Director of Crop Stewardship
Position Overview
As the Crop Stewardship Director, you will lead The Land Institute’s strategic and operational redesign efforts in perennial grain food systems and innovation. This role requires strong entrepreneurship, supply chain management, and technology transfer expertise to drive perennial grains into broader markets, creating sustainable value chains and maximizing their impact. Leveraging your knowledge and research experience, you will collaborate across teams in fundraising, perennial cultures, natural science research, operations, and communications to drive research strategies and align them with organizational goals. With your expert relationship-building and collaborative leadership, you will directly manage the crop stewardship researchers, supporting team evaluation and overseeing multiple budgets. You will inform and collaborate on the budget process, organizational financial priorities, communications, and funding strategies–including grant writing. To inform your decision-making, you will deploy a consultative input, feedback, and recommendation process with the other researchers, fellow Directors, and the Executive team. This role requires highly cooperative, cross-functional engagement, reporting directly to the President.
Responsibilities
Team Management - Manage crop stewardship researchers, including research agendas and activities, priorities and goal-setting, ongoing feedback cycles, compensation reviews, team staffing, culture-building, and evaluations. - Promote and lead the program’s professional development initiatives and identify and recommend opportunities to help realize organizational goals and priorities. - Work closely with People & Culture and researchers to keep updated job descriptions that clarify roles and responsibilities. - Set and manage expectations, create structures, and guide researchers in their research areas. - Translate organizational vision and growth initiatives to generate clear team guidance and develop Crop Stewardship strategies and priorities. - Model the organization's core values and culture and champion its vision and change management initiatives, including new behaviors, training, tools, and messaging across the organization and your department staff. Research Leadership - Direct the crop stewardship program and its research. - Perform research in your area of expertise: technology transfer, adoption and scaling, entrepreneurship, business development, market strategy, food systems, or related field. - Provide oversight and management of intellectual property, including Kernza® trademark and Baki™ trademark. - Develop integrated department-wide research strategy and growth priorities that align with organizational vision and cross-programmatic themes. - Manage program resources and develop program budget. Articulate organizational goals and priorities to direct reports in alignment with leadership direction. - Advocate for crop stewardship research, The Land Institute, its organizational vision, and growth initiatives through presentations, publications, public speaking, and press interviews. - Recommend and elevate researchers and team members to contribute their unique experiences and expertise. Cross-Functional Cooperation & Collaboration -Deploy consultative input, feedback, and recommendation process with the Crop Stewardship team, fellow Directors, and the Executive team to inform your decision-making. - Develop and recommend strategic initiatives in cooperation with other directors and provide expert consultation on organizational strategy to the executive team. - Collaborate on organizational-wide financial priorities, fundraising and funding strategies, operations, communications, human resources, and budgeting. - Create regular reporting patterns to solicit, synthesize, and deliver crop stewardship research progress, learnings, insight, impact, and opportunities and share them internally, with the Board of Directors, other directors, and executives, and tactically with fundraising and communications. - Lead, co-lead, or contribute to cross-programmatic special projects and growth initiatives internally and externally with partners. All other duties as assigned Diversity + Inclusion - Participate in The Land Institute’s diversity initiatives - Develop, maintain, and honor relationships with diverse groups and people - Build relationships with diverse partners with a mind toward further collaboration. Organizational Competencies - Mission Driven: You are passionate about the mission of The Land Institute and are interested in aligning your skills and personal genius to benefit this work. - Courageous: You do not retreat or shy away from hard things. You face challenges and conflict with professionalism, grace, and resolve. - A Boundary Spanner: You bring an interdisciplinary skill set and you model self-awareness in your own preferences. You are motivated to always be learning and you adapt to span boundaries with people across a range of different perspectives. Inspiring and Inspired: You are inspired by the people around you, finding and harnessing the genius in your colleagues to meet the organizational objectives, and you are inspiring to others through example and your own genius applied. - Growth Mindset: You have the vulnerability to know what you don’t know, admit your flaws, and learn from others to grow and develop yourself and the organization. - A Creative Collaborator: You believe in the power of a diverse collective to generate ideas and solutions. You excel at strategic thinking, being open to new perspectives, and managing innovation. You bring a playful, positive approach to the work and like meeting new people and deepening connections with those you already know. - Excited by change: You embrace nascent and evolving situations and enjoy engaging new people, ideas, and possibilities. You think about change holistically: internal, external, organizational, and cultural. You like iterating systems, building efficiency, and operationalizing design. You are willing to jump in and contribute to new projects as needed. Hours This role may be remote within a 2 hour drive of The Land Institute’s main campus in Salina, Kansas, USA. Primary travel within the United States, occasional or infrequent international travel. 