Director, Journalism and Digital Strategies

Overview

The director of journalism and digital strategies is responsible for elevating our work by coordinating audience actions across a dynamic, AI-influenced digital landscape and empowering editorially independent news coverage. We believe in the power of public broadcasting and nonprofit journalism to create conditions for change. As a mission-driven organization, we also deliver engaging content to influential audiences using a multi-channel digital strategy. The director provides leadership within Strategic Communications, which operates like a news desk in a collaborative, demanding organizational environment. The director shares budget responsibilities with the Strategy Director and supervises the digital audience editor and the digital content producer and editor. The director also leads the Reputational Risk Workgroup and coordinates crisis response with foundation leaders. At Lumina, we share our ideas with audiences whose support is essential to creating better learning experiences for today’s college students and adults in training programs. We highlight the nation’s need to do more to educate these students, who often are Black, Hispanic, Latino, and Native American, from low-income households, the first in their families to go to college, or working adults.

Core Responsibilities

Equity in Education: The director advances Lumina’s commitment to equity in education, ending barriers to learning beyond high school for students of color and disparities across income levels and geography. In discussions with external partners, the editor shares Lumina’s commitment to ensuring everyone has real opportunity to succeed through education and training. The director promotes racial equity, diversity, and inclusion in hiring, contracting, grantmaking, and decision-making to advance fair and just outcomes.

Journalism Strategy: The director leads a grant portfolio of 20+ public and nonprofit news media organizations, shaping project scopes and budgets, providing advice and technical assistance, monitoring and reviewing effectiveness, amplifying cutting-edge news coverage, and supporting journalism training, fellowships, podcasts, documentary film, and book projects. The director travels to professional conferences and coordinates with other funders, a full-service communications firm, and a publicist who ensures the journalism we support reaches audiences that can influence and effect change benefiting students. The director tracks news industry trends and draws lessons from current and past work to inform new projects and approaches.

Audience Strategy: The director relies on audience, public narrative, and message-framing research to ensure effective coordination between content creation and audience engagement strategies. With a small, high-impact team, the director ensures digital experience optimization from discovery to engagement, analyzing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and refining tactics to build cost-effective engagement, elevating our ideas, and securing audiences’ commitment to action. The director ensures that our storytelling and that of journalists whose work we support reaches audiences across platforms through search engines, social media, and digital advertising. The director tracks digital trends and draws lessons from current and past work to inform new projects and approaches.

Fluency with Our Work and Storytelling: The director stays abreast of developments, events, and trends affecting our work. The director understands and thoughtfully applies our audience, public narrative, and story-framing research. The director frames equity in education across race, ethnicity, income, and geography centrally, ensuring the voices of Black, Hispanic, Latino, and Native American populations are core to the storytelling and journalism we support. The director simplifies complex topics for broad audiences. Our team strives for a 10th-grade reading level free of jargon.

 Strategy Development and Leadership: The director leads Lumina’s journalism and digital outreach strategies and shares responsibility for developing and implementing an editorial vision aligned with the foundation’s strategic objectives. The director leads the Reputational Risk Workgroup, which identifies, monitors, and mitigates threats to our mission and shares responsibility with foundation leaders for crisis response. The director shares informed thinking and innovative ideas.

Integration and Collaboration: The director collaborates with direct reports and internal teams to design strategies and tactics that amplify our storytelling across different platforms, ensuring content is relevant, engaging, and aligned with our overall mission. The director manages multiple concurrent projects, ensuring timely delivery within budgets. The director collaborates with colleagues as a steward of charitable and educational resources, relying on coaching and support from the Strategy Director. The director supervises two team members, ensuring seamless integration of their work and supporting their professional growth and development.

Skills, Competencies, and Characteristics

•  The ability to thrive in a dynamic workplace that supports creative thinking and values results.
• Experience coordinating digital and social media, websites, and e-newsletters for cost-effective reach and engagement while monitoring KPI data and following digital trends.
• The capability to negotiate mission-aligned scopes of news coverage while assuring the editorial independence of public and nonprofit newsrooms.
• High degree of emotional intelligence, including an ability to regulate emotions, communicate effectively, empathize with others, and manage conflict.
• Proven capability to make consequential decisions on deadline.
•  Strong writing and editing ability, with submission of writing samples.
•  Project management skills and a demonstrated ability to achieve results by following through on commitments, prioritizing work, and managing time and financial resources.
• Demonstrated capacity to identify reputational risks and provide candid situational assessments to senior leaders.
• Capable of applying adaptive critical thinking skills in response to unforeseen challenges and new assignments.
• Ability to exercise sound judgment with sensitive or confidential information.
• Comfort with technology, including Microsoft 365 products such as Excel, Outlook, Teams, and Word, and experience with Cision, Critical Mention, HubSpot, and analytics tools.

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in journalism or liberal arts or equivalent education and experience.
• Experience supervising high-performing teams, including hiring, managing, evaluating, and developing professional communicators.
• At least seven (7) years of experience with digital and social media, websites, and e-newsletters.
• Journalism experience and familiarity with education and training after high school, economics, public policy, and philanthropy are pluses.

Work Environment and Physical Demands

• Work performed is mostly sedentary.
• Requires use of technology to monitor media, track outreach KPIs, and produce video content.
• Travel is 10 percent to 15 percent, including overnight stays for conferences and events, meetings with grantees and consultants, and professional development.

This description summarizes the typical job functions but is not an exhaustive list of all responsibilities. It is subject to change.

Please include a well-crafted cover letter and two to three writing samples with your application. Writing samples can include professional documents, unpublished works, creative writing, poetry, or other pieces that showcase your skills and style.

Apply online