Company Name
NPAG
Company City
Remote
Company State
Remote
Job Location
Remote
Company Information
NPAG is a consulting firm at the intersections of talent strategy, executive search, organizational development, and leadership & organizational capacity building. NPAG is dedicated to serving mission-driven organizations at the leading edge of movements for social change. Our core business is expanding the capacity and diversity of nonprofits by helping them build teams of leaders, changemakers, connectors, and disruptors to advance the missions they serve.
Over our 20 years in business, we have developed a team and company platform that is distributed and closely connected virtually from all regions of the U.S., and mobile as needed, to serve clients in their home communities. We offer a creative, energetic, family-friendly workplace environment – our 27 staff span all regions of the U.S. and around the globe, and represent a wide diversity of experiences, perspectives, identities, and both functional and subject areas. This allows us to provide the highest quality services with a full range of flexibility that results in a sector-leading value proposition for our clients and employees.
The strength and diversity of our team translates directly to the measurable impact of our work building healthy organizations in the mission-driven sector. Our clients do critical work, and we help them not just to identify and attract top talent, but to better understand the landscape of challenges and opportunities they face by effectively tapping the wisdom of diverse networks of leaders. The results speak for themselves, and to cite just one measure, over 70% of our placements since 2020 identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color, and nearly 80% are women.
We see these core values as foundational to everything we do, internally and externally:
• Integrity – Doing what we say we’ll do consistently and in alignment with our core values is fundamental to trust and to our success as a business. Operating with honesty, transparency, and reliability is critical to strengthening our trust with one other and with our sector clients and colleagues.
• Equity – We strive to provide space, tools, and resources to enable staff to establish and maintain critical consciousness in support of shared leadership and shared accountability to advance equity. Through regular practices together in various formats and contexts, we support one another to understand how our individual identities and experiences impact our expectations and needs to achieve success in our work. We proactively seek opportunities to identify and disrupt oppressive systems and to nurture a culture of belonging on our team and beyond.
• Kindness – We strive to be caring, empathic, and open-minded and we take steps to see and support one another in our individual learning in order to create and preserve the conditions for effective communication, joy, and psychological safety.
Job Description
MEET KATHERINE’S HOMEROOM
This Associate will have the unique opportunity to be part of the Homeroom team at NPAG led by CEO Katherine Jacobs with other core members including Managing Associate, Sharon Gerstman, and Executive Assistant, Jessi Davison. This team is responsible for overseeing a diverse and dynamic portfolio of leadership initiatives, ranging from guiding CEOs through transitions to building high-performing teams, and providing strategic consulting to philanthropic organizations and nonprofits during pivotal moments in their journey. Within this vibrant learning environment, the Homeroom team focuses on a wide array of important subjects, including social sector recruitment impacts on evolving multi-org leadership infrastructure and alignment for some of our most important national movements like democracy resiliency, climate justice, and immigrant justice. We also delve into the socio-economic impacts of emerging technologies on systems, culture, and justice imperatives. Furthermore, we explore the world of emergent leadership models at local, regional, national, and global levels in service to collective goals, participatory practices, shared power, and accountability. Due to the nature of our work in dynamic topics, a successful addition to our team will have a passion for continuous learning, an optimistic outlook, strong analytical skills, and pride for excellence in their work.
Katherine Jacobs, CEO
Sharon Gerstman, Managing Associate
Jessi Davison, Executive Assistant
ABOUT THE POSITION
We seek a highly motivated, organized, values-aligned, and client-focused problem solver to join our growing team. Experience tells us that our ability to deliver the highest quality services and fulfill our mission is directly related to the diversity of perspectives and professional and lived experiences represented on our team.
Associates in the firm are client-facing project managers, strategists, relationship builders, writers, and analysts of diverse channels of data and written materials. Our work is exciting, important, nuanced, and urgent, requiring our team to bring persistence, focus, dedication, and sensitivity to the work. Candidates must demonstrate highly refined critical thinking and expert project management skills, a proactive service orientation, exceptional communication skills, and a keen eye for both detail and nuance. Strong candidates will bring a commitment to NPAG values and relevant professional experience with strong alignment to mission-driven work. Capacity to manage multiple projects and priorities at once and to communicate well with internal and external collaborators both virtually and in person is essential. Associates will report within an NPAG “Homeroom” structure to their Homeroom team lead and are further managed on a day-to-day basis by project leads. NPAG has an extensive onboarding and on-the-job training program in all aspects of executive search and consulting and a very proactive orientation to employee advancement through a dedicated cadence of conversations and goal setting to help employees grow and develop their careers within and outside of NPAG.
The Associate will drive key components of a portfolio of searches. Specific responsibilities include:
• Project manage searches and track scheduling, follow up, and status details proactively and effectively throughout the lifecycle of the search to ensure that our work reflects our standards of client management.
• Lead communication in a timely and proactive manner with the NPAG team and client contacts to coordinate action items and drive effective process.
