Next City seeks an experienced and dynamic Executive Director & Editor in Chief to lead the organization.

About Next City

Next City is a nonprofit organization with the mission to inspire social, economic and environmental change in cities through media and events. Founded in 2003 and based in Philadelphia, Next City is renowned for its smart reporting on urban affairs and impactful events.

Its website, NextCity.org, reaches hundreds of thousands of readers each month who look to Next City for new ideas in economic development, infrastructure, civic technology,  policy and culture. Next City events, including the signature annual conference, Vanguard, help to network this audience of urban planners, government officials, and others who are professionally dedicated to advancing the cities where they live.

Next City is supported by its readers, corporate sponsors and many of the country’s largest foundations, including the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and Surdna Foundation, among others.

Job Description

Next City seeks an Executive Director & Editor in Chief at an exciting time: the organization has a rapidly growing online presence and audience, as well as strong philanthropic support. At this juncture, Next City seeks a hands-on executive who will lead its next phase of growth by overseeing the organization’s editorial strategy and programs, developing the organization’s business plan and providing thought-leadership. The right candidate will be comfortable talking about urban policy trends at public events and on television, expressing Next City’s vision to funders and readers, and leading staff to achieve their best.

The Executive Director & Editor in Chief will accomplish the following:

Editorial Leadership & Programming

–       Set editorial strategy and ensure high standards of editorial content

–       Develop ideas for innovative programming for high-impact events

–       Serve as the face of the organization in media, at events and with donors

–       Leverage and build upon the success of the Vanguard Conference, an annual 40 under 40 urban leadership conference

Fundraising / Business Development

–       Develop an overall strategy to build sustainable revenue opportunities

–       Maintain and grow Next City’s foundation and corporate support

–       Build relationships to develop major corporate sponsorships for events and sponsored content

–       Develop an individual donor base for Next City, from subscribers to major donors

–       Plan and execute an annual fundraiser

Budget / Administration

–       Develop annual budget for board approval and submit quarterly financial reports

–       Hire, lead and manage all editorial and administrative staff

–       Work with COO and bookkeeper to oversee accounts receivable and payable and the annual audit process

Board

–       Serve as primary organizational liaison to board of directors

–       Increase the size, diversity, engagement and impact of Next City’s board

–       Meet with board quarterly and report Next City business

–       Establish board committees

Qualifications

–       At least 5 years of experience in senior management roles

–       Experience in and understanding of online media

–       Excellent public speaking and written communications skills

–       Passion for social, economic and environmental concerns

–       Demonstrated fundraising and/ or business development ability

–       Self-driven personality, start-up mentality, relationship-oriented work ethic

–       Experience in at least one of the following: media, urban policy, nonprofit development. (Those with experience in all three areas will be preferred.)

–       Ability to travel domestically and internationally 20% of time

–       Occasional nights and weekend work

To Apply

Applications will be reviewed immediately. Please submit a resume, a cover letter with salary requirements and three references to jobs@nextcity.org. In addition, please send a link to a video demonstrating your public speaking ability and a link to a published writing sample, if available. No phone inquiries please. Click here to Apply.

Here is a quick summary of  the what, why, who and when:

During April 24th-26th, I was in Chattanooga, Tennessee attending the 5th Annual Vanguard Conference, an experiential urban leadership gathering of 40 of the best and brightest urban leaders under 40, hosted by the national non-profit media organization Next City.  Mind you, I’m probably the least accomplished of this excellent group of 40 promising leaders, all of them working to improve cities across sectors, including urban planning, community development, entrepreneurship, government, transportation, sustainability, design, art and media. We convened in Chattanooga for a three-day series of presentations, workshops and neighborhood tours. The Vanguard conference will culminate in the Chattanooga Challenge, an ideas competition sponsored by the Footprint Foundation and designed to jump-start civic local innovation through a $10,000 grant for the winning proposal.

Here are a handful of observations from this conference:

• In a nutshell, it was a life altering experience. I got to learn so many issues associated with urban development, such as housing and economic issues, while further understanding the linkages and the crucial role of transportation systems in building a better urban environment.

Image Courtesy: metrojacksonville,com

• Met some of the best and brightest in the country and was in awe from the time I arrived till I left the city (even now I’m in awe of how much knowledge was exchanged and free flowing in that setting).

Image Courtesy: metrojacksonville.com

• When you adopt an unconference format, discussions flow freely and people are at ease to share their ideas. Moral of the story: do not host events featuring powerpoint presentations.  The conversations were engaging, stimulating and at times downright wild (particularly those conversations over the beers and coffees were excellent).

