Media 2070 Senior Director

Free Press and Free Press Action work to amplify the voices of people and communities in the crucial decisions that shape our media. We believe that positive social change, racial justice and meaningful engagement in public life require equitable access to technology, diverse and independent ownership of media platforms, and journalism that holds leaders accountable and tells people what’s actually happening in their communities. We work at the intersection of media and technology to strengthen our democracy, while creating the way to a just and abundant media future.

The Media 2070 senior director leads the Media 2070 project at Free Press, a fast-growing organizing hub for thousands of people around the world engaged in surfacing the history and impact of systemic media anti-Blackness and sparking processes for repair. The senior director will focus on advocating and building collaborations at the intersection of racial justice and media, as well as the narrative and cultural components of the broader movement for Black reparations.

The senior director is responsible for working with individuals inside and outside Free Press to cultivate ideas and collaborations that transform the media system, which we define as inclusive of journalism, digital technology, film and television, media policy, telecommunications infrastructure and more. The senior director will lead the Media 2070 team as they work to create the conditions necessary to achieve a future in which the media system no longer perpetuates a myth of Black inferiority, and is abundant with the resources and power needed for Black communities to own and control their own stories.

This position will provide leadership, coaching and strategic planning needed for the Media 2070 team to deliver campaigns, organizing and cultural activations all geared toward the transformation of media infrastructure, policy and culture for a liberative future. They will collaborate daily to guide campaign strategy and coalition work, while serving as a thought leader and public communicator, and securing internal and external resources to advance the work. The senior director nimbly shifts and serves multiple audiences, working to reach, persuade and mobilize organizers, scholars, activists, allies, media-makers, policymakers, funders, thought leaders and the Free Press team behind new ideas, creative campaigns, and opportunities to make lasting cultural-shifts on issues of anti-Black media harm.

The Media 2070 senior director works closely with the Senior Advisor, Reparative Policy and Programs and advises the Chief Operating Officer, Chief of Staff and the Managing Director on matters related to budget, staffing and capacity. They manage the core Media 2070 team, and convene and collaborate with its members regularly, and work across the organization to advance reparative media work. They will also regularly advise and collaborate with the co-CEOs on strategy and fundraising.

The ideal candidate will be a strong communicator internally and externally and able to represent Media 2070 and Free Press in public, through media appearances and speaking engagements, and before funders and other supporters.

The Media 2070 Senior Director reports to the Chief of Staff.  This job requires flexibility in work schedule, generally aligning to the U.S. East Coast business hours and is remote within the U.S. The position requires evening and weekend work, especially to handle “rapid response” and event needs. Frequent domestic travel, including multi-day trips, is expected.

Free Press is composed of two separate organizations, Free Press and Free Press Action Fund. Both entities share the same overall mission and employees will have time assigned to one or both entities. This job description refers collectively to the two organizations under the name “Free Press.”

Primary Responsibilities:

