Program Manager, Future of Work & Innovation Economy initiative

Democracy Fund; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading organization seeks a Program Manager to support community colleges in advancing emerging tech workforce development. This hybrid position involves project management, technical assistance, and stakeholder collaboration, contributing to the renewal of the American middle class. The ideal candidate has a background in higher education or non-profit sectors and is skilled in managing complex initiatives.

Benefits

Health care coverage

Generous retirement plan

Paid time off

Office-wide closure between Christmas and New Year’s

Qualifications

• At least five years of relevant experience in higher education or non-profits.
• Proven skills in managing relationships with senior leaders.
• Ability to communicate complex ideas clearly.

Responsibilities

• Manage monthly web workshops for community colleges.
• Coordinate local summits across the nation.
• Draft monthly newsletters and maintain communications.

Skills

Project Management

Technical Assistance

Communication

Data Management

Education

Bachelor’s degree in higher education administration

Master’s degree (preferred)

Tools

Zoom

Google Drive

Notion

Canva

Job description

About New America: Since 1999, New America has pioneered a different kind of think-and-action tank: a civic platform that connects a research institute, technology lab, solutions network, media hub, and public forum. We are dedicated to the renewal of the American promise. We advance the quest to realize the nation's highest ideals, honestly confronting the challenges caused by rapid technological and social change and seizing the opportunities those changes create. Our policy experts, technologists, social entrepreneurs, and storytellers prize our intellectual and ideological independence and our diversity, seeking to do our best work to reflect and celebrate a new America.

About FOWIE: New America's Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative is a research, storytelling, technical assistance, and policy incubator. Our mission is to steer technological innovation in a direction that actively contributes to the renewal of the American middle class. We aim to ensure that the innovation economy creates family-sustaining jobs, reliable pathways into those jobs, and that emerging technologies make work better for all. To accomplish that mission, we advance a coordinated and integrated approach to federal science, workforce, and industrial policies and their implementation. Locally, we cultivate the enabling conditions necessary to align emerging technology, economic, and workforce development ecosystems by working with institutions that most often serve the American middle class, including higher education, labor, and workforce organizations.

New America’s Future of Work & Innovation Economy (FOWIE) initiative is seeking a Program Manager with experience in supporting technical assistance programming focused on community colleges, tech-based economic development, and STEM workforce development.

The candidate will serve as the operations lead for New America’s Accelerator for Community Colleges in the Innovation Economy—a national technical assistance and community of practice initiative designed to strengthen the capacity of community colleges participating in NSF Regional Innovation Engines, particularly around emerging tech workforce development and regional economic development.

The Accelerator focuses on strengthening colleges’ institutional policies and practices that foster regional economic and workforce development in advanced and emerging technologies of focus for NSF Engines–semiconductors, the water economy, textile innovation, regenerative medicine, clean energy capture and storage, battery manufacturing, and beyond.

Technical assistance focus areas include strengthening partnerships with employers, non-profits, and universities; scaling apprenticeship and work-based learning opportunities; implementing online learning; enhancing and financing non-credit workforce offerings; and improving colleges’ workforce data infrastructure.

The candidate will support participating colleges by identifying capacity-building needs; researching and curating relevant tools, models, and best practices; delivering insights through memos and presentations; and organizing virtual and in-person professional learning opportunities.

This is an extensively people-facing role, and the candidate should be experienced in managing relationships with senior college leaders. The ideal candidate will have experience working in or with higher education institutions and will be a flexible, detail-oriented, and collaborative team player who is willing to pitch in where needed and guide complex projects to completion on a set timeline.

Responsibilities:

• Primary Duties (75%): Project Management & Technical assistance:
  • Web workshops: Manage professionally designed monthly Zoom web workshops for Accelerator colleges. Tasks include designing compelling agendas, coordinating speaker invitations and preparation, issuing pre- and post workshop email communications, updating Google Drive folder with slides, resources, and Zoom recordings, administering live Zoom polls and feedback surveys, fostering chat engagement among attendees, and managing live-event logistics, including breakout rooms, Slido polling, Zoom whiteboard, and screensharing as needed.
  • Data management & impact tracking: Maintain Campus Contacts database. Co-design and manage qualitative and light quantitative data to measure and report on college engagement in cohort, capacity-building needs, and participation outcomes.
  • Technical Assistance: Deliver high-quality technical assistance by identifying college needs, connecting them to exemplars and resources, and documenting lessons and outcomes.
  • Local Summits: Coordinate 7-8 local summits across the nation, including collaborating with community colleges and local partners to steer the end-to-end agenda development process and conference logistics. This includes preparing meeting materials, collecting slides, scheduling session planning calls, leading aspects of the meeting, and distilling insights through written blogs, etc.
  • Annual summit @ NA: Organize an annual in-person summit for ~30 attendees, coordinating logistics, hotel arrangements, agenda planning, and collaboration with New America’s central events team.
  • Monthly newsletter: Draft and coordinate the Accelerator’s Monthly Update newsletter, including web workshop agenda, announcements, a round-up of blogs and articles, funding opportunities, and other strategic opportunities to benefit colleges.
  • Affinity groups: Manage Accelerator affinity group programming to promote networking and community-building among college leaders with shared goals (e.g., online learning, K-12 partnerships, work-based learning, systems coordination, etc.)
  • Capacity-building fund: Manage the operations of a capacity-building mini-grant program within the Accelerator, including coordinating application development, proposal review, reporting, and coordination with the New America finance office.
  • NSF Engines coordination: As needed, represent the Accelerator on monthly NSF Engines calls and coordinate ongoing communication with workforce leaders.
  • Presidents & Partner Council Coordination: Support the Accelerator Partners Council’s and Presidents’ Council activities, including events, conference sessions, blogs, and logistics.
  • Finance management: Coordinate the New America finance office to track and fulfill invoices for travel reimbursements, mini-grants for colleges, and project expenses.
  • Communications: Keep tabs on colleges' efforts in NSF Engines through Google Alerts. Ensure colleges’ and Engines’ communications and presidents’ offices staff are informed when colleges/Engines are featured in New America or external writing, presentations, and events. Coordinate press release launches and social media amplification.
• Secondary duties (25%): Blog Writing & Presentations:
  • Blogs: Author and/or co-author with supervisor or other analysts clear and compelling blog articles detailing effective capacity-building best practices, lessons learned, and college impact profiles drawing on Accelerator web workshop presentations, interviews with college leaders, light quantitative analysis (e.g. assembling and analyzing Google Spreadsheet databases), and online research of academic/policy/gray literature.
  • Presentations: As needed, give occasional virtual and in-person presentations regarding the Accelerator.

