Senior Director of State Campaigns

Senior Director of State Campaigns
Full Time, Exempt
Location: Remote

Position Summary

The Senior Director of State Campaigns will lead Economic Security Project’s successful state program, campaigning across our issues including guaranteed income, tax credits, and monopoly power to build an economy that works for everyone.

The Senior Director will guide strategy around our robust slate of state cash campaigns: we play a central role in doubling the number of state Child Tax Credits and expanding Earned Income Tax Credits, leading to 18 states winning victories last year. Fourteen states have state cash coalitions advancing a guaranteed income, including several in the South, and we are also defending against attacks on guaranteed income in some states.

Our state-level program shaping markets to work for families, not wealthy interests, is more recent and includes, for example, supporting antitrust policy in New York,a public option for grocery stores in food deserts in Illinois, and shaping the future of artificial intelligence in California. The Senior Director will help make progress and learn lessons in initial market-shaping campaigns while exploring opportunities for further expansion in this space. Across issues, they will build a stronger program to partner with and support a mix of inside advocacy groups and outside grassroots groups and organizations rooted in communities of color.

A successful Senior Director of State Campaigns will:

• Win legislative and other policy victories and drive innovative policy, helping advance our issues and agenda and continuing our steady pace of wins since 2019.

• Build strong partnerships with state organizations, positioning ESP as a valuable strategic partner and technical assistance provider (communications, research, etc.).

• Help raise money for ESP’s state campaigns and to resource partner groups on the ground.

• Work with the state directors of ESP affiliates in California and Illinois to position the affiliates for success, helping build visibility, power, fundraising, and alliances.

• Be visible in the world of state campaigns, building ESP’s brand through strong relationships with partners, funders, media, and policymakers.

• Supervise the Director of State Cash Campaigns and work as a member of the Senior Team in partnership with other program teams and communications and development teams.

About Economic Security Project

We believe in an America where everyone has the freedom and stability required to thrive. We are strongest when people are the authors of their own lives. But the inequalities in wealth and power created by bad actors, structural racism, and outdated ideas on how the economy should work have left us all more insecure and less resilient. We can make a different set of choices.

The Economic Security Project advocates for ideas that build economic power for all Americans. We legitimize bold ideas by supporting cutting edge research and elevating champions, win concrete policy victories for the communities that need to see change now, and provoke the conventional wisdom to shift what’s considered possible. Our team of academics, organizers, practitioners and culture makers disburse grants, run issue campaigns, develop creative interventions and research products, and convene to encourage investment and action from others. We pick our fights based on our analysis of where strategic mobilization of people and resources could turn emerging trends into concrete policies. Our current efforts include putting cash into people’s pockets with a guaranteed income and policies like the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit; and keeping corporations out of them by checking the unprecedented concentration of economic power with antimonopoly action. We believe these fights will get us closer to a world where families can pay the heating bills and make the rent, where consumers have choices and small businesses, a fighting chance. A future where we all have a chance not to just survive, but thrive with dignity.

Our Track Record

We’ve convened thousands in briefings, workshops, and marquee events to strategize and set the agenda for a more just political economy. We passed policies in over seven states to modernize the tax code, won over $1 trillion in checks for families in response to the pandemic, and spearheaded the federal fight for a guaranteed income for kids in the form of the expanded Child Tax Credit. These cash-based policies reduced poverty in the middle of a recession, in the words of one observer, “defying gravity”. And we’ve built the field by investing over $25 million directly into groundbreaking research; pilots and task forces; coalitions and campaigns; new initiatives and organizations; and trend-setting narrative and cultural interventions to advance racial and economic justice and reset the conversation. As a result, ideas that were once considered impossible are now at the center of a vision for an economy where people are the authors of their own lives.

We’ve worked alongside thousands across the country exercising political muscle, moral imagination, and on- the-ground experimentation. It’ll take this and so much more in the years ahead; we are in a broader fight for a multiracial democracy and an economy that works for all. Our task is to deliver and we’re looking for talent to join us in the fight.

