Director of Impact

NIA TERO

Nia Tero is a global bridging organization that brings Indigenous Peoples and allies together to advance what we call Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship. Our partnerships with Indigenous Peoples’ are explicitly structured to honor self-determination, respect time-honed knowledge and ways of being and build trust while upholding the sacred value of reciprocity. To achieve this, we work in solidarity with Indigenous peoples to safeguard their ancestral thriving territories and ways of being, collaborating on essential global efforts towards a vibrant and habitable future Earth.

• Our vision is that Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship is enabled everywhere possible on Earth as part of a just and vibrant future.
• Our mission is to directly support Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship and elevate the role and influence of Indigenous Peoples as essential to ensuring planetary health and habitability.

Our team is international and based across South America, the Pacific Islands, Asia, and North America, with a large contingent at our Seattle headquarters. We speak many languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and a wide range of Indigenous Peoples’ languages.

Nia Tero is in year two of our five-year strategy and is seeking candidates who thrive in a fast-paced environment, adapt quickly to change, and seek to strengthen the impact of a mission-driven organization.

SUMMARY

The Director of Impact will lead Nia Tero’s efforts to measure and describe its impact. Reporting initially to the CEO, the Director of Impact leads Nia Tero’s organization-wide approach to learning, impact evaluation, information management, and progress reporting. Internal to Nia Tero, this role serves as a key cross-functional leader who supports, facilitates, and drives alignment and coordination on the evaluation of organizational strategy, and the impact of our programs, partnerships, and field-building efforts. While the focus of this position is internal to Nia Tero, this role may have the opportunity and platform to provide leadership more broadly into the fields that intersect around Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship.

The Director of Impact is responsible for identifying information and data management needs, strengthening organizational learning systems, and ensuring that Nia Tero has the tools, processes, and insights needed to understand progress toward strategic goals and adapt with care, rigor, and humility. To accomplish this, the Director of Impact will work across teams to measure, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate the impact of Nia Tero’s partnerships with Indigenous Peoples in territories and the organization’s actions to influence and strengthen the broader field. The successful candidate will bring strong experience in strategy implementation, evaluation, information management, data visualization, learning systems, facilitation, and values-aligned communication. In all areas of work, this role will be rooted in our organizational strategy and values of reciprocity, centering mutual exchange, accountability, and respect for Indigenous knowledge systems, sovereignty, and community-defined measures of success.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Bring together operations, evaluation, programs, partnerships, communications finance, development and leadership staff to lead the development, implementation, and continuous refinement of Nia Tero’s impact evaluation and learning approach in alignment with the organization’s five-year strategy, values, and annual plans.
• Design and facilitate strategy reviews, learning processes, and decision-making rhythms that integrate progress tracking, dashboards, partner insights, risks, tradeoffs, and emerging opportunities.
• Partner with senior leadership and cross-functional colleagues to define shared learning priorities, outcomes, indicators, information needs, and evaluation practices that strengthen accountability and adaptation.
• Coordinate and support organization-wide tracking and evaluation of strategy implementation, program progress, resource deployment, partnerships with Indigenous Peoples, and field-strengthening efforts, developing clear recommendations for leadership.
• Guide ethical, secure, culturally respectful, and appropriately scoped data collection, analysis, synthesis, reporting, and information management practices, with attention to confidentiality, consent, and data sovereignty.
• Develop, coordinate, and maintain accessible dashboards, visualizations, mapping tools, impact narratives, reports, briefings, learning products, and executive summaries in collaboration with cross-functional colleagues for internal and external audiences.
• Collaborate across teams to ensure reports, proposals, public materials, systems, and workflows accurately and respectfully convey Nia Tero’s impact.
• Build organizational capacity for impact learning through facilitation, coaching, templates, shared routines, cross-team coordination, and a culture of inquiry, humility, reflection, and responsible use of information.
• Serve as an individual leader and collaborative thought partner to leadership, staff, consultants, evaluators, funders, partners, and peer organizations on impact, learning, adaptive strategy, continuous improvement, and organizational effectiveness.

PEOPLE AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBILITIES

This position will lead and mentor a cross functional team of staff and consultants supporting impact evaluation and related functions, fostering a culture of collaboration and creativity and will be responsible for optimizing the productivity and effectiveness of the team.

• Leads by example using a hands-on approach to management and an open-door policy. 
• Directs, counsels and coaches team members, meeting regularly to discuss objectives, observations, progress, and results. 
• Monitors work performance to ensure productivity, and the needs of the organization are met. 

