lead GDI’s Brand, Marketing, and Communications team with 3-4 direct reports and will serve as a member of the GDI management team. The Lead will work closely with members of all GDI teams including Strategy and Build, Finance and Operations, and Talent, as well as collaborating directly with the leaders of GDI’s incubated initiatives.

Responsibilities:

GDI organizational brand, marketing, and communications

• Set and direct strategy for elevating GDI brand among prospective funders, partners, and staff through channels include GDI’s website, marketing materials, digital media, and brand campaigns

• Lead GDI thought leadership efforts to shape the global development sector in creative ways in collaboration with GDI management team

• Direct and finalize process underway with external firm to reposition GDI’s brand and value proposition for our next phase of growth

• Develop GDI’s marketing strategy and tools for measuring impact of marketing tactics 

• Identify and develop key branding, marketing, and communications capabilities to support GDI’s incubated initiatives and hire new staff members and external vendors to bring those to life

Incubated initiatives’ startup branding, marketing, and communications

• Lead and facilitate brand and positioning development for incubated initiatives as they go to market

• Equip GDI’s incubated initiatives with the messaging, digital presence, and foundational communications capabilities they need to influence their target audiences and achieve their intended impact

• Together with direct reports, serve as interim marketing and communications staff for early-stage incubated initiatives directing support including digital media, thought leadership, creative campaigns, email newsletters, social media, launch events, conferences, and more

• Advise mid- to late-stage incubated initiatives on their branding, marketing, and communications

• Develop creative marketing and advocacy campaigns to influence constituents and shape policy

• Refine and scale right-sized quantitative approaches to measuring the impact of initiatives’ marketing and communications efforts 

• Support recruiting and handoff to full-time communications leads as initiatives graduate from GDI

Internal communications, knowledge management, and community building

• Drive connection, community, and affinity across GDI team and incubated initiatives – including through but not limited to annual staff retreats, internal newsletters, and facilitation of monthly team video calls

• Equip and empower GDI staff to share knowledge, approaches, and expertise across the organization to bring the best of GDI to our work

• Support Knowledge and Community Associate in driving improvements and adoption of GDI’s knowledge management system and coordination in business development outreach

• A bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience

• 10+ years of applicable work experience in branding, marketing, and communications; preference for agency experience

• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including impeccable English grammar and editing skills and the ability to translate complicated issues into clear writing

• Experience working in client-facing role that required strong facilitation and interpersonal skills

• Knowledge of and experience acting on key trends in brand, marketing, and communications

• Experience managing and providing coaching and mentorship to direct reports; experience managing outside agencies; experience managing a department budget

• Superb time and project management skills, attention to detail, excellence in prioritization

• Comfort with basic graphic design and a good “design eye”

• Experience designing and driving multi-media marketing campaigns with a deep understanding of digital marketing analytics

• Successful track record in media relations including placing articles in top publications

• Fluency in Microsoft Office suite; familiarity with MailChimp, Squarespace, Adobe Suite, and Wordpress; effective use of social media

The following qualities are a must for GDI employees

• Entrepreneurial “get things done” mindset and the ability to be productive and results-oriented in both collaborative and self-directed contexts

• Passion for driving social impact and tackling the world’s biggest challenges in new ways

If you are interested in this position and meet the qualifications above, please submit a single PDF document containing a one-page cover letter and one-page resume through the link below. It is optional to share a portfolio with some past examples of your branding, marketing, and communications work, but we’d love to see it!