SFEI seeks a visionary, knowledgeable, creative, and effective leader to direct our Resilient Landscapes Program. This role is an opportunity to lead and expand a high-impact team and programmatic area, to nurture relationships, connections, and excitement about the SFEI mission, and to serve as a public face of the organization.
SFEI’s Resilient Landscapes Program works across issue areas to restore ecosystem function and build nature-based solutions for a better future. While focused in the Bay-Delta region, the Program works at many scales and conducts work across the State. In this role, the Director will help develop the science-based tools and processes that inform, inspire, and empower community and government leaders to tackle the most complex environmental and climate challenges facing our region.
This is a job for a skillful, innovative leader with an ability to translate the best available science to communities, government, and the news media. We seek a candidate that likes people and embraces collaboration to help build a sustained recovery of our natural systems and resilient communities with a more just distribution of its benefits.
Key Responsibilities
SFEI’s Director of Resilient Landscapes reports to the Executive Director and works with other Directors (Clean Water and Environmental Informatics) to ensure bold, strategic, and effective delivery of our organization’s knowledge and expertise to key decision-makers and influencers. The Director will:
- Support a team of over 30 scientists, landscape designers, and planners on a full suite of projects and ideas
- Build and maintain external relationships and partnerships
- Develop ideas to find solutions to the pressing problems we face
- Work with the Executive Director to secure the discretionary funds necessary to work beyond what our government contracts cover
- Give technical presentations at regional and national forums
- Supervise senior program staff
- Ideate with the team about projects and future proposals
- Work with the Executive Director to tell the story of SFEI and its partners to the media and potential funders about the continued need for a collaborative science-based approach
Candidate Profile
We are looking for a Director for our Resilient Landscapes Program who is:
- Committed to the health of the Bay-Delta region and its communities, wildlife and ecosystems
- Well-grounded in science, and equipped to work with intended users of the science, to develop tools strategies and partnerships to help realize the vision for a healthy bay-delta region
- A storyteller— someone as comfortable with a Ted Talk as they are a PowerPoint presentation; at ease in small private conversations and in large public venues
- A recognized leader in their respective field, who brings a positive, bold, dynamic energy to their work. We are a collaborative organization and work across disciplines and areas of expertise to accomplish our mission. We support one another and our external partners. We seek a good listener, a strategic thinker, a respectful colleague, and someone with a good sense of humor.