Deputy Chief of Data Analytics

Job Title: Deputy Chief of Data Analytics

Department: Membership Growth

Location: Oakland, CA; Washington, D.C.; Chicago, IL; Flexible for the Best Candidate

Reports to: Chief of Strategic Planning

Supervises: Data and Analytics Team

Context: At the Sierra Club, we believe in the power of interdependence. Together, we remain committed to the fight for a healthy climate built on a foundation of environmental, racial, economic, and gender justice – a future where all people benefit from a healthy, thriving planet and a direct connection to nature. As the climate crisis and deeply entrenched systemic racism all fuel injustice, we will continue to fight for a bold, transformational agenda that recognizes the interconnectedness between our planet, our humanity, and our future. By recognizing that our destinies are tied, we continue to name that all things are fundamentally connected, and the overlap between ecology, race, gender, and representative government will move to either advance our collective humanity or to oppress it. Sierra Club has close to 800 staff across the country and a network of 64 local chapters that are led and fueled by thousands of volunteers. We are also proud to be a unionized employer, with three labor unions representing more than half of our employees.

Scope: The Senior Director of Data Analytics position is a new role leading a team focused on constituent data insights, analysis, and data visualization to provide the analytical support to drive performance across channels and segments, including to inform member and supporter acquisition, life cycle management, member experience, and offerings. This role will refine a data strategy designed to enable the seamless collection, aggregation and synthesis of data to drive both automated and relationship-based interactions, targeted and dynamic content delivery, and personalized marketing.

This role will require a candidate who is a strategic thought leader who will use data and analytics to provide insight on where the organization should direct future investments, while optimizing current offers and programs. A crucial component to the role is to shed light on what and how people are engaging with the Sierra Club, along with the ways those behaviors are impacting member and volunteer acquisition and retention.

The Analytics team will play a crucial role in both informing and analyzing the Sierra Club’s political, revenue generation, and mobilization strategies through providing insights to inform planning, design, multivariate tests and randomized controlled trials, and evaluating results. Key areas of focus include analysis of the lifetime value of revenue generated per member from donations, outings, and purchases; consulting with key organizational stakeholders on data collection; data modeling and analysis to maximize the efficacy and efficiency of political and mobilization work; and analysis of supporter engagement across all channels, including the web, Sierra Magazine, email, mail, paid and earned social, SMS, and more.

The Deputy Chief of Data Analytics will work closely with the Information Technology team, which manages data security, data governance and standards, as well as the Sierra Club’s data lake and other infrastructure.

Job activities include but are not limited to:

• Lead analysis to inform the development of enterprise audience cohort segmentation strategy and Member journeys
• Manage and hire the Data and Analytics team to provide proactive analysis and support for fundraising as well as member, volunteer, and supporter engagement to a broad range of end users and technical stakeholders across the organization to steer the strategic direction of the organization based on data
• Spearhead efforts to place the Sierra Club on the cutting edge of the use of data to mass customize communication to optimize the results of communication across channels
• Heavily focused on working with leadership and cross-functional stakeholders to refine multi-year data, membership engagement, and value proposition strategy to drive measurable competitive advantage for Sierra Club
• Test emerging data science techniques and tools, syndicating learnings to the broader organization for deployment
• Create a culture of creativity and innovation while working closely with campaigns, field, communications, membership growth, and the rest of the organization to build strong, differentiated consumer-facing technology solutions and new product capabilities
• Build strong industry partnerships and vendor relationships to leverage third-party development and maximize customer reach
• As a key member of the leadership team, develop and maintain strong relationships with all internal and external stakeholders
• Ensure data quality and security across the organization, including external data sources
• Develop unique insights about Sierra Club, its customers through qualitative and quantitative research
• Drive increased knowledge of specific customer profiles, behavior patterns and market segmentation
• Participate in Sierra Club’s strategic planning and the development of objectives in conjunction with other senior leaders
• Anticipate changing demands from Sierra Club’s organization and business environment, and initiate action to creatively realign data objectives as needed
• Support and coach digital, direct marketing, field, and political managers and staff on day-to-day, data-informed decision making, establishing a baseline for sharing analysis, reporting expectations, testing results, and audience strategy to meet organizational, team, and individual goals
• Recommend structures and processes to facilitate close collaboration and partnership across departments that further advance the Sierra Club’s data informed culture and community
• Spearhead data presentation development, particularly to meet the organization’ KPI, reporting, and Balanced Scorecard needs;
• Generate insights and actionable recommendations from modeling constituency data, which includes preparing formal presentations and visualizations to communicate with high-level stakeholders, donors, and non-technical audiences
• Working with IT, oversee movement building data collection and the completeness and accuracy of records, ensuring the integrity and optimization of the Sierra Club’s analytics platform
• Work with organizing managers and directors to establish benchmarks for issue advocacy work, create policies for tool usage and data collection
• Evaluate and recommend solutions to improve system capabilities and performance
• Work with vendors as needed to negotiate contracts, prioritize, clarify and escalate bug and feature requests
  
