Head of Marketing and Communications

Rippleworks Foundation believes all people should have equitable access to the resources and opportunities to live life to the fullest. Our mission is to relentlessly focus on the needs of social ventures by providing practical support for impactful entrepreneurs and their teams so Ventures can improve more lives. Rippleworks’ programs has directly supported 250 ventures by running 275 projects in 60 countries, held workshops for over 1,000 leaders and has deployed $150 million in unrestricted funding to our Ventures.

We are a 40+ person team to create the best possible workplace for purpose-driven professionals to make an outsized difference in the world: learning, growing, and feeling joy along the way.

Rippleworks has been named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies (by Fast Company) and one of the world’s Best Workplaces for Innovators (by Fast Company and Accenture)

We support our portfolio of Ventures 3 ways:

Rippleworks Projects: Rippleworks leads short-term, high-impact projects where social ventures address key operational challenges through customized engagement that pair ventures with industry-leading executives who bring deeply relevant entrepreneurial experience.

Rippleworks Leaders Studio: Rippleworks designs and delivers practical, interactive, expert-led learning sessions designed specifically for social venture leaders who are seeking to learn and grow. Rippleworks partners with leading industry executives to run interactive, results-driven learning programs where social venture leaders gain the critical skills they need to deliver impact at scale.

Rippleworks Capital: Rippleworks provides hard-to-find capital required for scale (grants and investments in the $1M-$3M range) to 50+ ventures working in 80+ countries.

Our Commitment to Diversity Equity Inclusion & Belonging: We know inequities exist across the globe and are perpetuated by practices such as systemic racism and colonialism. Rippleworks is taking an active role in disrupting these inequities that disadvantage historically excluded people. As such, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) is integral to realizing this vision.

We are an equal opportunity employer and committed to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion at Rippleworks. Candidates from racially underrepresented and marginalized groups (Black, Latinx, Native American or individuals with national origins from developing countries that reflect the communities we serve) are strongly encouraged to apply. Rippleworks also complies with federal and state disability laws and makes reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please email christina@rippleworks.org.

The Role

As the Head of Marketing & Communication at Rippleworks, you will play a pivotal role in creating and executing marketing strategies to deeply engage with our portfolio of ventures as well as funders, capacity builders and our volunteer experts. You will approach our communications with a customer service mentality to best serve our portfolio in our authentic, unique voice. Your expertise in client relationship and engagement, communications, and marketing will showcase our impactful programs, to drive lasting relationships with our Ventures. You will lead a team of marketing professionals, collaborating closely with the executive team, department leads, and cross-functional stakeholders.

Requirements

Reporting directly to the CEO, this person will lead our 3 person marketing team and collaborate closely with the Executive Team and the entire organization to identify and execute a broad range of marketing activities. Specifically, you will:

• Architect our Venture Relationship & Engagement strategy grounded in a Communication Strategy as well as the needs of our internal Departments. Build and iterate on this strategy with our growing understanding of Ventures to create engaging, high quality interactions that are consistent with our mission, strategy, and brand
• Develop and design a differentiated, authentic Rippleworks voice across external-facing collateral and marketing channels that aligns with our mission, values, and needs of our Ventures
• Oversee the design and produce internal events and communications that make our team feel informed, included, and inspired around our mission, annual priorities, team accomplishments, and the amazingness of our teammates.
• Create and lead a compelling content strategy to share our learnings and showcase the powerful stories of our ventures across various channels, including social media, email campaigns, newsletters, webinars and convenings to help Ventures and Funders achieve their impact potential
  • You will also co-lead our annual public DEIB report with our Equity Team to drive accountability of our commitment to champion belonging by embracing inclusive behaviors, equitable access, and transparency.

• Lead and mentor the 2 other members of the marketing team, fostering a culture of creativity, collaboration, trust, and continuous learning. You will set clear goals and provide regular feedback to team members to provide an optimal experience to achieve both Rippleworks’ goals and their own personal career goals. People managers also serve as a primary culture carrier and are responsible for ensuring Rippleworks is a great workplace as we scale a team that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

About You

• Start and end your work day loving to deeply understand the customer; the social impact venture
• Proven track record of designing and executing successful client relationship or engagement strategies that provide valued information and drive strong ties to customers
• You have been a strategic partner to departments to help them craft compelling, engaging, authentic messages and customer relationship campaigns
• You effectively drive cross-company efforts by engaging, empowering, and leading teams
• You identify with building a brand voice that is:
  • Sharp: practical, solutions oriented, results driven, comments derived from experiences
  • Trusted: reliable, deeply thoughtful in our work, empathetic, humble
  • Inspiring: positive, fun, story telling, and passionate
• Grow audiences through publishing or promoting valued content with authentic voices that are informative, engaging, and inspiring

