Vice President, States Initiatives

Location: Washington, DC preferred, but open to remote candidates, especially if the remote location may be strategic for engagement with various partners and donors

Reports to: Chief Executive Officer

Status: Full-time

Compensation: Offers expected to fall between $212,000 - $280,000, depending on experience and other factors, plus competitive benefits 

About the Recoding America Fund

The Recoding America Fund (RAF) is a new, bipartisan hybrid 501(c)(3)/501(c)(4) initiative to strengthen America by building the federal and state governments we need to compete globally and serve citizens effectively. RAF aims to restore the core capabilities of government and move to a new operating model—the right people, doing the right work, with purpose-fit systems and test-and-learn frameworks—so it can reliably deliver on its goals. The Fund seeks to help accelerate the growth and development of an ideologically diverse field of state capacity organizations, connect them to each other, fill in the gaps, and help them set ambitious common goals to drive transformational change across all levels of government in this time of unprecedented disruption. Change is coming to public institutions, and now is the time to shape that change in the public interest. That ambitious task cannot be the work of just one party or faction.

The Opportunity: Field Catalyst for State-Level Reform

Many opportunities for structural reform exist in state governments across the nation. But the state capacity field is particularly nascent at the state level. We’re looking for a Vice President, States Initiatives to lead our entire portfolio focused on ambitious reform of state governments, together with a growing field of partners. (Note: the current leader of our work with states, Robert Gordon, will be transitioning to a Senior Advisor role to go deeper on specific state capacity issues that will benefit from more focused attention.) Success in this role requires a field-building orientation: spurring durable reform at scale means building the capacity to drive structural change beyond any single state.

This role owns both the strategy and the operations of RAF's state-level work. The right person brings a clear point of view on where the highest-leverage reform opportunities are, designs scalable mechanisms for surfacing the right state partners, and approaches every engagement with a deliberate focus on co-creation with ecosystem organizations and investment in the connective tissue (shared knowledge, shared language, peer networks, shared identity) that turns a loose collection of actors into a coherent field. That field must be strong enough to outlast our organization. We are a six-year initiative, and at the end of it we want an ecosystem of organizations and practitioners strong enough to carry this work forward without us. This role is central to making that happen.

Although this role is focused on states, thinking ‘federally’ is critical to it. We engage at both federal and state levels, with the work at each level informing the other, a dynamic Jen Pahlka calls "federalism as a flywheel." Federal rules can block or enable what is possible in states; state proof points can be scaled nationally through federal action; and the federal government can connect state reformers to each other. The Head of States Initiatives works in close partnership with RAF's Federal Policy Director to ensure that feedback loop. 

Key Responsibilities

1. Scalable State Strategy and Portfolio Building

Developing and executing a state strategy that is scalable, field-oriented, and grounded in clear criteria for where, when, and how to invest.  

• Develop and bring disciplined execution to a state strategy focused on strengthening the nascent field to enable state governments to get the right people in the right roles, focused on the right work (not box-checking compliance), supported by purpose-fit digital infrastructure, and incentivized toward outcomes.
• Build a portfolio of state-focused bets that prioritizes our investment (broadly construed: time, relational capital, political capital, and dollars) towards the highest potential opportunities and that balances the politics (with red, purple, and blue state engagement). Regularly reassess the portfolio to ensure we pivot, deepen, or exit when it becomes clear a bet isn’t paying off. 
• Envision and design with ecosystem partners creative, scalable mechanisms for surfacing, assessing, and pursuing high-potential state-focused bets. For example, tapping the convening power of organizations and associations that have broad reach to state leaders, using open calls to focus attention on neglected issues and incentivize new kinds of work, and leveraging AI-enabled intelligence to maintain a dynamically-updating view of potential windows of opportunity across all 50 states. 
• Experiment (including with and through ecosystem partners) with a variety of approaches to support reform in states, rapidly learning from those experiences and feeding that learning back into the work.  
• Develop structured approaches to rapidly pressure-testing and responding to high-potential inbound interest from a state (whether from a CIO, a new governor, or a cabinet official overseeing a policy domain). Activate the ecosystem: identify which partners have relevant expertise, relationships, or existing presence in that state, and co-create an approach for engaging.

2. Field Building and Ecosystem Development

Ensure that field-building is a throughline in our states work: strengthening connective tissue and infrastructure across the field, and supporting partners in pursuing aligned opportunities.

• Cultivate and co-create partnerships with organizations across the ecosystem that are aligned to our strategy, including our focus on upstream, structural reform. Use strategic grantmaking as one tool among others to support these partnerships. 
• Create forums and infrastructure through which ecosystem organizations across the ideological spectrum can engage with one another in new ways, generate new ideas for tackling problems, and develop ambitious shared priorities. 
• Identify capabilities, tools, and knowledge resources that don’t exist but are needed as  public goods in the field and figure out how to make them exist. 

3. Advocacy

Creating the political conditions for reform to succeed, through narrative, policymaker education, political coalition-building, and where needed, lobbying through our 501(c)(4) entity, Recoding America Action.