  
  

The successful candidate must demonstrate the following skills, experience and competencies:

• 5-10 year’s data and analytics leadership experience
• Experience managing multidisciplinary teams of experts including in field, political, fundraising, and advocacy data
• Data analytics experience in the business to consumer sector, political, or nonprofit community or other exposure to consumer insights. Superb candidates from other sectors may be considered
• Experience with advanced data techniques including advanced qualitative and quantitative data mining, complex predictive modeling and other real-time pattern detection methods. In-depth exposure to algorithms, statistics, visualization, data engineering, natural language processing, data platforms and engineering
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics or engineering
• Skilled communicator with external and internal technical and non-technical audiences
• Advanced Excel skills, an understanding of relational databases and database design, programming languages (SQL)
• Experience creating data visualizations with Tableau or Civis Analytics platform and presenting insights and results to key stakeholders
• Committed to evolution. You are committed to continuously deepening and evolving your own understanding of systems of oppression through study, openness, and humility. And you easily recognize your own relationship to privilege and power, examining and shifting your behaviors as appropriate
• Uplifting and additive. You see mistakes as opportunities for growth; problems as catalysts for solutions, and inspire others along the journey. You carry a constructive approach, can-do attitude, a sense of humor, and authentic kindness wherever you go
  
  
  

The strongest candidates will also demonstrate the following skills, experience and competencies:

• 2-3 years of experience working with Salesforce preferred
• Advanced degrees in an analytical field are preferred, but not required
  
  
  

To Apply

The Sierra Club provides equal employment and advancement opportunities to all staff members. Employment decisions are based on merit, qualifications, lived experience and skills. The Sierra Club does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, national origin, immigration status, socioeconomic status, ancestry, age, size, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, familial status, veteran status, disability, AIDS/HIV status, medical condition, prior conviction, arrest history, traits historically associated with race, including, but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles, or any other characteristic protected by law.

The Sierra Club values applicants who are people that identify as Black, Indigenous, and other minoritized groups; women; queer, transgender, gender non-conforming, and gender fluid people.

Explore, enjoy and protect the planet.

Compensation & Benefits:

The salary range for this position is $175,000-$190,000.

The Sierra Club offers a competitive salary package commensurate with skills and experience plus excellent benefits that include medical, dental, and vision coverage, and a retirement savings 401(k) plan.

This is a category 2 exempt, non-represented, managerial, supervisory, confidential position.

Sierra Club values the expertise and talents of foreign nationals. Sierra Club sponsors both nonimmigrant and immigrant visas when certain criteria are met, based on immigration laws and organizational needs. Such sponsorship is at the discretion of the Department Head and Sierra Club Human Resources in consultation with the employee’s manager. The Sierra Club cannot guarantee the approval of a visa petition. The Sierra Club is an equal opportunity employer committed to workforce diversity.