Career Opportunities
Strategic Communications Lead
Wisdom at Work · Practical Wisdom Project · Abigail Adams Institute
0.80 FTE (32 hours/week) · Hybrid · Reports to the Principal Investigator (PI)
This is a senior communications role responsible for building the Wisdom at Work Hub—the public-facing website platform and subscription content home—and for leveraging the content we publish across channels to build brand awareness, community, and momentum around practical wisdom in school leadership and formative leadership across sectors. The position leads multimedia content development from concept through launch, ensures brand coherence across the full content ecosystem, humanizes the work through the voices of school leaders and other professionals, and advances the public conversation about the centrality of practical wisdom to leaders of formative institutions.
About the Project
The Practical Wisdom Project at the Abigail Adams Institute is a research-practice partnership advancing practical wisdom in those who lead and form others across sectors. Its flagship initiative, Wisdom at Work: Revitalizing School Leadership, engages school leadership teams through executive education, design-based research, and field-building through a networked Community of Practice. We begin with school leadership because that is where the stakes are most visible. Burnout and turnover are eroding the formative work of schools. We want to tell the stories of communities where leaders have leaned in and made a difference, and to distill the practical wisdom from their experience in ways that travel across professions where formative apprenticeship matters most. We are moving from a research base and a distinctive brand of leadership education with evidence-based tools and strong program interest into a phase of wider public engagement and expanded program offerings.
The Role
The Practical Wisdom Project is seeking a journalist with multimedia content development experience to create a coherent story across every communication channel—and to leverage those channels to build brand awareness, community, and momentum. The Strategic Communications Lead translates the project’s research, pedagogy, and brand into an editorial voice and public presence that reaches wider audiences, humanizes the work, and advances the public conversation in formative leadership.
This includes:
Leading the design and build of the Wisdom at Work Hub—the public-facing platform and subscription content home.
Leading multimedia content development from concept through launch across Hub, podcast, blog, audio, and video. Holding brand coherence across the full content ecosystem: blog posts, policy statements, practitioner tools, podcast episodes, Field Guide, decks, social, briefs, and Hub pages.
Building audience, community, and public conversation around practical wisdom—from readership to identification, awareness to engagement.
Curating, codifying, developing, writing, editing, and coordinating with contributors and podcast guests.
Leveraging the PI and Co-PI as inspirational voices, thought leaders, and content creators, amplifying their publications and appearances as core content assets, not just network access points.
Leveraging existing research, professional development materials, alumni voices, and the brand
to reach wider audiences.
Centering the human face of the work—school leaders themselves and other professionals in fields where formative apprenticeship matters.
Recruiting and directing expert freelancers, web designers, and production partners across the content and platform pipeline.
This is a senior strategic execution role. It does not duplicate vision or research leadership; it makes the work visible, resonant, and reachable within a focused editorial and audience-building remit. It builds the wider community around the ideas—the readers, listeners, and public who identify with the work. Business development, fundraising, and the Community of Practice among Fellows and alumni are held elsewhere on the team.
Operating Context
This is a build-stage initiative with an established research base, a distinctive brand, and a growing content pipeline. The role converts that foundation into a coherent public story and a growing community—agile enough to move from concept to launch, disciplined enough to hold thematic coherence across every channel, and well-connected enough to bring the right voices to the work and the right audiences to the ideas.
Leadership Structure
Principal Investigator (PI): Vision, pedagogy, external leadership.
Co-PI: Research and design-based research model.
Strategic Communications Lead: Editorial voice, multimedia content, and public engagement.
The role works in close partnership with the PI and Co-PI with clear responsibility for editorial and communications execution across channels.
Core Responsibilities
1. Editorial Vision & Storytelling Strategy
Set a coherent editorial narrative across every channel—Hub, podcast, blog, audio, video, social.
Lead with the distinctive brand; start with school leadership; extend into formative leadership across professions.
Tell the story of practical wisdom development—what it looks like, sounds like, and makes possible.
Bring the human face to the work through the voices of school leaders and other formative professionals.
2. Audience, Community & Momentum
Grow audience across every channel—readers, listeners, subscribers, viewers, sharers.
Build public community around the ideas: conversation, identification, and shared purpose.
Catalyze momentum from awareness to engagement—turning attention into participation, and participation into a widening public conversation in formative leadership.
Design content andsignature moments that draw new audiences in and keep them engaged.
3. Multimedia Content Development
Lead content from concept through launch across all formats.
Curate, codify, develop, write, and edit at a professional standard.
Coordinate with podcast guests, contributors, and interviewees.
Ensure thematic coherence across each phase of production.