Our Team and Culture

Our successes are due in large part to the diverse team we’ve assembled from a wide range of fields – from campaigners to policymakers to activists to academics. We’re building an organization that supports and resources our staff to drive forward work that is critical to our mission. We are committed to creating a best-in-class staff experience that promotes growth and performance, which requires a culture of active problem-solving, feedback, communication, and accountability. As a fully remote organization, ESP staff can work from anywhere in the country. We actively support and encourage people taking time away from work, including two weeks of full office closures and a six-week sabbatical at 5 years of service, in addition to our standard PTO. You can find more information on our full benefits offerings below. Our internal work is deeply rooted in our values around diversity, equity, and inclusion, ensuring that our policies and processes are equitable and informed by a wide range of lived experiences. We invest in our people’s professional development and promote regular conversations about career goals and growth opportunities. We provide opportunities to come together in person for both strategic planning and relationship-building, and we’re always up to take a game of trivia a little too seriously.

Drive strategy and oversee the execution of state cash and market-shaping campaigns

• Cash campaigns: Set policy priorities so we continue pushing the envelope on tax credits (including benefits access, ensuring low-income people can claim the tax credits for which they’re eligible) and connecting tax credits to longer-term guaranteed income campaigns, particularly in blue and purple states. Create campaign plans connecting our work to the larger fight for tax equity and raising revenue. Work directly with state partners in top priority states or who are advancing innovative policy goals. Hold both big-picture strategy and detail-oriented execution.

• Market-shaping campaigns: Identify issue opportunities and strategies, help us run strong initial campaigns and learn lessons from those, and establish a stronger presence for ESP on this issue in states. Much of our work is opportunistic and shifts over time in response to the landscape around us, and that is particularly true for market-shaping. The Senior Director will help shape that evolution.

• Strengthen our network of state and national partners through 1:1 and group meetings and playing a key role in planning our annual conference to build the state movement. Build on our program of campaign support for partners: strategy, communications, grantmaking, research & policy, materials, and more.

Work with other parts of the organization

• Drive state partner engagement in federal campaigns in partnership with the federal campaigns team, particularly around the 2025 federal tax fight and efforts to win a permanent expansion of the CTC in Congress.

• Work with the Build the Field team, which owns long-term strategies on guaranteed income and market-shaping (and more of the work in red states). Collaborate with them, particularly on state guaranteed income campaigns and benefits access work, as well as on market-shaping ideas moving into the campaigns realm.

• Serve as a strategic partner for state directors of ESP affiliates in California and Illinois as they develop their campaigns and field-building activities. Potentially lead efforts to create more state affiliates if the opportunity arises, and we see a path to sustainable local funding.

• Work with the Communications team on national priorities like planning days of action, recruiting and building networks of storytellers, etc. Identify state-specific communications opportunities to amplify nationally.

• Contribute to a political plan to elevate our issues in an electoral context through our sister organization, Economic Security Project Action.

Fundraising, organizational development, and management

• Represent ESP’s work in states to funders, raising funds for state campaigns and building relationships with key funders of cash work and state campaigns.

• Supervise the Director of State Cash Campaigns, the frontline person providing strategic campaign support to state partners. This role may grow to manage other positions over time.

• Serve as a member of the Senior Team, coordinating across teams and building a strong organizational culture.

While the following experience is strongly preferred, we encourage submissions from all candidates who can demonstrate a fit with the role, even if they don’t match every qualification listed below.

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent knowledge in relevant fields

• 10-25 years of professional experience as an advocate, organizer, or state director, with demonstrated ability to organize allies, persuade targets, engage in media communications around an issue, and create momentum for an issue or campaign.

• Significant experience with state legislative issue campaigns, including some experience with direct lobbying, field organizing, communications, and coalition-building. Work inside state government is welcome, but some work in issue advocacy campaigns on the outside is strongly preferred.

• Experience designing campaign strategy and tactics and executing sophisticated campaign plans on a local, state, or multi-state scale.

• Ability to work across multiple issue domains, digging in deep on a promising opportunity in a key state while holding the broad vision of our agenda across states and issues.

• Strong fundraising experience and aptitude with foundations and/or major donors.

• You must be a strong and experienced manager, an expert recruiter, an effective project manager, a master follow-upper, a great listener, and pleasantly persistent.

• Proven experience integrating racial equity into communications, strategy, and outreach, and ability to build relationships with diverse stakeholders.

• Experience in and familiarity with the progressive movement, relationships with progressive policy advocacy, and relationships with legislative staff.

• Experience working on economic policy is preferred through advocacy, organizing, or politics, especially familiarity with the EITC, Child Tax Credit, guaranteed income, or tax policy.

• Strong writing skills for diverse audiences, including informed insiders and public audiences.

• Ability to work on deadline, adapt to changing situations, handle confidential information, and switch between projects and tasks on short notice.

• Available for intermittent travel to states, conferences, etc. (usually once every 1-2 months).