• Be the chief evangelist for media reparations: Serve as a highly visible representative for the Media 2070 project and Free Press while advancing emergent frameworks within the realm of media reparations, including concepts such as media care, repair, and accountability – grounded in Black liberation, media justice and reparative justice, and the cultural shifts needed to achieve them. Be a compelling speaker, panelist, writer and advocate on issues of media reparations, helping to prioritize media repair as a component of all justice movements and in the public consciousness.
• See the future of media and racial justice — and guide us there. The senior director plays a key role at Free Press in identifying key components of a future liberative media and fine-tuning strategies and policy solutions that are needed to get us there. This requires deep grounding in Black liberation, intersectional racial justice, media advocacy, plus a mix of long-range strategic thinking and tactical flexibility. Media 2070 is a futuring-lab in the Afrofuturist tradition. In this role, the senior director will maintain a culture of dreaming, futuring, expansiveness and creativity as we support and shape the media reparations movement.
• Develop and lead winning campaigns: Design a robust program of advocacy and organizing that will make reparations a common-sense issue. Stay tapped into evolving reparations initiatives around the U.S, particularly the media and cultural components of these proposals. Design campaigns and push for policy reform aimed at influencing Congress, federal agencies, the Presidential administration and state and local decision makers as needed. Guide the project team in identifying campaign opportunities, targets, asks, actions and follow-up that will move the needle toward winning big on media components of reparations, as well as reparative funding models for the future of media. Build on our campaign and organizing infrastructure, strengthen partnerships with key stakeholders, prioritize directly impacted communities and individuals, and coordinate with campaign partners to track progress and wins.
• Build winning coalitions: Build powerful and engaged networks of stakeholders to advocate for media reparations, including scholars, organizers, media-makers, media leaders, creatives, artists, philanthropists and others engaged in culture shift work. Advance safe, just environments for collaboration with clarity around values and goals.
• Lead development and dissemination of the media reparations framework: Develop training curriculum, popular education and engagement events, cultural organizing tactics and field organizing, both on- and off-line.
• Encourage cross-team collaboration: Encourage cross-team collaboration between campaign, digital, field, communications, policy and strategic engagement teams and projects. Ensure good cross-team communication and cohesion. Work closely and collaboratively with senior leaders, the communication, program and policy teams on strategies for campaigns and activities, leveraging traditional and new media to achieve campaign goals.
• Secure resources to sustain the work: Marshal the resources necessary internally and externally to strengthen and maintain the work of the Media 2070 project. Cultivate relationships with prospective funders, maintain contact with current funders, develop and execute new ideas to attract new grants, and provide project updates and information to the development team. Provide report-backs on speaking engagements, events and meetings, documenting activities via blog posts, event reports or other collateral materials. Closely coordinate with the development team and the Co-CEOs, sharing information and intelligence, consulting on fundraising strategy and engaging support.
• Evaluate and learn: Develop and maintain deep substantive knowledge of issue area and campaign goals, and the dynamics of cultural and policy change. Conduct campaign evaluations and share lessons learned. Keep up on emerging campaign strategies and social movement tactics. Implement new approaches, technologies and best practices by regularly communicating with allies and campaigners, attending conferences and trainings as needed and reporting back to Free Press program staff.
• Advance intersectional race equity: Clearly and consistently articulate an understanding of racial equity and structural racism and the centrality of this analysis to the work Free Press does and how we operate. Integrate that knowledge into work projects and interactions by addressing structural implications and disproportionate impacts of policies, activities and decisions on race, class, gender and other group identities within the context of job responsibilities and projects. Advise Co-CEOs on advancing racial equity through our programmatic work and serve as an internal and external champion of this work, demonstrating and implementing expertise in this area to further our organizational values and goals.

Desired Skills and Attributes:

• Must have a commitment to Black liberation, racial equity and experience working with Black, Indigenous and/or other communities of color
• Organizer, educator, facilitator steeped in political and cultural change work, organizing winning campaigns for social and racial justice
• Familiarity with trends in journalism, press freedom, media and tech and cultural organizing
• A creative self-starter, able to work independently and with limited oversight to accomplish agreed upon objectives and to evaluate results
• Able to work under tight deadlines, navigate competing priorities, and effectively adjust work plans to respond to emergent challenges or opportunities
• Must be able to remain positive, tactful and composed under pressure
• A team player with a low-ego approach to collaboration with both internal and external colleagues
• Able to develop and maintain relationships with a wide range of external organizations
• Excellent interpersonal communication skills
• Must value and respect differences of race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, ability and socioeconomic circumstance
• Dedication to Free Press’ mission of fighting for everyone’s rights to connect and communicate, in addition to the overall success of the organization

Experience and Qualifications:

