Communications Director - (Remote, Bilingual Spanish)

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Executive Summary

Communications Director, (Remote, Bilingual Skills in Spanish a Must)

Justice in Motion, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the rights of migrants across borders, seeks nominations and applications for a Communications Director.

In the face of overwhelming legal and practical barriers, many migrants who have suffered exploitation or abuse at the hands of employers or government officials give up their rights after leaving the United States. Other migrants who flee abuse, violence, and persecution are unable to remain in safety due to lack of evidence to support their claims. These migrants need “portable justice” - the right and ability to access justice across borders. Justice in Motion is dedicated to ensuring portable justice through legal, educational, and policy initiatives in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Central America. Essential to this transnational model is our Defender Network, a unique partnership of on-the-ground human rights organizations in Mexico and Central America. Justice in Motion makes sure that wherever migrants go, their rights will follow.

The past several years has brought tremendous financial and programmatic growth for Justice in Motion, and a great deal of media attention. To position Justice in Motion to be proactive and strategic about opportunities to build our profile, we are seeking a Communications Director to build out the function in the coming years. The Communications Director will be the strategic leader of communications, marketing, and public relations, serving as a truly cross-functional partner to meet the needs of each team as well as the larger organizational goals. Initially, the Communications Director will handle much of the day-to-day communications work, as well as strengthening systems and processes to manage the work efficiently, before growing the team.

This is a full-time exempt position, reporting to the Director of Policy, with a dotted line to the Executive Director. Separate duties to be detailed during onboarding. Justice in Motion is a remote organization, and this position can be based anywhere in the U.S., with work hours aligned with the Eastern Time Zone. When safe to do so, this position will require occasional travel within the U.S.; potential opportunity for international travel (1-2 times per year).

Salary and Benefits: The salary range for this position is $90,000 - $110,000, depending on experience. Justice in Motion provides a comprehensive benefits package and a generous amount of leave.

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About Justice in Motion

Founded in 2005 and led by founder and Executive Director, Cathleen Caron, Justice in Motion protects migrant rights by ensuring justice across borders. In the face of overwhelming legal and practical barriers,

many migrants who have suffered exploitation or abuse at the hands of employers or government officials give up their rights after leaving the United States. Other migrants who flee abuse, violence, and persecution are unable to remain in safety due to lack of evidence to support their claims.

These migrants need “portable justice” - the right and ability to access justice across borders. Justice in Motion is dedicated to ensuring portable justice through legal, educational, and policy initiatives in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Central America. Essential to this transnational model is our Defender Network, a unique partnership of on-the-ground human rights organizations in Mexico and Central America. Justice in Motion makes sure that wherever migrants go, their rights will follow.

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Opportunities And Challenges Facing The New Communications Director

Justice in Motion is at a critical moment of evolving its dedicated team supports to be more impactful in their work. The Communications Director role is a new position with opportunities to evolve duties and responsibilities over time. The current primary areas of responsibility include:

Communications Strategy and Management

• Build and lead a long-term, cross-functional strategy for communications, marketing, and public relations that align with the strategic plan and organizational goals, including multi-year staffing.

• Effectively craft and integrate a coherent message to translate Justice in Motion’s breadth of work to different audiences.

• Develop and implement a marketing and public relations strategy that allows Justice in Motion’s leadership to cultivate meaningful relationships with targeted, high-level external audiences, including the media and key influencers.

• Effectively manage team and consulting supports, including a Communications Assistant to achieve strategic goals.

  Content and Process

• Serve as spokesperson and lead point of contact on media/press interactions that help promote and/or impact the organization.

• Develop and maintain a story bank and relevant visuals, including collecting stories from Defenders, and identifying compelling narratives for different audiences.

• Oversee development of and serve as the lead writer for all print communications, including digital and print collateral materials and electronic communication, including Justice in Motion’s website, social media content, newsletters, op-eds, press releases, and video creation, etc.

• Collaborate with Development Director and Grant Writer to ensure a consistent message and quality, and support updates to templates and boilerplate language for fundraising purposes.

