Senior Managing Director of Organizing

About this role

THE CHISHOLM LEGACY PROJECT SUMMARY:

The mission of the Chisholm Legacy Project is rooted in the Just Transition Framework. The project serves as a vehicle to connect Black communities on the frontlines of climate justice with resources to traverse the path from vision to strategy to action plan to implementation to transformation. In support of frontline leadership, the project seeks to link movements and mainstream entities with the tools necessary to advance systems change centered in equity and justice. With Black women on the frontlines of advancing systems change, this project ensures that these leaders have the support they need as they transform society from extractivism to a living economy that cares for sacred relationships between people and with Mother Earth, through regenerative, cooperative, democratic systems.

SUMMARY OF THEPOSITION:

The organization seeks a Senior Managing Director of Organizing with a commitment to supporting Black Liberation and a willingness to be on a learning journey, joining an institution that is grounded in Black Liberation, Climate Justice, and Just Transition. This position serves as a key member of the Executive Leadership Team (ELT), providing strategic oversight and leadership to ensure alignment between programs, organizing, and strategy within The Chisholm Legacy Project (TCLP). The role is responsible for supervising senior programmatic leaders, fostering a culture centered on Black Liberation and Just Transition, and ensuring that TCLP’s work is mission-driven and community-centered.

Additionally, the Senior Managing Director of Organizing acts as a connector and facilitator, ensuring effective collaboration across departments, guiding organizing, and maintaining accountability for outcomes and impact. The SMDO also plays a critical role in assessing partnerships, representing TCLP in national spaces, and advancing key strategic initiatives to support just transition, including climate justice, gender justice, and Black liberation.

This position will be responsible for ensuring strategic alignment and consistent communication with the programs team in partnership with the Senior Managing Director of Programs.

Roles & Responsibilities

Senior Leadership & Organizational Strategy

• Serve on the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) contributing to mission, vision, strategy, and work plan development.

• Collaborate with ELT to nurture an organizational culture centering Black Liberation and Just Transition.

• Ensure organizational practices reflect connection, fulfillment, care, support, and purpose-driven accountability.

• Provide co-leadership in fostering a culture that aligns with TCLP’s values.

Organizing Strategy, Infrastructure, and Movement Alignment

• Provide executive leadership for the organization’s organizing function, ensuring that organizing strategy and structure advance TCLP’s broader mission, strategy, and movement-building goals.

• Set the strategic direction for organizing approaches across regions, ensuring alignment with a community-centered theory of change and consistency in how outreach, engagement, and strategies are designed and deployed.

• Ensure the development of a cohesive, organization-wide organizing framework that integrates tools and methodologies such as power mapping, narrative strategy, digital engagement, and community visioning.

• Drive the evolution of innovative organizing strategies, and engagement models that strengthen grassroots leadership, deepen community relationships, and contribute to sustained environmental justice outcomes.

• Cultivate and steward a robust ecosystem of partnerships across local, regional, and national stakeholders; including cross-movement, faith-based, and environmental justice organizations to expand collective impact and resource alignment for frontline communities.

• Ensure alignment and integration between organizing and other core functions, including programs, communications, policy, research, and resource development, to support cohesive, constituency-driven strategies.

• Provide strategic oversight of the structures, systems, and resource flows that enable effective organizing, ensuring alignment between priorities, investments, and long-term sustainability.

Team Leadership & Supervision

• Provide supportive supervision to the Managing Director of Just Transition Municipalities Institute, Senior Director of Organizing and Senior Director of Narrative Strategy.

• Ensure all direct reports and their teams have clear work plans and adhere to TCLP’s performance management system.

• Maintain full accountability for departmental impact, balancing trust in team members with active verification.

Just Transition Municipal Strategy and Movement Integration

• Provide executive oversight and strategic direction for TCLP’s Just Transition municipal strategy, ensuring alignment with TCLP’s broader organizing vision, and long-term goals.

• Ensure the design and evolution of a scalable, multi-tiered engagement model that supports municipalities at varying levels of readiness, expanding access to Just Transition frameworks, tools, and pathways for implementation across diverse communities.

• Steward the advancement of a national municipal ecosystem that enables local governments; particularly those serving historically disenfranchised communities; to adopt and implement community-driven Just Transition approaches.

• Ensure the integration of leadership development and wellbeing-centered frameworks within municipal strategies, with a particular emphasis on advancing and sustaining Black femme leadership in local governance.

• Drive the alignment of municipal organizing efforts with broader state, national, and global advocacy strategies, positioning Just Transition municipalities as a catalyst for systems-level policy change and widespread model adoption.

• Ensure that municipal-based strategies are fully integrated into TCLP’s broader organizing…