The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, founded in 2008 by Peter G. Peterson, co-founder of the private equity firm The Blackstone Group, is dedicated to increasing public awareness of the nature and urgency of key fiscal challenges threatening America's future, and to accelerating action on them. As a nonpartisan foundation, they neither lobby nor represent special interest groups.
Tackling such key nationwide fiscal responsibility issues and fostering meaningful action require a broad reach, high impact public profile combined with expert positioning and communications strategies toward public policy arenas and the American public at large. The Foundation has tremendous intellectual capital, abundant resources, and the demonstrated passion to successfully pursue its aims. An integral contributor to the success of the Foundation will be the role of Director of Public Affairs.
For more information, please visit http://www.pgpf.org
The Position
Reporting to the CEO, the Director of Public Affairs will be responsible for coordinating all public relations activities for the Foundation with a primary focus on media and generating/screening high-impact, on-message public appearances. In many ways, the essential responsibility of the role could be described as the "Campaign Managerfor Awareness, Visibility, and Education" regarding the issues of importance to the Foundation. The role is responsible for managing/coordinating two outside ‘contractor' relationships with public relations firms in Washington, D.C. and New York City. In addition, there will be periodic needs for this role to coordinate polling organizations and their targeted activities on behalf of the Foundation and to coordinate an outside agency responsible for a major advertising campaign to further brand and extend the messages of the Foundation.
One key aspect of this role will be to work with grantees and alliance partners in support of grass roots efforts reflecting the Foundation's mission. Also, while not an absolute requirement, it would be valuable for the person in this role to be an adept, experienced speech writer in support of the Officers in the Foundation.
The Person
This is a person who is extremely well-connected with, well known by, and well-regarded by the media, most notably television. An individual with excellent editing and content generation skills who is naturally engaged with and committed to the fundamental beliefs of the Foundation is required. This person must bring the personal characteristics of diplomacy and the capability to work effectively within a team setting. He/She arrives with a natural bias to action, a powerful intellect, political awareness, a demonstrated courage of conviction around his/her beliefs, and an instinctive ‘nose' for what's topical and newsworthy. He/she must be able to manage relationships effectively and align resources, both internally and externally, for maximum effect.
Experience
A person who understands how to proactively generate, intelligently screen and target content for appearance opportunities in the media is required. This individual should have significant, direct experience in a television or major media news organization. He/she should have a solid undergraduate degree with a graduate degree in targeted arenas of study like communications, media or business. Importantly, this person must be comfortable and facile with new forms of media that are youth-centric and technology enabled, i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, and other forms of social networking and/or messaging approaches. Finally, while preferable but not essential, it would be very useful for this person to have had experience in consumer marketing and advertising, given the extensive messaging/positioning and brand building activities of interest to the Foundation.
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation is an Equal Opportunity Employer and encourages candidates of all backgrounds to apply for this position. The Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit organization, serves diverse organizations and is committed to building high-performing teams that mirror the communities we serve. Please register (free of charge) at www.bridgestar.org and apply online through this listing on the Bridgestar job board at http://www.bridgestar.org/Jobs/PositionDetails.aspx?jobId=5517