Image Courtesy: Metrojacksonville.com

Image Courtesy: metrojacksonville.com. A lot of beverages consumed and tons of knowledge exchanged.

image courtesy: metrojacksonville.com. Did I tell you it was wild and fun?

Image courtesy: metrojacksonville.com. Opening night party on the premises of the Aquarium building.

• People in the government at local levels work together and even when they work together to solve problems they are constrained by institutional biases and money shortfall.  The city owns a strategic piece of digital infrastructure – Chattanooga offers the fastest Internet connections in America through the city-owned fiber-optic network.
• City of Chattanooga is a great place and certain parts of it, like in most urban areas, has bad things going on.   As part of the Vanguard Conference’s Chattanooga Challenge, we were all divided into four groups and sent to explore different corners of the the city (East, West, North and South) by foot, bikes and transit.  I was part of the walking tour (Team West) that hit the West side and got to see up close the economic disparities that exist on either side of a major elevated highway (U.S. 27) that literally bifurcates the communities more details on the West Side tour in a different bullet below).

Image Courtesy: metrojacksonville.com. Team West, posing for a picture, moment before announced as Winners of the $10k Chattanooga Challenge.

• City of Chattanooga has a great bikeshare system, fantastic aquarium and an excellent set of touristy things like the historic Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel (pictured below), great restaurants and watering holes across the town.

Image Courtesy: Metrojacksonville.com. Click image to see an entire set of image from a fellow Vanguard, Ennis Davis at Metro Jacksonville

• The city’s low-income residents, particularly those in the West side neighborhoods such as College Hill courts, are somewhat caught in a bad situation. These communities, slated for redevelopment within a decade or so, live quite close to the economic heart of the city. But they do not have a meaningful direct access where they can walk to their jobs and they are cut off by a major thorough fare. This has resulted in poverty and the usual accompaniments of crime and lack of education.  I was part of the Team West in the Chattanooga Challenge that visited these communities and pitched a strong proposal to connect the divided communities.  Our team, bolstered by three strong local young leaders, gained very illuminating insights that helped  us understand the situation at hand.  We suggested that the City of Chattanooga offer free Wi-Fi service to a public housing community on the city’s west side and develop a new pathway to connect the city’s downtown to the highway-marooned neighborhood.  I’m borrowing the narrative from Next City to explain how this is laid out: Right now, area residents, (shown in image below total population of 2481 with a median income of $9277) many of whom are children and downtown workers commuting from public housing developments to school or jobs in other parts of the city, must trek by foot on a dirt path and across highway ramps to reach the city’s center. Where the path enters their neighborhood, residents must pass through a hole in a chain-link fence.  Our teammate Marlon Brown, a city councilman from Mason, Michigan put it succinctly “the neighborhood is physically divided from the downtown at the same time as it is digitally divided from opportunities there. You have to remember, a city is only as strong as its least connected neighborhood. ” These next two images below came from our teammate John Bilderback, who quickly generated them to show how this community  is strategically located and yet remains far removed from better opportunities. What’s better – our winning idea will get a $10,000 boost from the local Footprint Foundation and the City will get to implement the proposal. And the local newspaper did an excellent article covering our winning proposal.  Yay!

• 

  Image Courtesy: John Builderback. Picture1 – Westside – Where the Resources are.

•  Last but not least I got to ride a bicycle after almost 15 years.  I am a regular transit user living in Washington, DC metropolitan area, where we are blessed with better transportation alternatives and a fantatistic world-class bikesharing system.  But I never had a reason to ride a bike because of my living and commuting options. Thanks to Chatanooga and my fellow Vanguards, I got to commandeer a bicycle one afternoon. It was a lot of fun and I reached my destination without embarrassing myself and an exciting story to tell (yeah, our group got yelled at by an older gentleman in a pickup for occupying a full lane on a main thoroughfare).  Sadly, despite the presence of a bikeshare system in the city, the number of bicyclists on the city streets were relatively low.

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  Image courtesy: http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/. Click image to see an entire set of image from a fellow Vanguard, Ennis Davis at Metro Jacksonville

Image Courtesy: Metrojacksonville.com

• Announcing the 2014 Vanguard Class
• Next City’s 40 Under 40 Vanguard Conference: Applications due February 14
• Next City’s Vanguard Conference Heads to Chattanooga in 2014
• Vanguard Update: Our Largest Pool of Applicants Ever
• Foot soldiers for change: 40 young leaders from across the country to gather in Chattanooga