Smart Growth America is hiring an Economic Development/Community Development Specialist to provide direct assistance on triple-bottom line community revitalization in urban and rural communities around the country, and to work on the associated local, state and federal policy issues surrounding revitalization.
The Specialist will principally work with Smart Growth America’s Vice President for Economic Development, as well as across a number of programs including LOCUS, the Governors’ Institute on Community Design, and others. This is an opportunity to work at the intersection of policy and hands-on community level practice.
Position description
An ideal candidate will have experience, expertise, and a passion for smart growth issues. We are looking for an excellent writer, communicator, technician, and constituency builder, and someone with a comprehensive view of the human, physical environment, and institutional aspects required for successful revitalization. The ideal candidate will be both a practitioner and a policy wonk, someone who can take lessons from specific experiences and translate them into a larger approach and ideas for new policies and programs. In this position these abilities and talents will be put to working directly with communities to formulate and implement revitalization strategies, while also working to develop federal, state and local policy ideas and initiatives that will support and advance revitalization efforts.
Responsibilities
The Specialist’s primary responsibilities include:
- Delivering, through short and long term engagements, technical assistance in communities to help them advance their revitalization efforts;
- Analyzing local market, demographic, regulatory and other factors affecting revitalization, and participating in the creation, drafting and presentation of revitalization strategies;
- Constructing and conducting revitalization trainings; and
- Extracting lessons from revitalization efforts and using these as the basis for developing policy and program ideas to advance at the local, state and federal level.
Salary commensurate with experience. Benefits include health insurance, 401(k), and paid vacation and sick time. This is a full-time position based in Washington, DC.
[Photo by Storm Cunningham.]