• No minimum education is required, a background in public policy, political science, communications, organizing, or related fields will indicate aptitude for the daily work this job requires
• 8-10 years of directly relevant experience in media, technology and telecommunications policy is preferred; nonprofit and organizing experience required
• Issue area expert on organizing and advocacy efforts in support of reparations, as well as the history and case supporting media reparations
• Strong interest in media and technology issues and demonstrated experience working on those or similar issues
• Proficiency with setting strategy, marshaling resources, delegation, decision making, management and evaluation
• Ability to effectively work with highly sensitive personnel, financial, operational and political information
• Experience managing employees, volunteers and interns
• Demonstrated capacity for full-charge “ownership” of program or administrative areas that are integral to day to day organizational functions
• Demonstrated ability to run successful campaigns (identifying targets, tactics, allies, resources, etc.)
• Ability to represent Free Press and Free Press Action Fund to a wide and diverse range of external parties (e.g: allies, adversaries, elected officials, funders)
• Capable of serving as “back up” for essential staff functions below and above this position
• Experience creating and managing coalitions
• Experienced campaign director steeped in policy, advocacy and/or cultural change work, organizing for social and racial justice.
• Excellent writing and verbal communication skills, including the ability to distill complicated ideas into digestible content for a variety of audiences
• Brings relationships with organizers, journalists, media makers, media and/or tech networks, etc.
• Demonstrated program and/or project management skills and significant stakeholder/partnership experience
• Attention to detail, flexibility and demonstrated capacity to operate in a fast-paced environment
• Must have ability to succeed in a predominately telework/remote office  environment, including working with an off-site manager, adopting and maintaining strong digital security practices, and fostering connection and community with colleagues located throughout the U.S.

Covid - 19 Safety:

All Free Press employees must be fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus or have an approved medical or religious/ethical/moral accommodation.

Compensation:

Free Press is committed to offering competitive pay and generous benefits, including

• Annual paid time off is a total of ten weeks, including vacation, health-care leave, holidays, and two organization-wide week-long closures.
• Group medical, dental and vision insurance
• Short- and long-term disability insurance
• Employer contribution to retirement plans (no matching required)
• Flexible health, commuter and dependent care spending accounts
• Paid family leave
• Stipends for business use of personal phones and for home office locations
• All employees receive computers and equipment necessary for the job
• A flexible, supportive work culture

This position is categorized as a “career level 4 - senior director” position, in the context of five classifications at Free Press, ranging from coordinator to executive.

The starting salary at Free Press for a national director who meets the above qualifications is $110,000 - $125,000. Starting salary is based on the selected candidate’s qualifications and experience. To counter pay inequality and uphold internal parity, we use a nonnegotiable starting salary system, while benchmarking our pay to competitive markets in the nonprofit sector.

Free Press is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

We value excellence and diversity in our workforce. People of color, women, people with disabilities, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, gender-nonconforming and formerly incarcerated individuals are strongly encouraged to apply.

If you meet some of the qualifications above, we encourage you to apply or to reach out for more information. We know groups subjected to systemic oppression– including people of color, women, people from working class backgrounds, and people who identify as LGBTQ – are less likely to apply unless and until they meet every requirement for a job. Therefore, we strongly encourage applications from people with these identities or who are members of other communities who are marginalized.

How to apply:

Complete our online application.  Fully answering the application questions is an important part of the application process; 4-5 sentences in response to each question will help us understand your thinking.

Our hiring process includes an initial 20-30 minute interview with one staff person, one or two hour-long interviews with 3-4 staff members, and reference checks after the final interview.

We provide reasonable accommodations for the application, interview, or any other aspect of the employee selection process to applicants with disabilities. Please email amartyn@freepress.net to request an accommodation.

Key dates:

Applications submitted by January 30, 2024 will be reviewed with priority; applications submitted after that date will be reviewed on a rolling basis. This search will remain open until the position is filled. The ideal candidate will be available to begin work in March 2024.

Keywords

media reparationsracial justiceBlack liberationmedia advocacycampaignpolicy reformcoalitionsfundraisingracial equity