Director of Campaign Strategy (Midwest or Southwest)

Weingart Foundation; United States; Remote; USD 140,000; Full time

Job summary

The National Employment Law Project is seeking two Directors of Campaign Strategy to enhance its impactful work in promoting a just and inclusive economy. These senior leadership roles, focused on the Midwest and Southwest regions, will oversee strategic planning, coalition-building, and team mentoring, supporting transformative policy solutions for workers. Candidates should have substantial experience in lobbying, campaign strategy, and relationship-building, and a commitment to worker justice.

Benefits

Comprehensive health insurance

Significant retirement plan contributions

Paid parental and medical leave

Childcare/eldercare assistance

Student loan repayment assistance

Qualifications

• 10+ years in lobbying, labor, policy, organizing, and campaign strategy.
• 4+ years of supervisory experience.
• Ability to craft and manage strategic campaigns.

Responsibilities

• Lead political analyses to identify power dynamics for policy victories.
• Co-develop multi-year strategic plans with measurable outcomes.
• Build and mentor a high-performing team to meet strategic goals.

Skills

Lobbying

Policy

Organizing

Campaign Strategy

Building Trust

Coalition Building

Job description

The National Employment Law Project is hiring for two roles!

Director of Midwest Campaign Strategy (APPLY HERE) Remote based in the Midwest (Illinois or Michigan preferred) FTE $140K/yr+benefits

Director of Southwest Campaign Strategy (APPLY HERE)Remote based in the Southwest (Arizona or New Mexico preferred) FTE $140K/yr+benefits

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) seeks a highly collaborative and strategic leaders to advance our mission to build a good jobs economy—a just and inclusive economy where all workers have expansive rights and thrive in good jobs. Each Director of Campaign Strategy will lead and coordinate our expanding state and regional engagement strategy, which is central to our effort to incubate and advance bold, long-term transformative policy solutions. Those solutions reflect the needs of all workers—including historically marginalized groups such as women, Black, immigrant, and low- wage workers, and workers with records. We will be hiring additional Directors of Campaign Strategy so please check our careers page for upcoming opportunities. Join us!

About National Employment Law Project

Founded in 1969, the nonprofit National Employment Law Project (NELP) is a leading advocacy organization with the mission to build a just and inclusive economy where all workers have expansive rights and thrive in good jobs. Together with local, state, and national partners, NELP advances its mission through transformative legal and policy solutions, research, capacity building, and communications. Our victories over the last decade have impacted the lives of an estimated 100 million workers and their families. We lead and collaborate in fights for higher pay and just benefits, secure and safe jobs, and support at each stage in a worker’s life. For more information, read our annual reports and explore our website: www.nelp.org

NELP has a team of 55 staff people based across offices in New York City, Washington D.C., and Berkeley, CA, with a 9-person Board of Directors, an annual budget of $14M, and hundreds of partners in the field with whom we work to further our mission.

Role Overview

The Director of Campaign Strategy (DCS) will bring their leadership and expertise to building and shaping a first-of-its-kind role at NELP—one that represents our commitment to deepening collective capacity to move transformative policy solutions at the local, state, and regional levels.

Recognizing that federal avenues for advancing labor law and enforcement are currently limited, we are turning with purpose and intention toward state and regional strategies—where we believe enhanced engagement and collaboration with in-state allies can deliver meaningful gains for workers. This strategy will also allow us to continue to cultivate the ground for federal reform.

Joining a leadership cohort that includes other newly hired regional Directors, each representing a different set of states, the DCS will work collaboratively with NELP teams and local in-state allies to identify and resource capacity building initiatives. The DCS will also support knowledge sharing and collaboration between states, cohering a shared multi-year strategy and vision to support locally led worker justice initiatives, connecting campaigns across regions, and ultimately to the national level. We are planning to resource and support the DCS to design and build a team of 2-4 staff members to supervise, depending on the needs and opportunities for impact in the states and region.