Core competencies for all Rippleworks employees:

• Customer Focus: You have a customer-first mentality (both internal and external customers) and seek out opportunities to stay close to our customers to understand and meet their evolving needs.
• Agile Learning: You continuously and actively learn through experimentation when tackling new problems, using both successes and failures as growth opportunities.
• Interpersonal Skills: You relate openly and comfortably with diverse groups of people. You use deep empathy to build relationships and work collaboratively in a team environment and are particularly attuned to different and at times competing stakeholder needs and requirements. You treat everyone fairly and equitably.
• Managing Ambiguity: You are able to navigate dynamic, changing situations and make decisions or create a path forward with imperfect or incomplete information. You remain calm when things are up in the air; comfortably handle risk and uncertainty.

• Driving for Meaningful Results: You consistently and effectively deliver, and mobilize others to deliver, results as well as identify ways to improve that make a positive impact.

Core competencies for this role:

• Communication: You have an exceptional ability to articulate thoughts and express ideas in a clear and engaging manner using oral, written, visual, and non-verbal communication skills. You are capable of translating complex ideas into information that is understandable to a wide and diverse audience.
• Strategic Agility: You develop a forward thinking, broad, big-picture view while fluidly operationalizing tactical plans.
• Domain Know-how: You serve as an expert on all things marketing related. You constantly strive to get smarter and stay current on latest thinking so that you can adapt practices to be uniquely Rippleworks. You balance your marketing expertise with a willingness to let go of habits or traditional ways of doing things in order to create innovative or unique solutions.
• Building Teams: You drive engagement, collaboration, and camaraderie around a diverse mix of styles, perspectives, and experiences. You achieve this by building common team objectives with a shared mindset as well as a feeling of belonging and strong team morale.
• Business Insight: You apply knowledge of our work and your domain expertise to advance the organization’s goals

Qualifications

• 10+ years of demonstrated experience in building excellent customer relationship and engagement strategies. Responsibility for creating marketing strategies and driving results
• Designed department-level customer outreach strategies and drove excellent results.
• Built cross-functional high-performing teams to achieve company and department-level marketing results.
• Led internal communications strategy and execution.

• A passion or experience with the global social venture ecosystem (social ventures, funders, capacity builders).

• Created marketing or communications activities to bring a company’s voice to life by informing and inspiring audiences; such as creating compelling and engaging content, driving high-visibility distribution, creating engaging presentations or convenings.

Benefits

• Don't take a pay cut to do good in the world! We offer a competitive salary of $216,500, with competitive benefits: Medical, dental, vision, life, and short term + long term disability insurance, 401K + employer match, cell phone allowance, flexible PTO (non-accrued vacation), wellness/self-care stipends and more
• Be inspired by meaningful work: You will see and feel the tangible impact of your work on a daily basis
• Travel the world: Everyone at Rippleworks has the opportunity for at least one international working trip a year to see our impact in the field. Our Study Abroad program funds personal learning experiences abroad for employees to better understand the different geographies, cultures, and sectors that we support. And we know travel can be tiring! Our No Place Like Home policy encourages employees to take a day off after Rippleworks-related travel to catch up on sleep, do some laundry, or spend some extra time with your family.
• Boost your lifelong journey of giving back: Through our Community Grants program, employees have the opportunity to give a $50K grant to a local community nonprofit doing meaningful work in an area that the employee is passionate about. We also provide a $2,500 charitable donation match for financial and volunteer hour contributions.
• A culture that values professional & personal growth: We provide an external professional coach for every team member who wants one and a learning budget to put towards professional development. We also hold regular Lunch & Learns, monthly team-building, regular team celebrations (birthdays, milestones, anniversaries, holidays).
• A diverse and inclusive workplace that actively seeks and attracts people from different backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives
• A flexible, remote-first work environment in which team members have flexible time off, set their own work hours, and decide whether to work remotely or in an office
• A team of friends: We are a highly collaborative team that values learning together, recurring Slack jokes, and sharing insider trips to Trader Joes, updates on plants, pets and kids, and grabbing lunch or coffee when we're in person together!

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