Senior Impact Assessment and Learning Officer

The James Irvine Foundation; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

The James Irvine Foundation in California is seeking a Senior IA&L Officer to lead strategic learning across grantmaking initiatives, inform grantee, staff, and board decision-making, and strengthen impact through learning tools and practices.

Reporting to Director Kim Ammann Howard, the role emphasizes equity, collaboration with program staff and partners, and building capacity for learning across the Foundation, including learning agendas and outcomes.

Qualifications

• Experience facilitating convenings, workshops, and peer learning.
• Commitment to equity and inclusion in learning practice.
• Ability to collaborate across teams and departments.

Responsibilities

• Lead cross-Foundation learning efforts and build learning infrastructure.
• Advise on IA&L plans for grantmaking initiatives and data systems.
• Plan, facilitate, and document internal reflection and learning events.
• Synthesize lessons from research/evaluations for field sharing.
• Build IA&L capacity among staff and grantees via trainings.
• Collaborate to share findings with program and communications teams.
• Identify opportunities for learning and improving Foundation's work.

Skills

Facilitation

Learning design

Equity & inclusion

Stakeholder engagement

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

The James Irvine Foundation has partnered with Talent Citizen in the search for its next Senior Impact Assessment & Learning Officer. Reporting to Director of Impact Assessment & Learning Kim Ammann Howard, this collaborative learning strategist will help facilitate strategic learning within grantmaking initiatives, across grantmaking teams, and more broadly in the organization to inform grantee, staff, and board insights and decision-making.

The James Irvine Foundation (“Foundation”) seeks a curious, adaptive, and highly collaborative learning strategist to serve as its next Senior Impact Assessment & Learning Officer (IA&L). Guided by the Foundation’s Impact Assessment and Learning Framework and working across different teams, the new Senior IA&L Officer will help facilitate strategic learning within grantmaking initiatives, across grantmaking teams, and more broadly in the organization to inform grantee, staff, and board insights and decision-making. This is an attractive opportunity for an accomplished and dynamic learning professional to play a key role in strengthening strategic and comprehensive learning and impact efforts.

The James Irvine Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation dedicated to expanding opportunity for the people of California. The Foundation’s current focus is a California where all low-income workers have the power to advance economically. Since 1937 the Foundation has provided more than $2.92 billion in grants to organizations throughout California. The Foundation ended 2025 with $3.6 billion in assets and provided $160.2 million in grants. For more specific grantmaking initiative information, please visit Irvine - Our Focus.

IA&L at the Foundation supports assessment and learning efforts to guide strategy and enhance impact; advance accountability and transparency about what the Foundation is doing and learning as well as how that learning is being applied; and, where relevant, uplift these experiences so that they can be leveraged by others. We seek to ensure that evaluation is done equitably and in service of equity with those we seek to serve at the center of our work. To accomplish this, the Senior IA&L Officer will serve as a collaborator and facilitator with others to build multiple spaces and modalities for Foundation staff, grantees, and partners to interrogate and evolve their practices, determine how/if they align with evolving foci and principles, identify next steps, and provide strategic tools and resources to advance their work.

Reporting to the Director of Impact Assessment & Learning, Kim Ammann Howard, the Senior IA&L officer will work closely and collaboratively with IA&L team members, program staff, and foundation leadership around institutional learning and impact. As each initiative manages its respective programmatic evaluation efforts, the Senior IA&L Officer will be charged with advising Initiative Directors and their teams throughout their learning journey. They will understand and navigate both the potential and challenges for the Foundation and its’ key stakeholders, working to facilitate learning by building capacity, providing a suite of learning tools and methodologies tailored to each situation, and possessing the organizational acumen to work deftly with a range of personality and professional types. In this sense, they will serve as a trusted advisor, sense maker, and learning concierge for Foundation constituencies – helping to select resources and facilitate learning in each appropriate context as well as exploring pathways for emergent and cross-portfolio learning. As a result, it will be important that, more than a tolerance for ambiguity, the Senior IA&L Officer possess a keen appetite for creativity and the ability to support the curiosity of others.

Ideal candidates will have an appreciation for the ways that learning and evaluative practices drive reflection and inform strategic decision-making at all levels: institutionally, programmatically, within ecosystems and in relations to systems change. Compelling candidates for this position must be highly motivated, capable of self-directed work, detail-oriented, and able to work collaboratively across teams and departments. Incumbents must exhibit a keen sense of responsibility and enjoy working with multiple demands, shifting priorities, and ongoing change. While an understanding of current evaluation and learning concepts, norms, and practices is important, formal education in evaluation or experience as a professional evaluator is not required. Candidates must have experience facilitating convenings, workshops, and peer learning across issues; a history of working with an explicit focus on equity and inclusion; and proficiency in developing learning agendas, materials, and other products that advance learning and adaptation. An understanding of the principles, strategies, and mindsets required to organize individuals to influence institutions and a broader field is critical. They will also bring an extensive amount of experience in applied social science activities, which preferably includes philanthropic contexts.

Previous experience working in a complex organization is highly desired, as is the ability to hold space for others, understand multi-directional power flow and experience working in collaboration with a kaleidoscope of organizations, consultants, and sector leaders with different missions. The successful candidate will be a strong relationship builder and bring a consultative and facilitative posture to their work. Excellent organizational and interpersonal skills are necessary. Strong verbal and written communications skills are absolute musts. Most importantly, a personal and professional commitment to equity and inclusiveness is vital to advancing the work, including the understanding of how one’s own identity and lived experiences inform their work.

The Senior Impact Assessment & Learning Officer – Impact Strategist and Learning Concierge

Core Responsibilities

• Help lead cross-Foundation learning efforts both organization-wide and across initiatives by partnering with others to create the learning infrastructure and support a culture of curiosity aimed at uplifting through-lines of the work across grantmaking portfolios and departments;
• Advise on the implementation of IA&L plans for grantmaking initiatives and programs and related measurement, data collection, and feedback systems that support strategy, grantmaking, and ongoing learning and adaptation;
• Lead planning, facilitation, and documentation of internal reflection and learning events;
• Inform assessment and learning activities by researching, synthesizing, and presenting best practices and innovations in the field;
• Support efforts to build the IA&L capacity of Irvine’s staff and grantees (e.g., through group training, outside workshops, identifying and curating key resources);
• Collaborate with program and communications staff to synthesize lessons and findings of research, evaluations, and other relevant assessments for sharing with the field; and
• Actively identify and facilitate opportunities for learning and improving the Foundation’s work within assigned projects.

Qualifications and Experiences of the Ideal Candidate

• While this role requires