4. Story Capture & Participant Voice
Design and implement a rhythm for surveying participants in webinars and in-person professional development experiences outside Wisdom at Work—formative-leadership audiences we already reach but do not yet systematically hear from.
Explore and pilot options for capturing short participant video stories usable for impact communication across channels.
Build a systematic story-sourcing infrastructure that feeds the content pipeline with fresh first-person voices from the field.
Turn every external touchpoint into a potential source of story, testimony, and community.
5. Hub Development & Brand Coherence
Lead the design and build of the Wisdom at Work Hub—the public-facing website platform and subscription content home.
Own content architecture across audiences and pathways: what lives free, what lives behind a subscription, and how visitors move from awareness to engagement to membership.
Manage the web design and development team—agency, contractors, designers, UX partners.
Run user research to inform Hub design—cohort feedback, alumni voice, prospective audience testing.
Iterate the Hub across phases: MVP through production through a unified public-plus-subscriber platform.
Ensure brand coherence across the full content ecosystem—blog posts, policy statements, practitioner tools, podcast episodes, Field Guide, decks, social, briefs, and Hub pages—so every touchpoint reads as a coherent expression of the work.
Partner on brand identity and user experience so the platform and its content read as one voice.
6. Freelancer &Production Management
Recruit, brief, and lead expert freelancers—writers, editors, audio and video producers, designers.
Manage the production pipeline from assignment through delivery.
Maintain quality and consistency across all outputs.
7. Strategic Alignment
Translate the PI’s vision and the project’s research base into an editorial calendar.
Coordinate with research, program, and operations to keep the story aligned with the work.
Leverage the PI and Co-PI as inspirational voices, thought leaders, and content creators in their own right—build editorial infrastructure around their talks, essays, publications, and appearances as recurring content assets across every channel.
Leverage their networks and convening power to open doors, secure guests, and expand reach.
What Success Looks Like
Within 12 months
A production-quality Wisdom at Work Hub built and launched.
A coherent editorial voice across the Hub, podcast, blog, audio, and video.
Brand coherence visible across the full content ecosystem.
Measurable audience growth across channels.
A story-capture rhythm operating and feeding the content pipeline.
An established production cadence with a reliable freelance and vendor bench.
A signature story series live.
The PI and Co-PI positioned as recurring public voices.
An active public community forming around the ideas.
By Year 3
Practical wisdom in school and formative leadership is a recognizable, established public conversation.
A public community of educators, formative professionals, and public thinkers gathered around the work.
Content reaches wider audiences well beyond the Fellows program.
A deep story base informs research, program recruitment, and public discourse.
Role Focus
The core mandate is to translate the Practical Wisdom Project’s research, program, and brand into a coherent public story, a growing audience, and a wider public conversation in formative leadership—built on three integrated components:
Practice. Stories of school communities where leaders have leaned in and made a difference.
Formative Leadership Across Professions. The story of practical wisdom in those who lead and form others across sectors.
Distinctive Brand. A consistent editorial voice and visual identity that carries the work into professional, policy, and public discourse.
One-Line Synthesis
The role tells the story of practical wisdom—in school leadership and in formative leadership across professions—and leverages every channel to build the brand, community, and public conversation that carry the work well beyond the program.
What You Bring
Journalism and storytelling background at professional standard.
Multimedia content development experience across podcast, video, audio, written, and digital formats from development to launch.
Web platform judgment: you have led or overseen the design and build of a public-facing content platform with subscription or membership pathways.
Instinct for amplifying school leaders as public voices.
Instinct for building audience and community through content—you know how to grow readership, listenership, and public conversation around a set of ideas.
Editorial judgment: you can curate, codify, develop, write, edit, and hold thematic coherence across a wide production slate.
Comfort designing rhythms and light infrastructure for systematic story capture—surveys, participant videos, follow-up mechanisms—that feed the content pipeline over time.
Experience leading expert freelancers, agencies, and production partners.
Well-connected in the media, education, or formative-professions ecosystem.
Comfort in this space—you can hold your own with school leaders, scholars, and other formative professionals.
Agility—you can move from concept to launch and know when to switch modes.
Design-build sensibility: you think in systems and series, not one-offs.
Capacity to translate scholarly work into resonant public content without flattening it.
Strong judgment working within a senior leadership team.
Commitment to education, leadership, and human flourishing.
Compensation
Compensation is commensurate with experience. The role is scoped at 0.80 FTE (32 hours/week) to support the expanded remit of building the Hub, holding brand coherence across the content ecosystem, and driving multimedia editorial production.
How to Apply
Please submit a cover letter, CV, three references, and a short portfolio of relevant work—a story, series, podcast, campaign, or multimedia project you led from concept through launch to Karen Bohlin, Director of the Practical Wisdom Project: kbohlin@abigailadamsinstitute.org.
