Job Summary
This position is responsible for supporting the Boston Fed’s community development Engagement Strategies Group by formulating and managing innovative approaches to promoting the economic strength of lower-income communities. This person serves as a strategic advisor in the design and implementation of key department strategies, manages senior staff and collaborates with other team members to forge partnerships with external organizations — including non- profits, municipalities, financial institutions, and foundations — to advance two key focal areas: strengthening household economic security and equity and increasing employment opportunities. The Deputy Director is also responsible for leading strategies to promote access to credit, investment and financial services and fostering a better understanding of market developments and economic conditions. This includes monitor community credit needs, tracking economic conditions in lower-income communities and sharing that information internally and externally for the purpose of informing policy and programs and producing measurable impact on the lives of low- and moderate-income residents.
Principal Accountabilities:
Strategic Planning & Project Management:
• Serve as strategic advisor to AVP on two department focal areas: Improving Household Economic Security and Equity and Increasing Employment Opportunities. This includes helping to design strategies to address complex problems, provide input on high-impact initiatives proposed by senior staff, engage a range of stakeholders, proactively identify risks and establish control mechanisms, and support senior staff recruiting potential partners.
• Identify opportunities to inform public policies, improve community development programs and increase R&CO’s impact.
• Lead select high-impact community development initiatives across multiple teams. Generally, these are innovative pilots that rely on strong, cross-sectoral partnerships for implementation. Project management responsibilities include developing strategies, conducting background research, developing a research and evaluation agenda, designing a communications plan, recruiting external and internal support and resources and overseeing operations.
• Help to create and maintain external partnerships. This includes leveraging existing relationships in the community development field to identify and vet new partners or collaborators. In some cases this involves forming coalitions of organizations working towards a common goal, such as reducing racial wealth inequality, filling a community development capital gap within a specific geography or increasing the quality of jobs available to low- and moderate income residents within a specific industry or occupation.
General:
• Represent the Boston Fed at regional and national events by presenting on our community development initiatives and sharing research findings.
• Lead discussions with department staff to share themes that emerge from general community engagement work; through written and verbal updates to senior management, make recommendations about appropriate Boston Fed responses to emerging issues; disseminate findings externally to the broader community development field.
• Manage senior professionals responsible for:
o Monitoring Community Credit Needs.
o Managing two advisory councils to Bank President: Community Development Advisory Council (CDAC) and the Community Depository Institutions Advisory Council (CDIAC). CDIAC is comprised of Presidents and CEOs of New England financial institutions and CDAC is comprise of Executive Directors of Community Development Organizations or CDFIs, and leaders from a wide variety of nonprofit organizations that serve low-income individuals. This includes selection and vetting of potential members; designing meeting agendas and engagement strategy, as well as conducting briefings for Senior Bank Leadership.
o Collaborating with Supervision, Regulation & Credit and maintaining relationships with other regulators, including the FDIC and OCC.
o Supporting external organizations in effectively utilizing and complying with the Community Reinvestment Act by organizing training, responding to requests for information and assistance and keeping track of policy initiatives, changes in Q&As and implications for community organizations.
- Participate in Fed System Working Groups and help curate best practices and strategies that can be replicated in the first district, leveraging previous infrastructure and connections from the System.Other Accountabilities:
Perform other duties as assigned, including, but not limited to, required travel around New England and, occasionally, outside the region.
Supervision
This position is required to supervise senior staff.
Knowledge and Experience
• Community Development knowledge and experience normally acquired through Master’s degree and a minimum of 10 years working experience and at least 5 years of experience supervising direct reports.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and influence change in complex environments. Ability to be recognized as an influential, collaborative leader for public service that makes a difference.
• Strong strategic planning and project management skills, as well as the ability to manage the work of senior staff, including direct reports and interns.
• Learning orientation, including ability to adapt, pivot strategies if necessary and deal with complexity and ambiguity.
• Proven coalition-building, stakeholder engagement, and group facilitation experience. Superb interpersonal skills to effectively engage organizations and individuals, internally to the organization, across the Fed System and externally.
• Excellent team building skills.
• Strong writing and speaking skills, including the ability to represent the Boston Fed to local and national groups and convey best-practices and research findings to target audiences.
• Strong analytical skills and the ability to leverage a wide variety of data and evidence.
• Commitment to solving most pressing problems affecting underserved populations.
• Knowledge of other languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, or Mandarin is a plus.
All employees assigned to this position will be subject to FBI fingerprint/ criminal background and Patriot Act/ Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) watch list checks at least once every five years.
The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work required of this position. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities or skills associated with this position or the personnel so classified.
While this job description is intended to be an accurate reflection of this position, management reserves the right to revise this or any job description at its discretion at any time.
