Lotus Engineering and Sustainability is hiring for a Communications and Engagement Senior Associate. Click here or read below for the description and more about Lotus!

About the job

A Week in the Life of a Lotus Employee in this Position

We are looking for someone who is willing to get their hands dirty – to pitch in on all tasks that come up in the course of business. We need you to be flexible and nimble, willing to adapt to the needs of a business in a rapidly evolving market.

Our business model relies on your ability to work independently, ask good questions at the right time, and figure things out on your own. We need you to be resourceful, quickly leveraging the contacts and resources at your disposal in a strategic manner to work through day-to-day challenges.

During the course of a given week, we’ll ask you to employ a broad range of skills. We’ll ask you to use both sides of your brain. The majority of your work will support our projects with clients, while a small amount on a weekly basis will support our business development efforts. This role will mostly focus on managing projects and working within our communications and engagement practice area. Yet, here’s a snapshot of some of the work that we currently anticipate:

More than anything else, we’ll ask you to support us in delivering the highest-quality services to our clients.

- Lead project management for engagement and facilitation and sustainability planning projects on behalf of Lotus and our clients.

- Keep projects on time and on budget, collaborating across the Lotus team to delegate and coordinate project work.

- Identify, organize, and help respond to upcoming project opportunities.

- Scope and budget projects.

- Ensure that our client’s needs and wants are met.

We’ll rely on you to lead and support client engagement work.

- Facilitate stakeholder, task force, and community meetings.

- Develop engaging and participatory meeting materials and activities, weaving in research, data, and findings from other components of Lotus’ work into the process as needed.

- Develop robust communications plans related to both engagement efforts and the implementation of our clients’ work.

- Engage various audiences by planning, implementing, coordinating, and evaluating a variety of creative and effective engagement opportunities.

- Use various virtual and in-person tools to facilitate consensus building with stakeholder groups.

We’ll ask you to support Lotus’ and our clients’ commitment to equity and environmental justice.

- Develop meaningful engagement that includes all voices and values, is culturally relevant and inclusive, and incorporates relationship building.

- Integrate components that address equity and issues of environmental justice, environmental racism, and historic disenfranchisement throughout all of our outreach and engagement work.

- Lead and continuously improve our public engagement efforts and create a safe environment for engagement.

- Build positive professional relationships with engagement participants.

We’ll ask you to help us craft a story that explains our work.

- Analyze the results of engagement efforts and weave these findings into climate action plans, sustainability reports, and other client deliverables.

- Craft outreach materials, build websites for community plans, develop surveys, and identify and implement other innovative approaches to gathering community and stakeholder input.

- Develop meeting materials and graphic-heavy presentations to present our work to non-technical audiences or to conference crowds.

This position requires a candidate with the following qualifications:

• Communication and Engagement Skills
• Expert understanding in planning, implementing, and evaluating public participation and engagement and facilitation processes.
• Experience leading stakeholder processes, with a preference for experience in community building and gathering consensus across diverse networks of stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver enthusiastic, accurate, educational, creative, and entertaining presentations to a variety of audiences.
• Experience creating communication plans or developing effective communication strategies.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, and an ability to share complex information in an easily understood format.
• Excellent listening skills and the ability to hear, process, and aggregate input from multiple sources.
• Ability to coordinate and ensure internal team alignment on project status, needs, successes, and potential barriers.
• Project Management Skills
• Interdisciplinary work experience that focuses on managing projects of progressively increasing levels of complexity, collaborating across domains, and facilitating diverse networks of stakeholders to reach a common goal.
• Ability to manage multiple projects, people, timelines, and tasks simultaneously with a high level of independence and competence within a fast-paced, complex, innovative environment.
• Ability to delegate work across teams and keep projects on time and on budget.
• Attitude
• Collaborative team player and engager.
• A history of successful, creative problem-solving.
• A history of self-education on issues outside the immediate scope of prior work.
• Strong history of self-management and being self-sufficient.
• A passion and enthusiasm for the work we do with public and private sector clients.
• Education
• Bachelor’s degree and 5-7+ years of relevant experience or Masters’ degree with 4+ years of relevant experience.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel, Word, and the Google Suite (e.g., Docs, Sheets, Forms, et c.).
• Valid driver’s license and comfort with driving.

Other desirable attributes include:

• Spoken and written fluency in Spanish.
• An interest in and understanding of the quickly evolving world of sustainability and climate action, including green building, greenhouse gas accounting, environmental justice, transportation issues, and other sustainability topics.
• Demonstrated ability to establish and build professional relationships, connections, and partnerships with clients.
• Experience as a consultant or leading billable or client-based projects.
• Experience using project management softwares such as Monday.com, Asana, Microsoft Teams, etc.
• Experiences with Miro, Survey Monkey, Zoom, Mentimeter, and other virtual facilitation tools.
• Experience in Canva, Adobe InDesign, and ArcGIS (Desktop and Online).
• Experience in Website design using platforms such as SquareSpace, Wordpress, etc.

Compensation: and Benefits: Salary commensurate with experience with a range of $70,000-$85,000. This range is based on a 40-hour workweek. We highly value work-life balance and rarely work more than 40 hours per week.

A full-time employee will be eligible to participate in Lotus’ medical and dental plan. Lotus offers 15 days paid time off (PTO) per calendar and observes 10 holidays for full-time employees. We also match employee donations up to $500/year. A 401k (currently not matched). A full-time employee may request up to two extra weeks of vacation beyond the PTO benefits highlighted above. Extra time off will be unpaid and must be approved by management.

Additional benefits include: Volunteer and Board time up to 30 hours per year, annual training and continuing education budget, and 4 weeks of paid parental leave.

Location and Schedule: We are open to remote or Denver-based employees. If in Denver (or the surrounding Metro area), the work would primarily take place at Lotus’ Denver location (Steno – 1627 Vine St near City Park). Note that Denver area employees can remotely work for multiple days a week. We are open to remote working as long as employees are available to chat or email during normal business hours. The office is generally open from 9 am – 5 pm Monday through Friday.

We expect periodic meetings in and around Denver and occasional client-related meetings throughout Colorado and nationally.

To apply

Please submit the following documents to hello@lotussustainability.com with position name in the title followed by your name “Communications Senior Associate – [Your name]”:

● Resume and Cover Letter – Help us understand why you’re the right fit for our team. Tell a story, highlight your most applicable skills, do whatever you think will capture the essence of what you’ll bring to the table. Cover letters should address your ability to meet the job responsibilities in the Required Qualifications section. Please include 2-3 references.

● Writing sample – We’re looking for something that shows us your writing style, whether it’s a blog about skiing, a technical paper you wrote, a section from a recent project report that’s publicly available, or something else. Please make sure that it is your writing that we see.

The review of materials is ongoing and will continue until the position is filled. Early application is strongly encouraged.

We strongly encourage applicants with diverse backgrounds to apply.