• Expand the ecosystem's overall advocacy muscle and infrastructure to support ambitious government reform in states: identifying organizations to fund, finding ways to better leverage existing government affairs capacity across the field, and deploying Recoding America Action's 501(c)(4) resources for time-sensitive opportunities.
• Invest in demand-building for reform to ensure that state leaders see signals of political viability of reform. Work with ecosystem partners to build those signals: shaping narrative about what's possible, educating policymakers and their staff, connecting reform-minded officials with proof points from other states, and assembling the cross-ideological coalitions that give reform durability beyond a single champion or political cycle.
• Assess the political conditions that create or close space for reform in states, and engage the right partners, political strategists, and lobbyists (through Recoding America Action) to understand and navigate them.

4. Learning

Capturing what we learn, codifying it, and making it useful to the field.

• Synthesize lessons from across the states team's work and share them within the organization and, wherever possible, with the field.
• Identify and invest in the "knowledge public goods" and learning infrastructure the field needs most.
• Partner with RAF's Chief Digital and AI Officer to identify how AI and technology can strengthen the field's knowledge infrastructure, from tools that synthesize practitioner knowledge across the ecosystem to platforms that surface patterns across grantee and partner work.
• Collaborate closely with RAF's Federal Policy Director to carry lessons from state engagements to federal conversations and back.

5. Team and Organizational Leadership

Contributing to building RAF as a high-performing, field-oriented organization.

• Serve as a member of RAF's leadership team, contributing to organizational strategy, culture, and cross-functional collaboration. Bring the perspective of the states work to bear on organization-wide decisions, and bring organization-wide thinking to the states work.
• Build and manage a high-performing, geographically distributed states team. Set clear expectations and maintain clear roles, invest in professional development, and give ongoing feedback and coaching. 
• Contribute to field resource mobilization, including owning donor relationships where the states work is the primary draw. Develop a strategy for identifying and cultivating place-based donors whose geographic priorities align with high-potential states. Represent our states work to existing and prospective donors. Build connections between funders and ecosystem partners.

Who You Are and What You Bring

• You bring substantial experience in government reform, public sector innovation, or related fields, likely spanning 10-20 years, though we care more about what you've done and how you’ve done it, than how long you've been doing it. You have worked in or closely with state government and understand its rhythms, constraints, and politics from the inside. 
• You’re sick of the status quo and eager for transformational change. You know that the reforms to government's operating model that we're pursuing require structural change that is hard to catalyze, and you're excited about that challenge
• You're a field builder. You know how to create the conditions for an ecosystem to deliver wins at scale. You’ve invested in infrastructure and shared resources that made other organizations more effective, and you find the work of enabling others energizing.
• You think in terms of scale and sustainability. When you design a program, partnership, or initiative, your instinct is to ask: How does this scale? How does this outlast RAF? How are we building the field's capacity? 
• You build trust-based relationships and are a natural connector and convener, including across ideological divides. You have enabled people and groups to work productively together toward shared goals.
• You're comfortable representing your work to funders and are energized by building the philanthropic case for state capacity investment. You can tell a compelling story about why this work matters and where resources would have the most impact.
• You're a self-directed strategic leader who clearly articulates theories of change, identifies assumptions, and updates your thinking as you learn. You manage upward effectively, bringing others along as your thinking and plans evolve.  
• You’re a strong manager and team builder. You have experience building and leading high-performing teams. 
• You’re AI-forward. You’re actively experimenting with AI in your own day-to-day and strategic work.
• You thrive in a startup environment. We are early-stage and building fast. Scopes of roles evolve, priorities shift, and the org chart will look different in a year. You’re a low-ego builder who rolls up your sleeves and invests in building the organization as a whole.

We encourage anyone interested in this role to apply, regardless of whether you meet 100% of the qualifications listed. The strongest candidates will bring their own unique perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds from a variety of sectors and vantage points. We especially encourage candidates who would bring ideological diversity to the team and ecosystem to apply.

What We Offer

• Automatic 3% employer contribution to a 401k, fully vested immediately
• Flexible Time Off
• Time off for federal holidays plus an end-of-year office closure from Dec 24 through Jan 1st
• 100% contribution to employee premiums for medical, dental, and vision. 50% contribution to premiums for dependents
• Access to pre-tax accounts if you choose, including Healthcare FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and Commuter Benefits

Next Steps and Start Date

We're building and need you fast. We’ll review applications and interview candidates on a rolling basis, so we encourage interested candidates to submit as soon as possible. We anticipate that the most intensive portion of our candidate assessment process will take place June 15 through July 2. We are targeting an August start date. We will leave this recruitment open until we find the right person. 

Reasonable Accommodations

We are committed to fostering an inclusive and accessible work environment. If you require any accommodations during the application or interview process, or to perform the essential functions of the role, please email us at [email protected] with the email subject "Accommodation Needed." We will work with you to ensure reasonable accommodations are made to support your needs.

Equal Opportunity

Recoding America Fund is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants are considered for employment without regard to the person's race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.