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Policy Portfolio Director

This job is no longer available

Washington, DC
Full-time

Policy Portfolio Director

R Street Institute

Washington, DC

 

The R Street Institute—a free-market think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., and with regional offices across the country—seeks an organized, energetic, experienced Portfolio Director to oversee our technology and innovation, cybersecurity and national security policy efforts. The core aspects of this role focus on development, fundraising and project management. If you want to join an organization and do something extraordinary, this may be just the opportunity you need. 

Your typical day at R Street may include helping divide responsibilities for a new project between experts on our various teams, helping outline a potential organizational response to a recent cyber attack and meeting with a foundation program officer to discuss R Street’s potential role in a new effort. This role is part of our management team and will report to and work closely with the Associate Vice President of Policy. 

Other Aspects of Your Role

  • Establish a clear policy strategy for the Technology and Innovation, Cyber and National Security portfolio, demonstrating broad familiarity with programming and serving as a brand ambassador.
  • Oversee portfolio budget and facilitate cross-functional processes for fundraising, proposal development, and financial analyses.
  • Lead fundraising efforts, including: ideation, proposal development, pitching and closing deals.
  • Apply uniform standards for business assessment to analyze viability of policy programming and develop growth strategies where appropriate.
  • Supervise portfolio staff and ensure project deliverables are high quality, highly credible and timely.
  • Oversee hiring and managing staff with competency-based learning and assessment methods.
  • Leverage contextual decision-making to manage conflict.
  • Serve as a catalyst for activities which create high morale by demonstrating organizational norms and leading with integrity, humility, and resilience.
  • Prioritize the organization’s needs while concurrently demonstrating empathy to build strong internal and external relationships.

Skills and Qualifications

  • Demonstrated ability to oversee and deliver sophisticated, multi-part projects and budgets. Familiarity with Salesforce and project management software preferred.
  • A record of success in development/fundraising, with an emphasis on articulating and realizing strategic business goals, particularly in a nonprofit environment.
  •  At least five years of management experience involving oversight of multiple full-time W-2 employees.
  • Demonstrated ability to make difficult management choices, often without full information.
  • No particular educational background is required; proven ability to achieve results is far more important than credentials.
  • Aligned with our mission for free markets and limited, effective government.
  • A sense of humor and a desire to grow with a dynamic organization.

Demonstrated understanding and achievement in one or more of the particular policy areas is highly desirable but not absolutely required. This is a job for someone who has a firm grasp of fundraising, nonprofit business strategy and management. In other words, while familiarity with our policy content is a plus this job is not primarily about doing our policy work.

This is a full-time job based in Washington, D.C. However, for the duration of COVID-19 related closures, this position will be required to work remotely until our office reopens. The job will require some travel, almost all of it within the United States.

R Street strives to provide a compensation package superior to those at other think tanks and nonprofits. In addition to a competitive salary, we provide a health insurance option entirely paid by the employer (even for families); wellness benefit; employer-subsidized mobile phones benefit; 401(k) contributions with up to a four percent match; and an exceptionally generous vacation policy. We were named to Washingtonian Magazine’s “Great Places to Work” List and take pride in providing an exceptional environment for our employees.

R Street does not discriminate on the basis of age, sex, race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, era of military service, gender identity, relationship structure or anything else that's illegal, immoral or nonsensical to use as a basis for hiring.

We currently plan to accept applications for this job until filled. We will contact ideal individuals for video interviews and plan to conduct them on a rolling basis. Due to COVID-19, we will hold interviews virtually via Zoom until our DC office reopens. To apply, please upload a cover letter and resume in Microsoft Word or PDF format.

Organization Info

R Street Institute

Overview
Headquarters: 
Washington D.C., DC, United States
Size: 
11-50 employees
Founded: 
2012
About Us
Areas of Focus: 
Mission: 

The R Street Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public policy research organization (“think tank”). Our mission is to engage in policy research and outreach to promote free markets and limited, effective government.

Programs: 

R Street’s major accomplishments to date include spearheading the SmarterSafer.org coalition, whose proposals were incorporated into the 2012 Biggert-Waters flood insurance reform bill signed by President Obama; launching the Legislative Branch Capacity Working Group, which seeks to assess Congress’ capacity to perform its constitutional duties and to collaborate on bipartisan ideas to improve the legislative branch’s performance in our separation of powers system; promoting the use of the Congressional Review Act which, after years of dormancy, began to be used aggressively during 2017; building a conservative movement-wide coalition to oppose misguided Internet sales tax legislation; developing a proposal to forbid subsidized development in environmentally sensitive coastal areas that was incorporated into Florida law; leading the charge to make crop insurance subsidies more accountable, a proposal that was included in the 2014 farm bill; and publishing research that led to the proliferation of dozens of state-level laws that offer commonsense minimum standards for liability insurance in the ridesharing market.

Some ongoing R Street projects include bringing free-market principles to state alcohol rules; participating in broad conversations on regulatory, budget and tax reform; promoting the potential for competitive wholesale electricity markets as a mechanism to phase out subsidies, better serve energy consumers and more accurately reflect all of the costs and benefits of generation; a public-education campaign on how harm-reduction strategies can be incorporated into messaging on such press public health topics as smoking, sexually transmitted diseases and drug addiction; a criminal justice project that has examined reforms to the juvenile justice system, pretrial detention policies and better ways to reintegrate ex-offenders into society; a project to promote a balanced approach to intellectual property; and coalitions to promote more open and transparent congressional data and to ensure law enforcement and intelligence agencies do not trample digital privacy. R Street also is an active member of a number of other standing coalitions (see the list here).

Why Work For Us?: 

We believe free markets work better than the alternatives. At the same time, we recognize the legislative process calls out for practical responses to current problems. Toward that end, our motto is “Free markets. Real solutions.”

Connect With Us

Listing Stats

Post Date: 
Sep 23 2020
Active Until: 
Oct 23 2020
Hiring Organization: 
R Street Institute
industry: 
Nonprofit