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4 Mar 2015

Full-Time Senior Facilitator

Ag Innovations Network – Posted by lpatzek Sebastopol, California, United States

Job Description

Ag Innovations Network (AIN) is a unique nonprofit organization that designs and facilitates collaborations aimed at addressing the biggest challenges facing California’s food and farming systems. We are also frequently engaged as consulting facilitators for clients in government, academia, public health, food supply chains, and regional food systems around both their internal process facilitation needs as well as to manage public engagement. This position is a chance to practice facilitation at its highest level: making easier the difficult job of creating a sustainable future.

Position Description

The Senior Facilitator serves as lead facilitator and process designer for a variety of both our ongoing change collaborations and shorter-term public engagement projects. You will collaborate with program staff and project managers to design processes and meetings that meet the needs of the projects and coalition members, facilitate meetings, and work with program staff to advise and support the efforts of the members of these collaborations to achieve their objectives.

Specific duties of the Senior Facilitator include:

– Consulting and collaborating with the program staff and leadership bodies of our collaborations to identify needs and issues, develop process approaches to address these, and design meeting agendas to implement these approaches.
– Facilitating virtual, telephonic and face-to-face meetings of the collaborations.
– Advise the program staff and members of the collaborations on strategic considerations and approaches, and inform them of best practices and successful models of engagement and project design.
– Designing, facilitating, and supporting other contract projects, as assigned.
– Participating as an active member of our facilitation team to mutually advance and support the individual and collective learning of the team and its members, and enhance and improve the AIN practice approach and methodology.
– Participating in the documentation of and writing about the AIN process approach and methodology, and in the marketing of it to prospective clients and new markets.
– Participating as necessary in AIN strategic and team-building activities, as well as in development of new projects.
– Continually seeking to develop and learn professionally and improve your individual process design and facilitation practice and skills.

Qualifications/Requirements

We recognize that professional facilitation is a nascent field and there are multiple ways to have gained genuine competence. These are our desired qualifications; we look forward to learning how you might have creatively attained comparable skills:

– Significant experience as the lead facilitator for complex groups, projects, or initiatives.
– Previous leadership or participation in multi-stakeholder initiatives, collaborations, social innovation labs, Theory U projects, or other designed process approaches to generating change.
– Training, certification, or equivalent experience demonstrating mastery of a theory-based approach to facilitating change.
– A demonstrated ability in working with diverse stakeholders, including government and industry representatives and public interest advocates.
– Experience with a variety of technologies for supporting collaborations ranging from conference calls to Google hangouts to Webex and/or one of the dozens of other tools for group collaboration.
– Proven writing, presentation, public speaking, and interpersonal communication skills.
– Meticulous organizational skills and ability to keep track of multiple project efforts.
– Ability to work as part of a team to solve problems, coordinate projects and to develop short and long-term business plans.
– A graduate degree, or its equivalent in experience, in a field that prepared you to become an effective facilitator. This may include psychology, community development, sociology, organization development, or leadership.
– The personal flexibility and adaptability to be successful in an entrepreneurial nonprofit organization.

Candidates with these additional skills are particularly encouraged:

– Significant experience and/or knowledge of California food and agriculture systems.
– Qualifying experience may include work in not-for-profit organizations, government agencies, academic institutions, or the private sector.
– Specialized training in group dynamics, group development, and advanced methodologies such as Theory U.
– Strong sensitivity for multicultural issues and concerns as well as the dynamics of power within socio-economic systems.
– Bilingual Spanish-English with the ability to facilitate in both languages.

Compensation and Benefits

Ag Innovations Network strives to offer competitive salaries and benefits and a hospitable and collaborative work environment. This position is a full-time, exempt, salaried position. Compensation is competitive and dependent on experience with an expected salary range of $70,000 to 90,000 per year. While the starting salary is negotiable, new hires should not expect an offer at above the mid-point in the salary range. Paid vacation leave, employer-paid health benefits, and an employer-matching retirement plan are included as benefits.

Equal Opportunity

AIN is an equal opportunity employer. Our policy is to afford equal employment opportunities to qualified individuals without regard to any personal trait or characteristic that is not related to one’s ability to perform one’s job, including but not limited to those that are protected by law (i.e., race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, family status, veteran status, physical or mental disability, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic data, and age).

About Ag Innovations Network

Ag Innovations Network (http://aginnovations.org) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Sebastopol, California founded in 1999. We are dedicated to building a sustainable food system that serves farms and farmers, families and communities, and regenerates the environment upon which all life depends. Our approach is unique. We create powerful coalitions of leaders and then lead them through the best processes we know to unlock creativity and generative thinking. Our combination of process skills and understanding of food system issues has proven to be both valued by stakeholders and effective in creating change.

How to Apply

Send your cover letter explaining how and why you can effectively facilitate social innovation labs and multi-stakeholder initiatives to create a better food system for all and your résumé showing your training and experience in multi-stakeholder facilitation to [email protected]. This position is open until filled.

Job Categories: Food / Hunger / Agriculture. Job Types: Full-Time. Job Tags: agriculture, collaboration, environment, food systems, public engagement, sustainability, and sustainable.

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