Protect Democracy is seeking an Advocate who is passionate about protecting our democracy to lead our efforts to strategically organize grass top and influencer support for democratic norms, institutions and key related objectives. The Advocate will lead our efforts to influence the Hill and executive branch oversight bodies through direct outreach, strategic interventions and liaising to other grassroots groups to offer them our expertise and support in service of their organizing efforts to protect democratic institutions. We do not envision that this will involve direct grassroots organizing at this time, but the Advocate should be familiar with how that work is done should this position evolve to include it. The Advocate will be a leader on our team and expected to do the following at a high level:
- Develop, propose and lead strategic campaigns to activate and organize influential leaders and civic institutions in defense of democratic norms that are under threat;
- Build coalitions of leaders and groups in support of strategic campaigns to protect our democracy, including a central campaign to support an agenda for strengthening our democracy that would be adopted by candidates and elected officials of both parties;
- Liaise with other groups, including grassroots groups, to find ways to utilize our comparative advantages in support of their work;
- Collaborate with our legal team to develop advocacy campaigns that will support our legal work through strategic organizing initiatives;
- Collaborate with our communications team to develop communications strategies to strategically amplify the Advocate’s lobbying and organizing work;
- Design, hire and build a growing team to execute this work;
- Contribute as a leader to the overall development of the organization across all areas.
Requirements:
- A passionate commitment to the preservation of democratic norms and institutions.
- An ability to perform at the highest standards of excellence, including a keen attention to detail, a sophisticated ability to discern good strategies from poor ones, and the ability to execute thoroughly and responsibly to impact.
- Ability to track, prioritize, and where necessary triage work in order to always be using one’s time in the most efficient and productive way.
- Exceptional diplomatic skills and ability to build strong relationships, including with people from different backgrounds and ideologies.
- Resourcefulness about networking to key people.
- Excellent judgment about political activism – what levers can make change happen with limited resources.
- Instinctual understanding of the rhythms of the political-media world and Congressional dynamics.
- Ability to build and execute legislative and executive branch lobbying strategies.
- Excellent writing, communications and diplomatic skills.
- The ability to be efficient with time to achieve a maximum amount of productivity per hour spent.
- Excellent critical thinking skills – ability to reason one’s way through novel problems and have good instincts about how to get to optimal solutions.
- Comfort with full transparency on work and proactive managing up, down and sideways to keep others informed at all times.
- Demonstrated ability to perform at high levels of excellence at a top quality company or mission-driven organization (the role of the position will scale with experience).
- Ability to adhere to the culture principles of Protect Democracy.
- Comfort with an open and transparent culture with constant feedback up, down and sideways.
- Comfort taking smart, strategic and calculated risks.
- Comfort working in a start-up environment, doing whatever is necessary to build the organization and support your own work.
- Comfort with team collaboration; not needing to work only in an isolated and autonomous way.
- Fluency with the current political environment and legal issues (a J.D. is not a requirement, but the ability to understand and communicate legal issues is).
- Comfort developing relevant metrics and then meeting them.
- A healthy mix of idealism, sophistication and practicality, coupled with personal kindness and generosity of spirit.