Community & Growth Lead
Wisdom at Work · Practical Wisdom Project · Abigail Adams Institute
0.80 FTE (32 hours/week) · Hybrid · Reports to the Principal Investigator (PI)
This is a senior stewardship, community, and growth role responsible for cultivating the people at the heart of the Practical Wisdom Project—Fellows, alumni, partners, and prospects—and for building the networked Community of Practice through which the work sustains itself and grows. The position leads the Fellow lifecycle end to end, advances institutional partnerships and earned-income development, supports grant writing and donor cultivation, and maintains the constituent systems and impact reporting that make relationship-based growth possible.
About the Project
The Practical Wisdom Project at the Abigail Adams Institute is a research-practice partnership advancing practical wisdom in those who lead and form others across sectors. Its flagship initiative, Wisdom at Work: Revitalizing School Leadership, engages school leadership teams through executive education, design-based research, and field-building through a networked Community of Practice. We are moving from a research base and a distinctive brand of leadership education with evidence-based tools and strong program interest into a phase of wider public engagement and expanded program offerings. We are also turning cohorts of Fellows into a dynamic Networked Community of Practice and building a sustained pipeline of partnerships, grants, and paid engagements.
The Role
The Community & Growth Lead is responsible for stewarding, sustaining, and expanding the Fellows experience into a Networked Community of Practice—and for driving the integrated marketing, partnership development, and business growth work that expands the project’s reach and sustainability.
This includes:
Leading the Fellow lifecycle: first touchpoint, recruitment, selection, onboarding, orientation, and communications across the Deep Learning and Wisdom Coaching phases of the executive education program, as well as ongoing alumni engagement.
Envisioning and co-building the Networked Community of Practice with current and veteran Fellows.
Cultivating institutional partnerships and advancing new opportunities, from pitches and proposals to contract completion.
Leading grant proposal writing and donor cultivation in close partnership with the CoPIs.
Establishing the systems that track reach and impact: testimonial capture rhythm, grant-aligned impact reporting matrix, strategic database maintenance, newsletter, and annual report.
Driving integrated marketing across the recruitment and stewardship arc.
This is a senior strategic execution role. It does not duplicate vision or research leadership; it stewards the relationships and builds the growth infrastructure that make the work durable. Editorial storytelling and public-facing content are held elsewhere on the team by the Strategic Communications Lead.
Operating Context
This is a build-stage initiative with a growing Fellows base, a strong initial grant, and clear ambition to convert its R&D phase into a sustainable Community of Practice with earned revenue and partnership revenue. The role builds the relational, marketing, and advancement infrastructure to get there—disciplined enough to run a systematic pipeline, warm enough that people at every stage feel engaged and stewarded.
Leadership Structure
Principal Investigator (PI): Vision, pedagogy, external leadership.
Co-PI: Research and design-based research model.
Strategic Communications Lead: Editorial voice, multimedia content, and public conversation.
Community & Growth Lead: Fellow lifecycle, Community of Practice, partnerships, and growth
execution.
The role works in close partnership with the PI and Co-PI and as a peer to the Strategic Communications Lead, with clear responsibility for stewardship, community-building, and growth execution across the constituent base.
Core Responsibilities
1.Fellow Lifecycle Stewardship
Lead the Fellow lifecycle end to end: first touchpoint, recruitment, selection, onboarding, and orientation.
Steward Fellows through Deep Learning Wisdom Labs, Wisdom Coaching modules, and cohort touchpoints.
Design retention and revitalization mechanisms that keep Fellows engaged beyond their cohort.
Move Fellows into alumni and alumni into active, networked contributors.
Facilitate RPP engagement—drawing Fellows into the research side where appropriate, in alignment with the Co-PI.
2. Community of Practice Development
Envision and co-build the Networked Community of Practice with veteran Fellows.
Design gatherings, rituals, digital spaces, and contributor roles that make the CoP durable.
Turn graduated Fellows into peer mentors, guest voices, and community stewards.
Coordinate with the Strategic Communications Lead so CoP activity feeds the wider public conversation without duplicating effort.
3.Partnership Development & Institutional Growth
Cultivate institutional partnerships, including school networks, teacher education programs, foundations, and faith-based education associations.
Lead pitches, proposals, and contract completion.
Lead the Facilitator Licensure Program (FLP) as a growth engine, including pricing tiers, contracts, revenue-share on facilitator-led external cohorts, and quality-control mechanisms that protect fidelity as the work scales.
Move prospects through a defined pipeline with clear stages, next actions, and follow-through.