15% travel for conferences and meetings with collaborators or remote programs and staff. You will have a laptop computer and access to commuter vehicles Location + Travel This role prioritizes candidates who can be in-person in Salina, KS within 2 hours. Grounded in the Central Great Plains, our Salina, KS campus has a flexible base location but will require travel for events and meetings with collaborators. Most other travel will happen in the United States, but international travel may be infrequent. Estimated travel is 15% of the time based on the employee's discretion. This role will be supported by a travel budget that includes mileage reimbursement, professional development funds, and a laptop computer. Environmental + Working Conditions -Prolonged periods of sitting/standing at a desk and working on a computer and phone -Occasional work in field and laboratory research settings -Work in a general office environment
Qualifications
Who you are: -You hold a Ph.D. or have equivalent experience in a field relevant to technology transfer as it relates to perennial grains crops (e.g. grain agriculture, supply chains, scaling, business development, market strategy, food science, food systems, economics, policy/advocacy, or extension agronomy) -You have experience directing research groups and holistically coordinating many diverse programs and projects. -You have demonstrated leadership and management experience. -You have strong relationship-building and influencing skills. -Your approach to decision-making includes assessing and weighing potential risks, options, and rewards and developing a strategy to mitigate potential risks of action and inaction of various research agendas. -You thrive in a rapidly changing environment -You have a keen interest and expertise in assessing and calculating research return on investment. -You are familiar with facilitating collective and collaborative processes and are committed to elevating them over hierarchical decision-making. -You are excellent at time management, prioritization, and decision-making. -You have a proven ability to create and deliver public presentations using visual, verbal, and written content to convey information -You have experience identifying and addressing barriers to diverse, equitable, and inclusive participation in food systems -You are excited about managing a growing and changing organization -You can identify and address barriers to diverse, equitable, and inclusive participation in research, farming, and education -You have developed and negotiated contracts -You have experience with project management and conception, including budgets
Preferred Level of Education
Ph.D. or have equivalent experience in a field relevant to technology transfer as it relates to perennial grains crops (e.g. grain agriculture, supply chains, scaling, business development, market strategy, food science, food systems, economics, policy/advocacy, or extension agronomy)
Benefits Offered
Compensation + Benefits The Land Institute offers an excellent benefits package and competitive salary commensurate with experience. The salary range for this position is $91,000-128,000 annually. Remote-friendly work environment Paid parental leave Competitive, equitable compensation 403(b) Retirement 403(b) Employer contributions Health Insurance Dental Insurance Vision Insurance Employer Provided Life Insurance Flexible Spending Account Dependent Care Short-Term and Long-Term Disability Insurance Voluntary Life Insurance Accidental Insurance Critical Illness Insurance Employee Assistance Program Paid holidays Generous paid time off Complete laptop workstation and set up for remote work
Compensation/Salary
$91,000 - 128,000
How to Apply
To apply, submit your resume and letter of interest by December 16th, 2024 through the application link. Applicants will be contacted starting in January 2025.
Application deadline: December 16, 2024
About The Land Institute
The Land Institute co-leads the global movement for perennial, diverse, regenerative grain agriculture at a scale that matches the enormity of the intertwined climate, water, and food security crises. An independent 501c3 non-profit founded in 1976, the organization seeks to reconcile the human economy with nature's economy, starting with food. The transdisciplinary team of scientists and global partners are developing new perennial grain crops, like Kernza, and diverse cropping systems that function within nature's limits while researching the social transformation required for a just, perennial human future.
Learn more about The Land Institute
Equal Employment Opportunity
The Land Institute is an equal opportunity employer and embraces the opportunity to provide employment to qualified individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. We are pleased to provide reasonable accommodations to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.