About Pacific Environment

For more than three decades, Pacific Environment has worked to serve people, wildlife, and ecosystems by promoting grassroots activism, strengthening communities, leading strategic campaigns, and working for policy changes. Pacific Environment is currently headquartered in San Francisco, with regional offices or staff in Alaska, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand, and with partnerships that span the Pacific Rim.

Pacific Environment and its partners fight fossil fuels and champion clean energy, challenge industrial models that disregard local interests, and bring grassroots concerns – and whenever possible grassroots leaders – to national and international bodies to advocate for policy solutions that reflect community needs and values.

Pacific Environment operates as a campaigner, coalition-builder, and thought partner. The organization provides direct funding and technical assistance to grassroots environmental activists in the regions where they work. Pacific Environment offers one of the very few granting and training programs for grassroots environmental leaders that nurtures creative activism and leadership among local partners and their many community volunteers. The organization complements these community-led efforts with national and international coalition-building and advocacy to decision-makers to support policy changes.  Pacific Environment has a strong track record of local and international achievements, addressing the root causes of environmental challenges.

The Opportunity

This is an exciting opportunity for a strategic communications leader to guide an organization that influences governments and industry while building lasting community partnerships across the Pacific Rim. With recent and substantial growth in funding, programs, and staff, this is a pivotal moment for Pacific Environment and a unique opportunity for a creative and pragmatic department leader to enact organizational change and scale program impact.

The Senior Director, Communications, will lead Pacific Environment’s narrative strategy and communications across the organization, including campaign programs, branding, and fundraising. They are responsible for developing and executing communications strategies to advance Pacific Environment’s campaigns, research, and thought leadership across all relevant media platforms on a global scale. By crafting engaging stories about people, campaigns, and actions, the communications department plays a key role in achieving Pacific Environment’s mission to nurture community-level movement building and advance systemic environmental reform.

Reporting to the Executive Director, the Senior Director will build and manage an international department with the support of existing communications staff, evaluate communications strategies and tactics for increased effectiveness, and expand brand recognition to support the mission, program campaigns, and fundraising. The Senior Director will advise the Executive Director, other organizational leaders, and the Board of Directors. The Senior Director will be responsible for managing and executing a dynamic $800,000 budget.

The Senior Director will be joining an organizational culture that is global, fast-moving, and highly entrepreneurial. Collaboration, participatory leadership, and inclusive decision-making are characteristics of the team’s approach to working together. Embracing these qualities is essential to success in this position.

Key Responsibilities

The Senior Director’s specific areas of responsibility include, but are not limited to:

Communications Strategy

• Build and lead the organization’s new, fully integrated communications department, uniting existing communications staff and strategies under a single comprehensive organizational communications strategy.
• In collaboration with executive leadership, communications, and program staff, lead, develop, and implement comprehensive and measurable communications and strategies to further Pacific Environment’s mission and organizational priorities.
• Lead the continual refinement of communications strategies and practices and drive implementation throughout the organization.
• Create a brand awareness strategy to ensure the organization’s recognition and reputation grows and supports impact.
• Elevate and ensure the uniformity and quality of brand identity and voice. Foster cross-functional dialogue to deepen the organization’s understanding of communications and brand identity, and its direct influence on campaign impact.
• Guide content production for strategic campaign communications priorities in disciplines including writing, digital content creation, videography, graphic design, event production, website, photography, and public relations.
• Oversee market, trend, and performance data analysis; recommend new strategies or adjustments to current programs, campaigns, and content.

Leadership, Staff, & Organizational Development

• Build the long-term vision and structure of the communications team, including job delineation, career planning, and hiring.
• Support a diverse, inclusive workplace culture to attract, retain, and motivate a values-aligned and high-performing team.
• Align globally distributed team members into a unified department.
• Create a laser-focused prioritization system for staff to distinguish high-impact tasks with ease while balancing the rapidly changing needs of specific campaigns.
• Supervise consultants, vendors, and contractors to oversee graphics, writing, editing, and promotion, as needed.
• Implement organization-wide administrative and budgetary systems for communications staff.  Facilitate budget literacy across the team to increase members’ capacity.

Advancement & External Partnerships

• Work with the Senior Director of Advancement to execute regular fundraising-related communications in alignment with broader communications strategies to captivate new funders and increase levels of individual giving.
• Build relationships with targeted media and journalists, identify media opportunities, and shape larger news narratives around policy, programmatic, and political priorities.
• Liaise with communications professionals at partner organizations and funders to produce content, coordinate messaging, and support the most promising climate, environmental justice, and biodiversity solutions.