Director of Community Engagement and Organizing, PAVE (DC)

[Courtney B. Taylor]

PAVE is currently hiring for a Director of Community Engagement and Organizing to lead the most critical work on our team - our organizing model that develops parent leaders to reimagine DC's education system to be made WITH communities and families, not just for them.

We are looking for someone with deep experience in community organizing, coaching, and management who is a systems thinker and a hands-on leader. At PAVE, our parents want to realize - for the long-term - the change that they seek for our children and their schools. This role will require a leader who has seen success in collectively bringing together communities for change and building a team of mission-driven community organizers to help amplify the voices, needs, and concerns of the communities that they serve. 

The ideal candidate believes passionately in our mission to empower, connect, and inform parents to be partners and leaders in creating a system of great schools in every DC ward and community. And at the center of those beliefs, the ideal candidate has demonstrated themselves to be a true champion for equity, committed to not only uplifting parent voices but doing so in a way that opens up space for families that have too often been marginalized in our education policy spaces - namely, black and brown families, families from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, families in geographically isolated communities, immigrant families, and families for whom English is a second language. 

The ideal candidate must also have a commitment to ensuring that parents are able to share their story of self as informed advocates, one of the most critical parts of our model. Our parent leaders have demonstrated that when given the knowledge, information, and collective spaces to learn about the education policies that they identify, they can marry their experience in the system with their understanding of the system to accomplish any of their goals. 

In two short years, PAVE's nearly 2,000 parent leaders have fought for and achieved historic increases in per pupil funding, quadrupled out of school time funding in the city's budget, canvassed thousands of families in the city to get input on city policies and programs, and created a first-of-its-kind community-driven school creation process, just to name a few of their policy wins. The Director will not only lead and develop the team of community organizers that support the work of our parent leaders but will also lead the work refining, codifying, and growing the education policy-centered community organizing model at PAVE.

The job description is attached and linked HERE. Please share it widely with your networks! This is a senior level position in the organization and the salary is commensurate with experience. Resumes, cover letters, and the work sample detailed in the description can be sent to jo...@dcpave.org.