In close consultation with senior leadership and financial staff, this position has budget accountability in areas of key responsibilities. This role is expected to guide resource decisions and ensure efficient use of funding and staff time.

QUALIFICATIONS

Education and Experience Requirements*

• 7+years of relevant experience in organizational strategy, impact evaluation, evaluation and learning, information management, organizational development, research, and/or related fields.
• Experience working with Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous-led organizations, community-based organizations, environmental justice, human rights, conservation, philanthropy, or global nonprofit contexts.
• Deep knowledge of strategy development, strategy implementation, performance management, and evaluation systems that support organizational learning and adaptation.
• Demonstrated experience designing and facilitating strategy reviews, learning processes, dashboards, progress tracking systems, or impact reporting for complex, mission-driven organizations.
• Experience defining data management needs and supporting information management systems that enable accurate reporting, analysis, visualization, and decision-making.
• Demonstrated understanding of ethical data practices, community accountability, consent, confidentiality, data sovereignty, and culturally respectful approaches to knowledge stewardship.
• Experience facilitating cross-functional collaboration, synthesizing complex information, and influencing leaders across diverse cultures, identities, functions, and geographies.
• Bachelor’s degree preferred, or equivalent combination of education, training, lived experience, and professional experience.

*A combination of education, training, lived experience, and professional experience which has provided theoretical and practical knowledge will be evaluated for equivalency.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Strong strategic thinking skills with the ability to connect strategy implementation, evaluation, storytelling, information management, and decision-making.
• Excellent facilitation, collaboration, and relationship-building skills across cultures, disciplines, geographies, identities, and organizational levels.
• Exceptional presentation, written, and verbal communication skills in English, with the ability to write clearly for executive, Board, funder, partner, and public audiences.
• Ability to bring independent, thoughtful analysis to complex organizational dynamics, program strategies, data, and learning questions.
• Ability to hold complexity and nuance while producing practical tools, recommendations, dashboards, summaries, and deliverables.
• Strong organizational, time management, and project management skills, including the ability to manage multiple workstreams, timelines, collaborators, and competing priorities in a fast-paced, global work environment.
• Demonstrated ability to use qualitative and quantitative information responsibly and communicate findings in accessible, actionable ways.
• High level of discretion, humility, cultural sensitivity, self-awareness, and sound judgment when handling sensitive information.
• Fluency with Microsoft Office, including PowerPoint and Excel, and familiarity with project management platforms, data visualization tools, mapping tools, databases, survey tools, or knowledge management systems.

Ideal:

• Deep ties to and understanding of Indigenous cultures, governance, knowledge systems, Indigenous Ways and Means, reciprocity, and community-defined approaches to success.
• Experience with Indigenous data sovereignty principles, community-led evaluation practices, Indigenous evaluation methodologies, or biocultural monitoring.
• Experience working in global settings across multiple regions, languages, time zones, cultural realities, and organizational contexts.
• Conversational proficiency in Spanish and/or Portuguese; proficiency in additional languages is also valued.
• Experience developing impact narratives, strategy dashboards, analytical reports, learning briefs, mapping products, or Board-level reporting materials.

WORKING CONDITIONS AND TRAVEL

This full-time position is based in Seattle, WA, or Honolulu, HI with flexibility for hybrid work consistent with organizational policy. Evening and weekend hours may be required to support global collaboration across time zones. Domestic and international travel is a requirement of this role.

Physical Requirements:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job:

• Visually or otherwise identify, observe, and assess distance, color, and depth; required to regularly communicate with others and exchange accurate information.
• Able to operate a computer and other office productivity equipment; able to remain stationary at a computer for extended periods of time and move around their assigned workspace.
• Able to travel to remote environments, using multiple modes of transportation, with limited accommodations; willing to follow international medical and vaccination requirements for the localities to be visited; and, capable of lifting 50-75 lbs. of gear.

HOW TO APPLY:

If interested in this role, please email a cover letter and resume to jobs@niatero.org and include “Director of Impact” in the subject line. Nia Tero is an Indigenous Peoples serving global organization that strives to have an inclusive, equitable, and diverse work culture. We encourage people from historically excluded groups to apply.

The salary for this position is USD $136,000-$185,000 based on experience. Our compensation program is U.S. based and pay ranges are representative of compensation in the U.S. market. For positions outside of the U.S., pay rates are determined based on the applicable local regional market.

This is a full-time permanent position and qualifies for healthcare benefits (medical, dental and vision), 401K and paid time off, including vacation leave, sick leave, and personal days.