Seafood Traceability Collaboration Project Coordinator
DESCRIPTION
This role will serve as the core project coordinator of a multi-NGO Seafood Traceability Collaboration. The NGOs involved in the Seafood Traceability Collaboration are FishWise (FW), Future of Fish (FoF), Institute of Food Technologists’ (IFT) Global Food Traceability Center (GFTC) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
This collaboration is a novel and innovative way of combining efforts of our four NGOs to work across the entire ecosystems of stakeholders necessary to build widespread adoption of traceability in the global seafood sector. Our work engages representatives from every supply chain node, vendors building the technology solutions, government agencies, and the nonprofit entities promoting traceability for the sake of conservation. Our work digs into both the system conditions that enable or derail traceability, as well as into the thinking and plans of those individual companies looking to adopt traceability solutions and make traceability commitments.
This role will involve managing the coordination across our four NGOs where activities are owned by individual NGOs but close collaboration is needed to collectively execute the overall grant. The project coordinator will be expected to help keep the collaboration organized, on track, and communications flowing to help facilitate successful collaboration between the NGOs.
The project coordinator will be housed at Future of Fish but will work to serve the Collaboration as a whole and will have his/her performance evaluated by the Collaboration Steering Committee.
Future of Fish is a virtual team with staff working remotely from locations throughout the US. The Collaboration is located across several time zones – specifically the Pacific and Eastern time zones and so the coordinator will be expected to be flexible in their schedule.
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
As the project coordinator, your responsibilities are to:
• Organize monthly Collaboration calls and additional Collaboration calls as needed
• Schedule and organize the Collaboration’s in-person quarterly meetings and relatedlogistics
• Attend and take minutes at all Collaboration in-person meetings and calls
• Travel to all quarterly in-person Collaboration meetings, in-person meetings with eachNGO, and to conferences where the Collaboration as a whole is presenting on its work
• Work with the Collaboration NGOs and/or facilitator(s) to develop call and meetingagendas
• Track progress on Collaboration projects and deliver regular updates to group
• Identify overlaps and risks in Collaboration project work and ensure the Collaboration is coordinating on those overlaps
• Manage grant reporting process and deliverables
• Utilize Collaboration management tools (e.g. Trello) to keep information and resources up to date and organized
• Oversee budget for meeting spaces, catering, facilitator, etc.
• Organize, assign, and follow-up on all next steps resulting from calls/meetings
• As assigned, manage coordination and production of joint Collaboration products, such as joint communications to the Collaboration Advisory Committee, joint announcements, etc.
• Identify challenges as they arise and help the Collaboration co-create solutions
QUALIFICATIONS
• Bachelor’s Degree or higher
• 2+ years working in fisheries, marine conservation, the seafood industry, or other related field
• 3+ years of related project coordination
• Strong MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint user
• Excellent interpersonal, communications, and writing skills
• Able to work and excel on a diversity of tasks. (e.g., writing, coordinating logistics, developing spreadsheets, setting agendas, etc.)
• High level of professionalism, collaborative spirit, and maintains a positive attitude
• Self-starter and ability to learn and expand knowledge on their own
• Highly organized and attention to detail
• Strong record of working closely with clients and partners and understanding their needs
• Ability to recognize vagueness and working to resolve it
• Ability to take complexity and break it down in manageable tasks
• Ability to design processes and systems to accomplish project work and ensure accountability
• Experience working independently and also as part of a fast-paced team environment
THE SEAFOOD TRACEABILITY COLLABORATION
The areas of leadership and expertise by organization follow:
FishWise is a leading NGO partner to North American retailers and distributors on sustainability, traceability, and human rights in seafood. As an early expert organization working on traceability, FishWise plays a critical role in connecting and convening a network of companies, nonprofits, and policymakers involved in key traceability projects and precompetitive collaborations. FishWise’s contributions to the space include integrating traceability and human rights into seafood sustainability discussions, equipping the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions with the tools and resources they need to promote traceability, working with U.S. companies to implement ambitious but achievable traceability and social commitments, and creating tools and resources to improve traceability implementation by the industry and advance stakeholders’ shared understanding of traceability. Core competencies: Strong private sector leader relationships, trusted advisor to many stakeholders and within the Conversation Alliance, ‘real-world’ traceability implementation experience, and strong understanding of supply chain barriers to traceability.
Future of Fish is a design process expert driving collaboration, prototyping and storytelling. Its pilot project work has led it to become one of the most granular players in understanding technology deployment in the field and the technical stuck points in that process. It has also built unique relationships with technology vendors to allow them to coordinate their voice and support of a growing and more rationalized demand. FoF’s specific achievements include developing precompetitive technology vendor initiatives, refining the business case for traceability at all levels of the supply chain, and creating compelling education tools for the NGO sector. Core competencies: Deep technology knowledge, in-field technology deployment experience, ethnographic research & analysis, ability to convene and support cross-sector collaboration, design process expertise and innovation process leader.
Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Global Food Traceability Center (GFTC) is an internationally renowned institute for food traceability. It is a center at the Institute of Food Technologists, a membership organization of scientists involved in food systems and production. The organization brings unparalleled insights about technology application and transparency adoption in other food systems and supply chains. Their experience in navigating and catalyzing other industry transformation informs our perspectives on what is necessary and what is possible.They are experts in both traceability “rollout,” as well as the strategy (and execution) of building industry wide training and standards dissemination. GFTC has been a co-leader of the Global Dialogue. Core competencies: Insight into and experience working with science-based traceability across multiple food sectors; Expertise in industry transformation and the tactics to accomplish it
World Wildlife Fund is a global conservation NGO that, through its policy level leadership and on-the-ground partnerships, creates connective tissue between the business and nonprofits worlds to align and work toward conservation goals together. WWF has both on-the-ground fisheries work and extensive seafood industry partnerships in multiple countries. WWF has created a “Traceability Principles” manifesto to align the NGO world around traceability, and has piloted the development of supply chain risk assessment and traceability benchmarking tools. It is also a coleader in the Global Dialogues. Core competencies: On-the-ground partnership and execution in the field; in-country expertise in partner recruitment and management; business lens and perspective.
APPLICATION PROCESS
Please send a cover letter (with monthly rate requirements) and CV to Cheryl Chen, Future of Fish - Operations Director (cchen@futureoffish.org) by Friday February 24 2017. This position will be a full-time limited term independent contractor position to June 2018 with possible extension if additional funding is secured.
The anticipated start date of the contract would be March 13, 2017 and will require the contractor to attend a meeting in Boston from March 22-23rd.