Advisor, Multi Stakeholder Initiatives, Land and Environmental Justice

Position Post Date: April 20, 2023

While progressive businesses have made commitments to respect community rights, a gap persists between commitments and practice. Communities lack the access to information and technical resources that businesses have. As a result, time and time again, communities across the Legal Empowerment Network find their voices and genuine consent continue to be missing in investment processes.

To level the playing field, Namati has worked intimately with hundreds of industry leaders and grassroots civil society organizations to design a grantmaking facility that would pool funds from investors, global businesses, and operating companies into an independently managed fund that can be accessed by communities to connect with local independent legal and technical support. The facility would enable communities to better understand and navigate the investment process and give investors greater assurance of the level of community engagement in their development.

This exciting new initiative will pilot in 2023, supporting communities responding to agribusinesses and agricultural commodities in West Africa and Indonesia. We will work with pilot partners, Legal Empowerment Network members, and other supporters to share learning from the pilot process and promote the uptake of robust business-community engagement to fundamentally and systematically change how corporations engage with communities.

Namati is hiring a Multi Stakeholder Advisor to launch and manage the pilot project. 

The Advisor's primary areas of responsibility include: 

• Building on the consultation and co-design work to date, lead the launch and execute a pilot fund that would ensure that impacted communities have access to resources for legal and technical support. This includes:
• Finalizing formal partners (such as financial institutions, operating companies, allied CSO networks) and financial commitments
• Setting up the governing board, secretariat, as well as the grantee sourcing and selection process for the pilot
• Serving as the primary liaison for all internal and external stakeholders and sharing updates and insights in a timely manner
• Providing strategic guidance on the execution of the pilot, with a particular emphasis on testing key design elements and making recommendations on how to refine the structure
• Developing a plan to scale up the pilot into a globally operating financing mechanism
• Collaborating with Legal Empowerment Network’s corporate accountability campaigns, when relevant, which may include:
• Inputting to  global policy asks and building evidence from network member experiences to justify these asks;
• Creating relationships, allies, and networks within key global policy spaces including corporate due diligence or climate change finance;
• Representing the pilot initiative and the lessons that emerge from it in industry platforms and advocacy spaces

Examples of what you might have tackled last week

• Facilitate a meeting between financial institutions about how they can collaborate to establish a joint fund and meet their institutional goals
• Stewarded a dialogue between private sector and civil society representatives to agree on pilot details 
• Led a discussion among multiple civil society organizations that make up the pilot secretariat to agree on grantmaking processes and responsibilities
• Led an energizing virtual conversation with community members, Indigenous rights advocates, and environmental justice defenders from across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa to validate that the process for receiving resources from the fund aligns with their needs and experience
• Revised a collaborative position paper that outlines the fundamental principles for corporate engagement with communities

About You

• Background in land rights and/or environmental justice: You have a strong understanding of the power holders, relationships, and opportunities related to land environmental governance in key countries and/or globally, and know how to influence them to build considered, creative, and practicable strategic plans.
• Collaborative across stakeholders: You understand the benefits of different stakeholders working together and can intuitively build trust with different stakeholders. You have a track record working with industry and civil society - and all the actors would report that you understand their interests.
• Mission-driven: Our vision for supporting communities impacted by investment to have a stronger voice to shape what they would like to see happen on their land deeply resonates with your own hopes for the world. You are driven, competent, and creative in your work because you know this cause needs driven, competent, and creative people.
• A creative, relentless problem-solver:  It’s in your nature to work tirelessly on a problem -- you don’t rest until you’ve identified a great solution. And although careful planning and execution define your work, when challenges arise you quickly reorient and identify the best new course of action. You’re well-regarded for your ability to make reasoned decisions, even in the face of limited or conflicting information. 
• Growth-oriented: You’re always seeking to better yourself and your work, and you will push yourself to the peak of performance to help fulfill our mission. In service of that growth, you welcome and delight in feedback from supervisors, peers, and anyone else.

Location 

This position is open to candidates in countries where Namati has staff presence in-country, including Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Kenya, Ghana, Spain, the Philippines, and the United States. We are also open to considering candidates in Mexico. Namati is in the process of setting up operations to be able to hire team members in Mexico so the final terms of employment are still to be determined. We may be able to consider especially strong candidates working in Europe. If you are based in Mexico or Europe and interested in this position, we still encourage you to apply. In all locations, Namati is unable to sponsor a work permit or visa so candidates must have the ability to legally work in any of the locations mentioned. 

The successful candidate will be expected to work non-standard hours to accommodate the various time zones of Namati staff, the Legal Empowerment Network, pilot partners. 

Compensation

We base our compensation on the markets where our staff operate. We work to communicate transparently with candidates (including talking about compensation very early in the process) and will finalize pay and responsibilities based on the qualifications, experience, and country location of the person joining. If you have salary requirements, please share them in your cover letter.  

We also offer competitive benefits: while the exact terms vary somewhat based on location, they always include health coverage, generous paid time off, retirement or old-age plan contributions, sick leave, and parental leave— or compensation for the same. All staff also have access to funds for professional development opportunities.

To Apply 

Please complete our online application form. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis. No phone calls, please. Namati is an Equal Opportunity Employer.