Managing Director, Global Climate Strategies

Key Responsibilities

The Managing Director, GCS will be joining Climate Lead as it moves from its first five years of proving its model into its next phase of strategic growth.  The following represent key priorities and objectives for the role.

Executive Leadership

• As a member of the leadership team, model Climate Lead’s values as well as actively collaborate and contribute to setting the organization’s strategic direction and culture, ensuring alignment with its mission, vision, and long-term goals for the whole of the organization.
• Provide high-level support and guidance to ensure effective implementation of organizational policies, work plans, and new initiatives across all teams.
• Contribute to and participate in budgeting and financial planning processes, ensuring the organization remains financially sustainable and meets all fiduciary responsibilities.
• Provide leadership support and coaching/mentorship to management colleagues and team members across the organization, helping to foster a collaborative and inclusive culture that promotes living Climate Lead’s values, achieving the organization’s Purpose, and enabling professional growth and organizational excellence.

GCS Team Leadership

• Lead the development and implementation of the GCS team strategy and annual work plans to effectively integrate global expertise and solutions into Climate Lead’s work.
• Partner with teams across Climate Lead to ensure GCS is effectively integrated with and coordinating on organizational strategy and work plans across the organization.
• Lead and manage efforts to build, maintain, and leverage the knowledge base that enables Climate Lead to systematically connect new climate philanthropists to trusted funder peers, advisors, as well as proven and high-impact strategies, collaborative giving vehicles, and the strong ecosystem of regional and specialized regrantors and grantees.
• Lead and contribute to efforts that identify, promote, and curate opportunities for philanthropists with the potential to draw eight- and nine-figure investments into high-impact climate strategies and goals.  Engage in and promote systems-level thinking and scaled impact with field and coalition partners.
• Champion workflow processes and effective prioritization (e.g., for due diligence and product development); help identify where possible opportunities for modularity might exist with Climate Lead’s product sets to support effective scaling, flexibility, and speed.

Sourcing and Diligencing Strategies and Solutions

• Lead, manage, and contribute to GCS team efforts to source and diligence strategies and solutions from across philanthropic and civil society sectors, helping to match the needs of new philanthropists with trusted opportunities for their philanthropic capital to flow toward high-impact solutions.
• Operate as an objective and expert broker for the climate field, which requires not being wedded to a single theory of change or climate agenda. Provide support to the Philanthropy team in helping philanthropists understand different points-of-view around various climate strategies and solutions, and help guide them to viable pathways to impact through the paces of a rigorous diligence framework.
• In close partnership with the Philanthropy and Communication teams, help design and craft accessible materials for new climate philanthropists, including developing frameworks to quickly educate philanthropists on investment options, elevating the questions that matter most for impact, and supporting efforts to move philanthropists from learning to action, with the unique skillset of the GCS team.
• In partnership with Communications and Philanthropy team colleagues, co-create “on-demand” knowledge products with involvement from networks of experts and other stakeholders to support investments in climate philanthropy and eventual scaling.
• Lead and manage GCS team efforts to better define opportunities for intersectional engagement from philanthropists who support other causes, such as health, gender, and poverty.  Build and elevate cases for why climate is vital to every cause and curate portfolios of strategies with compelling co-benefits.
• In partnership with the People team, champion the ongoing development of Climate Lead’s learning culture, including offering team-wide climate learning sessions on climate content and overseeing the GCS team’s efforts to manage processes to cascade new learnings to the team.

Engagement With Global Networks/Advisors

• Continually grow, evolve, and maintain trust-based partnerships and networks to the global climate sector, including ensuring advisors rotate periodically and Climate Lead evolves as it learns.  Identify and address gaps in networks, finding new partnerships and coalitions across geographies and sectors that meet Climate Lead’s needs for diverse validation and expertise as well as to advance its efforts to curate big ideas with the field.  Promote and lead transparent engagements rooted in reciprocal information and knowledge sharing.
• Actively partner with and represent Climate Lead externally in complex networks and convenings, primarily to identify emerging climate opportunities and developments in the sector, as well as to help the field and Climate Lead align on messaging and learnings.
• Ensure network access and visibility are codified and shared across the GCS team and Climate Lead.

Ideal Profile

Climate Lead seeks a senior global climate strategist and leader who will manage the GCS team with vision, creativity, and commitment.  While no one candidate will embody all the qualifications enumerated below, the ideal candidate will possess many of the following professional and personal abilities, attributes, and experiences:

• Climate Expertise:  Demonstrated ability to deploy an objective approach to sourcing and evaluating climate strategies and solutions from the sector in order to work effectively across a wide spectrum of networks, partnerships, and funder groups.  Has a strong understanding of the philanthropic tools and levers suitable for high-impact climate solutions.  Deep expertise in how impact is measured in the climate sector as well as a clear and authoritative ability to articulate and advocate for the most promising and impactful solutions.
• Leadership and Management:  Able to balance presence, focus, and engagement between internal and external responsibilities.  Knowledge of how to lead through organizational growth and demonstrated use of change management tactics to effectively iterate on strategy, systems, and operations.  Demonstrated expertise managing through influence at leadership team levels and with external stakeholders.  A natural coach and mentor who knows how to use their experience and wisdom to lift up others in their work.
• Network Engagement: A background operating in global and regional climate networks and an ability to activate or tap into experts and movement leaders from across the climate and environmental justice communities.
• Adaptive and Resilient:  Thrives in evolving, fast-paced ventures.  Energized and capable of working at strategy and leadership team levels; handles administrative and tactical responsibilities through hands-on implementation.
• Advisory Orientation:  Enjoys work environments built around active inquiry and learning; thrives by creatively synthesizing ideas and input from multiple sources, and an ability to recognize excellence.  Able to define and use rigorous criteria and analytical frameworks for decision-making, due diligence, and prioritization purposes.
• Communication Skills:  Brings outstanding communication skills, particularly as a writer and with a clear perspective on how to most effectively tailor content to generate powerful narratives.  Understands how to translate complex material into relatable and digestible content, but also remain respectful and true to the complexity and depth of the issues at hand.
• Embraces Collaborative Teams:  Thrives in and respects Climate Lead’s collaboration model, which works in a participatory way across the organization and through Climate Lead’s extensive global networks.
• Emotional Intelligence:  Encourages constructive, balanced / objective discussions to drive innovation and progress internally and externally.  Invites candor and has a temperament that deploys a sensitive touch in teasing out points of disagreement.

Required Experience

• At least fifteen years of broad strategy and content expertise in the global climate sector, ideally working across sectors and geographies, including in the global south, and a grounding in how organizations deliver solutions in different regions worldwide.
• Significant experience serving on organizational leadership teams and strategically managing divisional teams in a high-performance and matrixed environment.
• Experience managing a team and work environment where people from diverse cultural, social, and ethnic backgrounds can thrive.
• Experience designing and/or championing processes and work cultures that enable efficient collaboration, learning, and impact-orientation within and across teams.
• Significant experience cultivating and expanding external networks and operating with an ethos of mutual respect for a diverse range of perspectives.
• Experience representing organization-wide vision/strategy in international fora, through speaking engagements, advisory roles, or other methods.