Lead Program Manager, Global Advocacy at Wikimedia Foundation

Summary

Wikimedia envisions a world where the sum total of human knowledge is available to everyone.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit home of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and other free educational projects, serves as the hub of a global movement of hundreds of thousands of contributors collaborating to collect and share the sum of all human knowledge with the world. Wikimedia's fast-growing Global Advocacy team advocates globally for policies and technologies that enable our movement and its projects to thrive.

You are responsible for:

We seek a Lead Program Manager to serve as the "chief operating officer" for the Global Advocacy team. Reporting to the VP for Global Advocacy within the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal Department, our ideal candidate is a seasoned professional with experience running programs or organizations at the intersection of technology, human rights, and open knowledge. You will help us manage rapid team expansion, drive strategic planning, track and evaluate impact, support the VP in managing our budget and resources, and help the team set appropriately ambitious yet realistic goals. You will help us improve systems and processes to manage our work with other teams and departments, improve our coordination of advocacy campaigns with affiliates and volunteers across our global community, and refine our approaches to collaborating effectively with external partners.

• Design and facilitate the team's long-term strategic planning as well as routine processes for setting, meeting, and reporting on our objectives and measuring impact in the world
• Help the team balance our need to react flexibly and nimbly to opportunities, events, and crises in the world, with the need to complete long-term projects and meet internal needs for policy counseling and support
• Facilitate a shared understanding of objectives and key results across diverse sets of stakeholders, managing processes, identifying and clearing bottlenecks and integrating timely opportunities
• Streamline, organize, and support reporting and communication flow for the VP within the team, across the Legal Department, with other departments, and in some circumstances with volunteers and affiliates
• Streamline, organize, and support the Global Advocacy team in briefing leaders across the Legal Department, the executive team and all staff on how the entire organization can advance our global advocacy objectives in service of a thriving global movement
• Work with department leaders to provide program planning and facilitation, identify and optimize recurring workflows, and coordinate cross-departmental efforts led by the Global Advocacy team
• Coordinate strategic projects as needed, which may include supporting high-speed, short-term, multi-stakeholder micro projects as we respond to global challenges, events, crises, and opportunities
• Identify the resources required to meet our objectives and support the VP in obtaining C-level support
• Support budget planning and monitoring
• Take on projects as new opportunities arise

Skills and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree and 8+ years of experience in program management or a Master's degree with 6+ years related experience, or equivalent work experience
• Prior experience working in or with an organization, program, or department focused on public policy and/or advocacy
• Excellent organizational skills to manage programs, projects, process, calendars, and planning activities
• The ability to drive and organize projects independently with limited feedback on a daily basis
• Strong verbal, written, and social communication skills with attention to international diversity
• Tolerance for ambiguity and facility with managing complex problems
• The ability to excel in a fast-paced, changing environment that often requires fast turn‐around
• The ability to thrive in a globally-distributed team and nurture and maintain positive, respectful professional relationships
• Natural inclination for team collaboration and for helping colleagues succeed
• Flexible mindset and ability to adjust processes to scale or to change course
• Internal motivation and high standards
• Commitment to the organization's mission, values, and guiding principles.
• Experience with project management tools (e.g., Asana, Trello, or other systems)

Additionally, we'd love it if you have:

• Prior experience as a department- or organization-wide program manager, and/or chief of staff
• Experience working with online communities
• Experience working in an global organization that has a distributed workforce and spans multiple timezones
• PMP or MSP certification
• Non-profit experience
• Tech sector experience