Ashoka - Planet & Climate Leadership Group Member and Field Catalyst

Position at Ashoka

The Opportunity

The world is better than we think. In pockets across the globe, humans are pioneering and implementing working, real-life solutions — answers to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.  Ashoka identifies, supports and lifts up these examples, and the changemakers behind them. From a bird’s eye perspective, we see patterns and frontiers of innovation that show a way to a better future. We weave a community of innovators committed to building it, and share our findings and insights with the world.The Planet & Climate Leadership Group Member (LGM) and Field Catalyst will be an exceptional entrepreneur and executive that designs and leads Ashoka’s role in Planet & Climate, one of several focus areas within Ashoka’s Next Now initiative.   The mission of Ashoka Planet & Climate is to envision the most innovative and impactful paradigm shifts for human and planetary wellbeing, and establish the most effective way to bring this new reality about, leveraging a network of networks approach.  To do this we mobilize Ashoka Fellows, Ashoka Young Changemakers and strategic partners across sectors and around the world.

Why Ashoka?

Over the last 40 years, Ashoka pioneered the field of social entrepreneurship globally. We searched and launched 4,000+ extraordinary men and women with system changing ideas to solve problems. Ashoka Fellows have gone on to improve the lives of tens of millions. They have won Nobel Peace Prizes, facilitated the global spread of breakthrough innovations like rotational grazing and microfinance, made major inroads in ending child labor, established key aspects of the sharing economy, championed cross-national treaties to reduce overfishing, and more.

We have also helped the world see why social entrepreneurship is a more powerful way to drive change. Seeing differently, helped people do differently. Investors invested in them, journalists wrote about them, universities created programs and taught courses, and incubators/accelerators supported them. In some countries, governments created policies to support social entrepreneurs.

We continue to grow a global movement of social entrepreneurship, and we recognize this is not enough. The rate of change is accelerating, and our problems are growing faster than our solutions. In such an environment it is not enough for a few to lead and others to follow. Everyone must be a changemaker.

Are you the entrepreneur to lead Planet & Climate?

• You have a vision of a future where everyone has a role to play in advancing human and planetary wellbeing.
• You would relish co-creation with entrepreneurs whose innovations are solving issues of biodiversity, climate change and other environmental crises.
• You want to engage citizens, publishers, and technologists to collaborate with these innovators to catalyze a new era of planetary wellbeing.

The Planet & Climate LGM and Field Catalyst will:

• Build a vision, a uniting purpose and 3-year rolling strategic priorities for the field of Planet & Climate, in alignment with Next Now’s leadership & Ashoka’s Board of Directors

• Lead a team and collaborate with peer entrepreneurs to advance the field of Planet & Climate inside and beyond Ashoka, such as:

• Refining our understanding of patterns and insights across hundreds of Ashoka Fellows in Planet & Climate

• Identifying new paradigm shifts based on field-level insights and prior research such as Thinking Differently – Ideas for Action on Planet & Climate and The Unlonely Planet 2022 – How Ashoka Fellows Accelerate an Everyone a Changemaker World

• Building a global ecosystem of changemakers and key partners, and catalyzing a co-creative effort towards a common goal and shared agenda

• Igniting a movement that fosters a new Planet & Climate mindset for the good of all

• Develop high-level relationships with strategic partners, including financial partners that will secure the financial self-sufficiency of Next Now Planet & Climate’s work moving forward

• Drive institutional alignment and collaboration across programmatic and geographic teams

• Serve as a member of Ashoka’s and Next Now’s senior leadership teams

The Planet & Climate LGM and Field Catalyst will have a minimum of 15 years’ experience, having raised significant funding and mobilized major partnerships, teams and cross-sector networks, and will meet Ashoka's core hiring criteria:

• Entrepreneurship / Intrapreneurship: The candidate cannot come to rest until the new pattern for society that they have conceived and developed is the way that things are routinely done. This requires an incredibly long-term commitment – and with continual listening and adjusting – a relentless and realistic “how-to” thinking, and a passion for seeing their ideas come to life.
• Understanding & Belief in “Everyone a Changemaker”: The candidate understands and believes, and at the gut level, the vision of “Everyone a Changemaker.” They have an expansive and inquisitive intellect and a thinking pattern that connects the dots between the historical trends and contemporary social context.
• Emotional & Social Intelligence: The candidate has the ability to work efficiently and respectfully in teams. They understand how individuals, groups, and societies work and engage effectively in savvy, subtle, and honest ways.
• Ethical Fiber: The candidate embodies exceptionally strong ethical behavior. They are self-reflective and have a strong sense of empathy. They are trustworthy.
• Self-Definition: The candidate assumes that changing the world in big ways and, at a minimum, on a continental scale is what they will achieve in life. They naturally operate at this level and have developed the appropriate skills and ways of thinking. They aren’t interested in small scale roles.

Visit Ashoka Career Opportunities to learn more about our culture, values and hiring criteria.  Ashoka is an equal opportunity employer and invites applications from candidates regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability or religion.

Logistics

• Time commitment: Preferably full-time.
• Compensation: Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location.  A Leadership Group Member (LGM) based in Washington, DC typically has an annual salary of $140-150K with potential equity bonus of $30K.
• Location: Ashoka Global: Washington DC, or Regional offices: London, Lagos, Cairo, Bangalore, Jakarta, Sao Paulo.