Partners for Justice (PFJ) was founded to transform public defense locally and across the United States, diminishing the effect of race and wealth on legal outcomes. This means ensuring that public defenders are equipped to assist clients with the underlying drivers of legal system involvement, to secure better legal outcomes both inside and outside the courtroom, and to help more clients emerge from prosecution with their rights, life, and future protected. Since our launch in 2018, PFJ has grown rapidly and we now support 18 public defender agencies across the country through embedded collaborative defense teams and capacity-building support.
PFJ works closely with public defender offices to help them adopt more collaborative and holistic practices. Our flagship program embeds trained Client Advocates in a host public defender, immediately expanding their ability to provide clients with wraparound support, and also serves as a series of learning labs that have enabled us to refine our approach to helping any public defender expand their practice and become more client-led. We call this approach the Collaborative Defense Model, and have recently had great success implementing it not only in regions where we have Advocate teams, but also through capacity building projects with defenders nationwide.
Building something beautiful and effective is great—but if you don’t tell anyone about it, it can never have system-scale influence. PFJ’s mission is to fundamentally transform the way public defense is practiced—not in a few locations, but nationwide. The PFJ Communications Director will have responsibility for ensuring that our work and its impact is visible, and capable of garnering the kind of public traction that enables defenders anywhere (or their local government) to take our model and utilize it to re-define their role in the community.
The Communications Director will oversee both local and national communications efforts. Primarily, they will work on refining our messaging for key audiences, developing talking points, generating ideas for earned media opportunities across our partnership and capacity building locations, pitching PFJ and stories about collaborative defense to local and national media outlets, helping PFJ team members draft and pitch perspective pieces and op-eds, and working with leadership to ensure that we are effectively communicating the value of expanded public defense for low-income communities.
Core messaging: Our core messaging is about making the incredible value of public defense to impact these intersections and areas of subject matter visible to legislators, stakeholders, funders, media, and the general public. As such, the Communications Director will work with leadership to develop and execute multi-platform communications strategies to help advance our mission, refine our core messaging, and develop new modalities for demonstrating the value of collaborative defense.
National media: PFJ is a nationally-operating nonprofit with a system-scale vision: a unique project that has developed groundbreaking proof-of-concept in recent years. The Communications Director will develop pitches on collaborative defense, PFJ, and the power of innovations in public defense and pitch them to national media outlets.
Local media: PFJ is presently operating in 24 locations, with phenomenal client successes happening in every town we serve. The Communications Director will work with PFJ clients, Advocates and defender partner staff to identify compelling client stories and pitch them for local media coverage. If a pitch is accepted, the Communications Director will be responsible for running the process of PFJ media engagement, including liaising with all parties, setting up any protective parameters that need to be in place for client safety, arranging site visits, preparing talking points, or handling any other matter to ensure defenders, Advocates, and clients are able to responsibly and respectfully engage with public reporting.
Opinions and perspectives: The Communications Director will work directly with PFJ staff, clients, and defenders to draft and submit op-eds and similar perspectives, record video testimonials, prepare blog posts, and otherwise find opportunities for the voices of people directly inside the criminal legal system to be promulgated.
Supporter engagement: The Communications Director will work with PFJ leadership to ensure that information is posted regularly and effectively across all PFJ communications channels, and also oversee a communications database.
Media training: The Communications Director will be responsible for ensuring that any PFJ client, team member or partner who is engaging with media about our work (or at our request) is as well-prepared as possible. This may mean some group training for general media preparedness as well as some one-on-one preparation for specific media engagements.
Community-building: The Communications Director will build relationships and connections with other change-making organizations (defenders, partner organizations, participatory defense networks, advocacy groups, organizers, etc), ensuring that we are working in strategic coordination with our allies in the movement to end mass incarceration. The Communications Director will also stay abreast of new developments in communications about public defense, new strategies, technology to utilize, or other innovations.
Impact: The Communications Director will be a key resource in understanding how our messaging advances our mission, and will be responsible for evaluating the impact of communications efforts and creating analytics reports for the PFJ team and potentially also the PFJ Board of Directors.
Collaboration: The Communications Director will be joining a collaborative team who regularly produce a variety of print and electronic material about PFJ’s work. The Communications Director will support their production efforts as needed, contributing content or offering guidance.
We are deeply committed to justice, equity, and inclusion in hiring. People with lived experience or identities that overlap with PFJ’s clients are strongly encouraged to apply for this role.
Desired skills or experience:
- Commitment to PFJ’s mission and to our vision of collaborative, client-centered representation for low-income people involved in the criminal legal system
- Dedication to serving racially or socio-economically marginalized communities
- Experience training individuals with little to no media experience for media appearances and interviews
- A minimum of five years’ experience working in communications, public relations, or media
- Strong writing skills (as demonstrated by publications or successful pitches, reports, or other exemplar material)
- A robust network of media contacts
- A track record of successful media and op-ed pitches to high-readership media outlets
- Experience working remotely and/or in a start-up environment is preferred
- Ability to travel up to 25% of the time (public health conditions permitting)
This is a full-time, salaried position with a salary range from $80,000 - $90,000, commensurate with skills and experience. PFJ’s benefits package includes employer-paid medical and dental coverage, a 401k program, and reimbursement for Bar or other professional dues. PFJ employees work remotely with the benefit of flexible hours. We also encourage our team to rest and take care of themselves, which we support with unlimited sick leave and vacation, as well as 12 office holidays and a year-end rest period.
Please send a cover letter, resume, and two references to [email protected] with “Communications Director” in the subject line. Be advised that if you do not include this subject line, we may not receive your application.