Leverage the PI’s and Co-PI’s relationships and convening power to open doors, and provide the operational follow-through to convert them.
4. Grant Writing & Donor Cultivation
Lead grant proposal drafting and continuation funding, in close partnership with the PI.
Cultivate and steward donor relationships across a defined pipeline.
Build a diversified funding base beyond the initial grant.
Manage grant reporting rhythm in coordination with the AAI fiscal sponsor.
5. Impact Reporting & Testimonial Systems
Establish a regular rhythm for collecting testimonials from practitioners, including a natural follow-up process immediately after talks or presentations.
Define a simple, grant-aligned impact reporting matrix in sortable Google Sheets or Excel, with tabs for reach, impact, and constituent categories.
Coordinate with the Strategic Communications Lead so testimonials and external PD story capture are complementary, not duplicative.
6. Database Optimization & Constituent Systems
Optimize and maintain the constituent database.
Establish a recurring rhythm for updating the database by category of constituent, starting with development contacts.
Define the detail required for each contact type: Fellows, alumni, prospects, partners, donors, funders.
Build the constituent data structure that lets a small team run relationship-based growth without dropping people.
7. Integrated Marketing
Design and execute the integrated marketing arc for recruitment, orientation, and retention.
Segment audiences and communications across the Fellow lifecycle.
Maintain internal comms rhythms with active cohorts and alumni.
Coordinate with the Strategic Communications Lead so external content and internal Fellow communications reinforce each other.
8. Strategic Alignment
Translate the PI’s vision into growth priorities and relational milestones.
Coordinate with research, program, and communications to keep the constituent journey coherent.
Leverage the PI’s and Co-PI’s relationships and convening power to expand reach.
What Success Looks Like
Within 12 months
A defined and running Fellow lifecycle with clear stewardship touchpoints from first contact through alumni contribution.
A testimonial-capture rhythm operating, with talks and presentations reliably producing follow-up assets.
A grant-aligned impact reporting matrix live, sortable, and used regularly.
PWP database current and maintained on a recurring rhythm, starting with development contacts.
An active institutional partnership pipeline with early deals closed.
A clear vision and pilot for the Community of Practice, co-built with veteran Fellows.
A Networked Community of Practice operating with veteran Fellows as active contributors.
At least one new grant or bridge funding source secured or substantially advanced.
By Year 3
Institutional partnerships and paid cohorts contributing meaningfully to earned revenue.
Diversified funding base beyond the initial grant.
A mature constituent pipeline across Fellows, alumni, partners, funders, and prospects.
Retention and revitalization patterns visible in Fellow engagement data.
Role Focus
The core mandate is to convert the Fellows experience and the project’s growing reach into a durable community and a diversified growth engine, with three integrated components:
Stewardship. The Fellow lifecycle from first touchpoint through veteran contribution—the relational spine of the project.
Community. A Networked Community of Practice co-built with veteran Fellows that keeps the work alive between cohorts.
Growth. Institutional partnerships, business development, grants, and diversified funding that sustain and expand the model.
One-Line Synthesis
The role stewards the Fellows experience, co-builds the Networked Community of Practice, and drives the partnerships, grants, and business development that turn a grant-funded program into a sustainable, growing institution animated by an active Community of Practice.
What You Bring
Track record in stewardship, business development, or community-building—you know how to turn relationships into results without treating people as transactions.
Entrepreneurial judgment paired with stewardship discipline—comfortable moving prospects through a pipeline and closing, while sustaining long-term relationships.
Experience owning a full participant or customer lifecycle—recruitment through retention through advocacy.
Grant proposal writing and fundraising experience across foundations, family philanthropy, and individual donors.
Instinct for building and sustaining a Community of Practice, alumni network, or networked professional community.
Fluency with CRM or constituent database systems; comfort building and maintaining data structures that scale relationship-based work.
Familiarity with certification, licensure, or credentialing programs is a strong plus.
Capacity to design lightweight, durable systems for testimonial capture, impact tracking, and reporting.
Well-connected in education, formative-professions, or mission-driven partnership ecosystems.
Comfort translating a PI’s vision into growth execution and aligning the team behind it.
Strong judgment working within a senior leadership team.
Commitment to education, leadership, and human flourishing.
Compensation
Compensation is commensurate with experience. The role is scoped at 0.80 FTE (32 hours/week) for high-leverage execution within a focused remit.
How to Apply
Please submit a cover letter, CV, three references, and a short example of relevant work—a growth plan, partnership pitch, Community of Practice design, grant proposal, or fundraising strategy—to Dr. Karen Bohlin, Director of the Practical Wisdom Project: kbohlin@abigailadamsinstitute.org.