Communications Associate, Urban Development and Data

Responsibilities

• Contribute to developing and promoting the brands of WRI urban development initiatives, ensuring that all communication products are high quality and consistent with the brand guidelines and strategy.
• Coordinate the creation of original content and the cross-posting of partner content in partnership with the editors of WRI and partner blogs and other channels, with a focus on events, new research and analysis in relevant workstreams, success stories from local projects, interviews with city and national stakeholders, and more.
• Collaborate with researchers on data visualization, including developing compelling graphics, diagrams, infographics, and charts to communicate key messages and research findings to the public and converting numerical information and geospatial data into engaging visual formats.
• Contribute to initiative websites, including but not limited to creating and posting new content, updating existing content, ensuring technical maintenance, and optimizing for SEO.
• Contribute to WRI social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), maintaining a regular schedule of original and partner content, promoting events, and devising a strategy to amplify engagement.
• Craft marketing assets and strategy for major events (for e.g., webinars, conference sessions, workshops), including messaging, social media cards, emails, event pages, and print collateral.
• Work with WRI’s Cities Communications and Core Communications teams to leverage the appropriate WRI communications assets for each objective.
• Support the production, launch, and promotion of online self-paced learning guides.
• Manage or support the management of communications-related projects with external vendors as needed, including writing TORs, reviewing expressions of interest, maintaining regular communication, processing payments, and providing feedback on deliverables.
• Support the team with general communications tasks as needed, such as hosting webinars, taking meeting notes, preparing talking points and slide presentations, etc.

Skillset

• Education: You have completed a bachelor’s degree in communications, journalism, international relations, public policy, or a related field.
• Experience: You have a minimum of 5 years of full-time professional experience in creating and implementing communications strategies and high-level content.
• Excellent writing and editing skills (journalistic writing and annual report writing experience a plus).
• Detail-oriented and organized thinker with strong organizational, coordination, and project management skills.
• Excellent design sense, visual storytelling ability, and experience with visualization design tools (i.e., Adobe InDesign/ Illustrator/ Premier Pro/ Figma/ Flourish).
• Critical thinker who can analyze complex and technical content and convey it in engaging infographics and other visual forms.
• Ability to work cooperatively with others, demonstrate flexibility in fulfilling assignments, and be proactive in planning, researching, and pitching ideas.
• Desired qualifications: Excellent web content, social media, and email marketing skills (Hootsuite/ Emplifi/ Ortto/ Salesforce experience a plus).
• Strong web editing skills, including knowledge of website content management systems (Drupal/WordPress/CSS skills a plus).
• Ability to assess the impact of communications strategies and outputs, familiarity with Google Analytics.
• Professional experience at an environmental or scientific organization and understanding of issues related to the environment, climate, sustainability, and urban development, especially as it relates to sustainable cities.
• Languages: Fluent in English (fluency in one or more other languages of countries where WRI has an office is a plus: Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Mandarin, Bahasa Indonesia, etc.
• Requirements: Existing work authorization is required where this position. WRI is unable to authorize visa work authorization.