What You Will Do

The Director of Campaign Strategy will be part of NELP’s management team in this senior leadership role, reporting to the Chief Program Officer. Key responsibilities include:

Strategic State Planning, Campaign Design, and Advocacy

• Identify opportunities for NELP teams to partner with in-state allies on campaigns seeking significant worker justice advances.
• Support NELP teams and in-state allies in advancing and winning campaigns with a range of supports including lobbying, and educating legislators and administrative officials.
• Co-develop and implement multi-year strategic plans with measurable outcomes for selected states and regions in collaboration with our staff and in-state allies.
• Lead political and power analyses in designated states to identify leverage points, opposition threats, and unique paths to worker-centered policy victories.
• Engage various partners—including labor, community-based groups, policy organizations, and unexpected allies—to design strategies that are tailored to winning in that state.
• Collaborate with state partners in articulating long-term goals rooted in local needs and power- building strategies to advance our good-jobs economy agenda, which include leveraging cross-issue economic justice opportunities.
• Identify and support opportunities for state policy experimentation and innovation, with a long- term goal of federal relevance or replication.

Cross-Issue Integration and Strategic Learning

• Coordinate across our teams to align programmatic work with state-level strategies, timelines, and partner engagement.
• Help assess replication potential across regions and provide strategic insights on sequencing and implementing future state and regional expansions.
• Contribute to evaluation efforts that track the impact of our regional strategy, including progress toward policy, messaging, and capacity-building goals.

Team Leadership and Management

• Build, lead, and mentor a high-performing team, setting clear performance goals for team members, offering constructive feedback, and fostering a collaborative, inclusive work environment.
• Oversee the recruitment and development of staff to ensure the team has the necessary skills and expertise to meet our strategic goals, providing professional development opportunities and supporting continuous learning and growth.

Start Date, Location, Compensation & Benefits:

This is a full-time exempt remote position. Candidates must be able to work full-time from their resident state and have reliable internet. While we have a nationally distributed team, most staff work in a hybrid arrangement from one of our three offices in Berkeley, CA; New York City; or Washington D.C. This role will require regular travel within the region and to our offices for meetings and events—likely monthly during the first two years.

For the Director of Midwest Campaign Strategy, we have a strong preference for candidates based in Illinois or Michigan but may consider others in the Midwest region with deep experience and strong relationships in those states.

For the Director of Southwest Campaign Strategy, we have a strong preference for candidates based in Arizona or New Mexico but may consider others in the Southwest region with deep experience and strong relationships in those states.

The ideal start date is September 2025 or earlier.

The salary for the Director of Midwest Campaign Strategy is $140,0000.

The salary for the Director of Southwest Campaign Strategy is $140,000.

Compensation at NELP includes an excellent comprehensive benefits package, including full coverage of family health insurance, a medical reimbursement plan, generous vacation and sick leave, plus additional organization-wide holidays, significant contribution from the employer to a retirement plan (both an unelected contribution and employer match); and for qualifying participants, up to 26 weeks paid parental leave, 12 weeks paid medical leave, 6 weeks of paid family medical caregiving leave, childcare/eldercare reimbursement assistance, and student loan repayment assistance. Staff at NELP are represented by Local 2320, UAW, excluding management and certain other categories. This role is a non-bargaining unit position.

Who You Are

We understand that the right candidate may not have all the qualities below. We seek candidates who have deep experience with key skills and the demonstrated judgement, leadership capacity, and readiness to develop others as needed in this senior leadership role.

• You have 10+ years of experience in lobbying, labor, policy, organizing, and/or campaign strategy, ideally focusing on state-level or regional work. Experience in our issue areas a plus.
• You have four+ years of supervisory experience and are skilled in cultivating a positive team dynamic, including developing, coaching, and empowering staff to grow and develop professionally.
• You have a strong track record of building and sustaining trust-based relationships and working in coalitions and strategic relationships with a variety of stakeholders and interests, such as community-based organizations, policymakers, and advocacy organizations.
• You have a demonstrated ability to craft, manage, and execute strategic worker organizing or public policy campaigns. You can see the long arc of change while acting quickly and pragmatically when needed.
• You are a high-level strategic thinker who has a track record of increasing organizational success, building effective cross-team initiatives, operationalizing a vision across an organization, and using evaluation tools and metrics to support accountability.
• You have a justice-oriented understanding of how power impacts relationships, organizational culture, and partnerships, and are committed to a personal and professional practice around deepening this understanding, continuously learning, reflecting, and growing.
• You are an effective, persuasive communicator with strong presentation, speaking, written, and nonverbal skills, who conveys information clearly and concisely, internally and externally, with high emotional intelligence and professional judgment.
• You are flexible and agile, responsive to feedback, open to changing direction, and focus on continuous improvement and innovation.
• You foster inclusive and trusting team environments by supporting the success of others, building relationships across lines of difference, and mutual accountability.
• Candidates must be eligible and authorized to work in the United States.