• Manage outreach to critical network contacts to develop deep, diverse, and highly qualified candidate pools by engaging sector leaders in intelligent, two-way dialogue about organizational strategy and impact goals; manage a high volume of relationships with authenticity, sensitivity, and aplomb; capture and track critical data and develop compelling narratives to engage leaders meaningfully around the challenges our clients face.
• Screen applications and convey findings efficiently and thoughtfully to search leads and clients; conduct candidate telephone interviews to more deeply understand a candidate’s career and to assess whether the candidate and client would be able to engage in a mutually complementary relationship.
• Develop and write compelling client deliverables including memos and position descriptions that capture the excitement and opportunity inherent in each search and summaries that synthesize the relevant narratives, experiences, and qualities emerging from each candidate’s background.
• Engage in referencing conversations with sector leaders to gain information about top candidates thoroughly and systematically, and work with Team Leads to ensure clients’ questions and concerns are addressed in a manner befitting the importance NPAG places on deep, comprehensive referencing.
• Contribute to regular company-wide meetings and discussions of a wide range of relevant craft and sector issues and ongoing quality improvement to ensure NPAG benefits from the collective wisdom of all its team members.
We actively seek out identities, experiences, and perspectives that we don’t have represented on our team and do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability. We strongly encourage people from underrepresented and/or historically marginalized communities to apply.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
Associates have a variable compensation plan that includes both base salary and regular “plus” compensation tied to billable hours, plus annual bonus, benefits including paid time off, health insurance reimbursement plan, and retirement plan with guaranteed employer match. Annual total compensation for Associates ranges from approximately $80,000 to $120,000, commensurate with relevant experience.
Job Qualifications
The Associate will drive project management to effectively steward the success of a search. They will support and work in close collaboration with clients, candidates, and across the NPAG team. Success in the role requires someone who embraces the pace and orientation of professional client services work while balancing and holding the values of the mission-driven sector. While no one candidate will embody all of the qualifications enumerated below, the ideal candidate will possess many of the following professional and personal abilities, attributes, and experiences:
• Minimum 5 years of experience working in a relevant professional environment including, for example, client services, philanthropic, or nonprofit organizations.
• Extensive project management experience driving many projects at a time, each with complex timelines, deliverables, and accountability to several stakeholder groups.
• High detail orientation and an ability to both track and synthesize details with accuracy.
• Ability to apply strategy, creativity, analysis and persistence to research projects and other assigned duties.
• Excellent written communication skills, including experience developing written materials that are grammatically sound and tailored to the intended audience.
• Excellent oral communication and presentation skills, including the ability to persuade stakeholders towards shared commitments and understanding.
• Ability to build rapport with both clients and candidates.
• Have an interest in staying abreast of trends in the sector through thought partnership with colleagues, clients, research, etc.
• Be intellectually curious and be willing to seek out and pursue opportunities to develop their skills.
• Be willing to both be mentored/coached and share their own wisdom and experiences with their colleagues for the benefit of the organization.
• Comfort working within a remote environment (this position is home-based).
• Fluency and savvy with web-based technologies and apps such as the Microsoft 365 Suite (Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote, Teams), SharePoint, and Zoom, as well as other project/work management tools such as CRM software or other database experience is preferred.
CORE COMPETENCIES
Successful candidates will, first and foremost, be committed to serving the missions of our clients – including but not limited to their support of movements advancing racial equity, social justice, immigrant rights, economic justice, reproductive justice, child welfare, gender justice, educational excellence and opportunity, disability justice, ethical technology, and environmental justice.
As client-focused project managers, the Associate will partner closely with team members on client facing deliverables and ensure that the service we provide meets NPAG’s standards. This will require that the Associate effectively manage and drive project timelines; proactively identify and rise to meet the client’s needs; be open to and willing to apply constructive feedback from the client, candidates, and colleagues; collaborate closely with all stakeholders in a search; and be prepared to learn from failure and apply these lessons in the pursuit of future success.
Throughout client engagements, the Associate will be expected to bring critical thinking and discernment to the work. This includes supporting the identification of challenges and opportunities that the client is facing, recognizing patterns and learning to anticipate challenges before they materialize, recognizing the values inherent to a client’s mission and organizational goals, and the co-development of strategies for addressing them.
Successful Associates will also be continuous learners with the capacity and willingness to contribute to the team’s diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice (DEIBJ) learning journey and incorporate those concepts into their work continuously. They will bring self-awareness and effort to recognizing and mitigating their own biases; be prepared to recognize power dynamics and discuss them in their work both internal to NPAG and externally with clients and candidates; develop a high level of comfort with language and professional practice related to equity and be able to recognize equity, diversity, and inclusion as distinct but related concepts; and treat everyone with respect, dignity, and grace.
How to Apply
Learn more about NPAG and our purpose at: npag.com.
Candidates may submit a cover letter, sharing more about their interest in the opportunity and relevant experience engaging with people-related change efforts in their career, along with their resume via NPAG’s website.
NPAG is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity and strives for authentic inclusion. NPAG does not discriminate in employment based on any individual’s race, socioeconomic status, national origin, color, disability, religion, gender, age, marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity and encourages all candidates to apply.