Qualifications:

• A bachelor’s degree in higher education administration, non-profit management, public policy, political science, instructional design, communications, or other relevant areas is required. A master’s degree is a plus.
• At least five years of work experience working in think tanks, philanthropies, colleges and universities, membership associations, or non-profits focused on higher education, economic development, workforce development, emerging technologies, or public policy.
  • Experience supporting technical assistance, professional development, qualitative research, and a community of practices focused on higher education institutions.
  • An ability to work more independently with initiative and drive.
  • Understanding of the importance of evidence-based policies and programs.
  • A plus if you have experience working in or with higher education institutions and/or workforce development organizations, state and federal policy, technology, or R&D organizations.
  • A small to moderate amount of business travel may be required.
• Proven technical assistance, research, and communication skills. Candidates should be able to communicate complex ideas clearly and concisely to higher education and journalistic audiences using both the written word and oral presentations.
  • Ability to translate qualitative insights from focus groups, interviews, and document analysis into written products for both specialized and broad audiences.
  • Comfortable creating professional slide presentations that communicate complex ideas to senior higher education leaders.
  • A passion for following higher education, economic development, science policy, and innovation policy news, academic papers, policy reports, and gray literature.
• Strong project management skills. Proficient in using technology and coordinating workflows for large, complex projects.
  • Well-developed notetaking, task-management, and time-management skills (e.g., creating and using Gantt charts, workplans, budget trackers, etc.)
  • Above-average skillset for using Zoom, Notion, Google Drive, and products (e.g., Google Slides, Sheets, Docs), Gmail, Canva, and Slack
  • Strong organizational skills and attention to detail, including meeting and communicating around deadlines and milestones
• A love of learning and a commitment to a growth mindset
  • Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to patiently manage relationships with executive-level leaders and experts at colleges.
  • A spirit of curiosity, an inclination to intellectual hubris, and a love for research and learning.
  • A mindset of continuous improvement and a strong work ethic, matched by openness to feedback and team collaboration.

Location: Hybrid (Tuesdays and Wednesdays in-person at New America’s DC office; candidates must reside in the DC/MD/VA metro area

Compensation and Benefits: This is a full-time role with benefits. The annual salary will be between $90,000.00 - $110,000.00, depending on experience.

New America offers a highly competitive benefits package that includes health care, dental, and vision coverage; a generous retirement plan; paid time off; observes all federal holidays; and an office-wide closure between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Application Process:

Please submit 1) CV/resume, 2) a 1-page cover letter addressed to hiring manager Shalin Jyotishi, Founder and Managing Director of the Future of Work and Innovation Economy initiative at New America, and 3) a writing sample, with 3 professional references included at the top of the sample. Please include the reference’s full name, title, email, and your relationship to them. At least one reference must be a former full-time supervisor.

Note: References will only be contacted at the final interview stage following candidate notification. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and priority will be given to applications received by COB June 2, 2025.

Originality and Transparency: At New America, we value authentic voices and intellectual property rights. All application materials, including cover letters, writing samples, and any other submissions, must be solely your own original work. The use of AI text generation tools like ChatGPT, language models, or other artificial intelligence writing assistants is strictly prohibited for any part of your job application. Submissions found to contain AI-generated content will be immediately disqualified from consideration. Applicants have a responsibility to be fully transparent about authorship and any tools or resources utilized. We celebrate human ingenuity and want to hear your genuine thoughts and experiences

New America is an equal-opportunity employer committed to hiring a diverse workforce at all levels of the organization thereby creating a culture that allows us to better serve our clientele, our employees, and our communities. We value and encourage the contributions of our employees and strive to create an environment where everyone can reach their full potential and drive outstanding results. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, age, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status, gender identity or expression, or any other basis protected by local, state, or federal law. This policy applies with regard to all aspects of one’s employment, including hiring, transfer, promotion, compensation, eligibility for benefits, and termination. This is a bargaining unit position.