• Collaborate with Policy and Government Affairs Director to ensure effective messaging across traditional press channels, social media, website, newsletters, and more- to drive our policy goals with the federal government.

• Own and actively cultivate all media relationships, and work to generate publicity for Justice in Motion programs, special events, public announcements and more, in English- and Spanish- language media; manage and oversee staff and Defenders to engage effectively with media.

• Exercise judgment to prioritize media opportunities, and prepare talking points, presentations and other supporting material for organizational leadership as needed. Use best practices to update the communications process and calendar and utilize project management tools to manage tasks and deadlines and assign tasks to others as needed.

• Oversee the process for updates to the website and other online hubs.

• Identify appropriate projects to outsource to contractors, including graphic design and other short-

  term projects.​

Leadership and Management

• Oversee and produce reporting for the communications department, including planning and budgeting.

• Identify future staffing needs and hire appropriate staff and/or consultants.

• Manage freelance and consulting relationships.

• Work with leadership team and staff to recognize internal and external communications opportunities and solutions and define and execute appropriate strategies to support them.

• Serve as a thought partner on communications and PR matters with the Communications Committee of the Board.

• Participate as a member of the management team and contribute to discussions and decisions on strategic topics and directions, including formulating strategy related to the collective bargaining process.

• Collaborate with peers on cross-functional projects.

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Qualifications of The Ideal Candidate 

While no one candidate will embody all of the qualifications, experiences, and skills enumerated below, the ideal candidate will:

Be an experienced thought partner: This person will bring a minimum of 4 - 7 years of manager/director level responsibility in a communications role. They will have regularly partnered with leadership and knows how to ask the right questions and facilitate conversations to build and refine strategy, working to elicit key thinking to craft a vision with buy-in from stakeholders, and then translate that into action plans.

Demonstrate Spanish fluency in a professional setting: This person is either a native speaker, or has significant experience using Spanish professionally, both verbally and in writing. Can easily switch back and forth between English and Spanish with comprehension nearing 100%.

Be a strong and strategic communications generalist: This person is a self-starter and independent thinker who has a track record of rolling up their sleeves to learn and execute different aspects of this varied work. In addition, this is someone who has demonstrated growth and taken on increasing responsibility - most recently starting to build the strategy for their function.

Have knowledge of and experience with spreading a complex message to new audiences: This is someone who understands how to harness social media and other channels to build a relatively unknown brand and have a larger presence for a small organization.

Be an effective bi-lingual (Spanish/English) communicator: Both in writing and in person, able to quickly

and effectively tell the right story that resonates with that audience. This is someone who has experience writing a wide range of communications and PR pieces, op-eds, collateral, and website content - and is comfortable with public speaking and engaging with journalists.

Have experience with development and policy: They might have previous grant writing experience or have partnered closely with development colleagues to create a seamless giving campaign. This person might also have experience communicating with government staffers or other political audiences about mission- driven work.

Incorporates different voices: They understand the need to generate multiple perspectives when building communications plans and content and find ways to bring a variety of voices to the table. This person has a way of facilitating that draws out great nuggets from a range of people on the team.

Be collaborative: Rather than seeing this as a buzzword, this person seeks out opportunities to partner with like-minded organizations and groups to amplify everyone’s messages. They might have experience working with communications teams at larger nonprofit organizations.

Be connected to Justice in Motion’s mission: Experience with migration or labor rights, from a communications perspective, and a general understanding of the context of these issues is a plus.

TO APPLY

More information about Justice in Motion may be found at: www.justiceinmotion.org

This search is being led by Katherine Jacobs of the talent strategy firm, NPAG. Due to the pace of this search, candidates are strongly encouraged to apply as soon as possible. Candidates may submit their cover letter, outlining their interest and qualifications, along with their resume via NPAG’s website.

If you would like to submit a nomination for this role, please contact Jessi Davison at: jdavison@npag.com Justice in Motion values diversity in our workforce and encourages candidates of diverse backgrounds to

apply. Work will begin as soon as possible. Candidates will be considered on a rolling basis.

Justice in Motion is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, marital status, or any other applicable status protected by state or local law.