Looking for new opportunities

Update: I've secured a contract which will keep me here until at least January, by which time I hope to have found an ongoing position which suits my skills and passions. I'm still open to any suggestions!

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As I mentioned last week Small Act have decided to pull the plug on the San Francisco office after I'd only been here five weeks, so my future in San Francisco and America is a bit uncertain. And by "a bit" I mean I probably have five weeks to figure something out which will allow me to stay here. And by "something" I mean work.

As you might imagine I'm disappointed by this turn of events. I was extremely excited to join Small Act and to come to San Francisco. The opportunity to work with, support and learn from a variety of social change organizations and be part of a small and evolving start-up appealed to me and felt like a perfect fit for my skills, experience and what I wanted to learn next.

As for San Francisco, it's a city I've loved since I first visited as a 15 year-old. My life changed here when I attended the State of the World Forum as a 16 year-old. It was here that I realized my power as a changemaker. It's the perfect place to be working at the intersection of technology and social change and for K it's the perfect place from which to grow her family's wine business in North America. Not to mention that it's the home of burning man culture and one of the very few places in America with a decent psytrance scene. So: we were excited to move here.

And we hope to stay! I'm grateful that Small Act have given me time to try and figure this out as I wind things down with them over two months. At the end of this time I will need to have a new job in order to stay in the country. So, I'm looking for new opportunities to make a difference.

I'm passionate about the intersection of technology, community-building and social change. I believe technology can reshape our media and politics but that this is not an automatic outcome, that we must work for it. I am passionate about doing this work and have spent the past 15 years creating on- and offline platforms and opportunities for people to share stories that matter, come together to learn from each other, share and synthesize ideas and imagine a new future. I believe in the power of art and stories to engage, inform and inspire people to action.

My skill-set and background is entrepreneurial. I have founded a number of organizations and initiatives, most notably Vibewire Youth Inc which I established while at university and ran for eight years, until 2008. During this time Vibewire grew from an all-volunteer student collective to an internationally-recognized organization with five permanent staff, numerous project contractors and hundreds of volunteers and contributors. We launched several websites, ran online and offline conferences, toured a film festival around the country, sent youth reporters onto the campaign trail to report back on the Federal election and opened a youth enterprise incubator in Sydney.

More recently I spent two years in Washington DC as the first Social Media Director at Ashoka. In this role I established numerous new social media channels, grew the Ashoka twitter account to 315,000 followers, launched a blog, email newsletter and ebook series and significantly increased the use of video across the organization.

I have organized everything from art exhibitions to conferences, music events to film festivals, political outreach campaigns to social media strategies, training programs to Burning Man theme camps.

Which means I'm very open to possibility! I want to stay here and I want to do meaningful work. This could take the form of a new full-time position in a cause-focused organization or a series of smaller projects. As Small Act have agreed to continue to hold my sponsorship so long as I have confirmed work lined up (who then contract me from them) a new employer does not have to go through the visa process with me, a significant silver lining to this whole situation. This creates, despite the brutal deadline, an exciting amount of flexibility and possibility.

I know I can help an organization do something incredible, and I know that there's many organizations here that are doing incredible things. I am confident that things will work out despite this set-back.

Five weeks to figure it out. Wish me luck!

Of course, if you know of anything that you think would suit me or people I should be talking to please give me a holla.

Here's my resume, feel free to share:

[scribd id=38801055 key=key-1xe5fqn1r1amglx5n1tk mode=list]

And my full-length CV if you're not into the whole brevity thing:

[scribd id=38449225 key=key-23k4sfofqsqj5my785m7 mode=list]

Image by Donnie Ray on flickr.

Looking for the next challenge

It's official: I'm moving on from Ashoka. Ashoka doesn't usually promote specific roles but today we announced that we are looking for a new Social and Digital Marketing Manager. I've had an amazing time building the social media program at Ashoka. During this time our Twitter account has gone from zero to 315,000 followers, we have run 12 Twitter #SocEntChat conversations, published 3 e-Books, live-streamed 7 Fellow presentations, launched a number of new blogs including our flagship Change InSight, developed a new template for Ashoka websites which foregrounds social content (which you can see piloted on the Ashoka USA site), crowdsourced an Everyone a Changemaker film, placed social media at the heart of our events and run numerous trainings for staff, Fellows, changemakers and students. Most importantly, social media has been adopted across the organization, by staff and programs.

It's been an amazing experience and I've learned a great deal. Ashoka's Everyone a Changemaker vision is one I believe in intensely and it has been an honour to represent this vision to our online communities, and to work with an incredible group of people.

So why am I leaving? Our two year visas are almost up and I will need to apply to get a new one whether I remain at Ashoka or not. K's work with WineInc is strongly pointing us West, to San Franciso. When we moved to DC for my work I promised K that she could choose the next city we lived in. San Francisco is the right place for her to grow the business while also fostering her creative practice. For me the draw is the incredible local non-profit technology and start-up culture in the Bay Area, and the proximity of so many of the outdoor locations I most want to explore in the States: Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, the Sequoia Forests.

This all means we are looking for a passionate, energetic and entrepreneurial individual to take Ashoka's social media and digital marketing program to the next level of reach and impact. If this sounds like you we'd love to hear from you. Go here to see the position description and here to apply.

My colleague Hayley from Ashoka's People Team put a blog post up today on what Ashoka is looking for when hiring and I wanted to excerpt it here as it does a great job of explaining the unique nature of our approach:

Who is more important than what. At Ashoka, we are not typically looking to hire someone who can do a job. We are looking to hire someone who can re-define a job; taking it, the team, and the initiative to a higher level. That means that who you are and what you’ve been compelled to do is more important than your degrees, your work experience, and the metrics demonstrating your competence.

Our hiring criteria are clearly listed on that page. Let me take this blog-post space to explain the meaning of one of our most important criteria: entrepreneurship.  We describe it like this: Entrepreneurs are compelled to take creative initiative and ownership (e.g., founding an organization or company, starting a movement, or re-shaping the work of an existing organization). They demonstrate relentless and realistic how-to thinking and passion for seeing their ideas come to life.  That means not only that you have demonstrated social initiative, but that you have proven a willingness to see a few things:

·         Things must change. ·         Things can change. ·         You can be a part of change.

Entrepreneurs are not intimidated by the worlds’ ills, not defeated by the status quo. They intuitively realize that they, and others, can make change. Often solutions to the worst social ills are simple, but require changing systems, not just situations. Entrepreneurs know that. They aren't afraid to think big, they can see how each tiny piece relates to the whole.

This may all sound like wishful thinking. Embedded in our prototype of the entrepreneur is 'realistic and relentless how-to thinking.' That means working within real-time, real limitations, and with real people to make change that affects not symptoms, but causes.

I am sad to leave Ashoka but also excited to once again not know exactly what I'll be doing in three months time, when anything seems possible. I am having some very interesting conversations about some great opportunities and I hope something will be finalized within the next few weeks. I'm completely open to possibility in terms of my next role so long as it is fun, challenging and meaningful. I'm inspired by using technology to empower communities and individuals and share inspiring stories the world needs to hear. I want to continue to learn and grow and make a difference.

If you know of an opportunity that sounds like a good fit, I'd love to hear from you.