Chief of Staff, Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN)

ABOUT US

The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit organization whose purpose is to ignite human potential to build understanding and create new possibilities for a better world. Founded in 1949, the Institute drives change through dialogue, leadership, and action to help solve society’s greatest challenges. It is headquartered in Washington, DC, and has a campus in Aspen, Colorado, as well as an international network of partners.

CENTER FOR LEADERSHIP

The Center for Leadership exists to ignite and nurture leadership potential in its constituents, building meaningful connections that generate lasting impact. Its work is to inspire, challenge and support leaders with different perspectives to understand how and where they can make a difference and live lives of deeper meaning and greater individual and collective impact. By supporting, connecting, and incubating leadership programs across the Aspen Institute, it fosters a global community of courageous and well-connected leaders in real relation with one another working across their differences in service of a better world.

The Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN) is a growing, worldwide community of high-integrity leaders who share a commitment to use their creativity, energy, and resources to tackle the foremost societal challenges of our times. Through a rare community of support, transformative convenings, and catalytic capital, we ignite 4,000+ Fellows across 62 countries to turn moral courage into lasting change.

ABOUT THIS ROLE

The Chief of Staff is the operational and organizational backbone of the AGLN and a leadership role with team-wide scope and authority. While the VP sets the vision and senior leaders run their respective programs, the Chief of Staff ensures that the entire AGLN operates as a coherent, high-performing team.

The Chief of Staff designs and leads the infrastructure that makes excellence possible: the planning systems, reporting structures, accountability rhythms, and portfolio-wide visibility that allow every team to do its best work. They empower leaders across the AGLN — both internal and external stakeholders — with the tools, templates, and project frameworks they need to operate with rigor and consistency. The Chief of Staff looks across the full portfolio of AGLN fellowships to ensure teams are built right, resourced well, and moving with purpose.

As a thought partner to the VP, the Chief of Staff keeps the pulse of the AGLN’s health- on its operations, team management and finances surfacing what needs attention, making sure nothing important falls through the cracks and keeping the whole organization running aligned with the AGLN’s strategy and goals. The salary for this position is $190,000 - $215,000. In accordance with our Reimagining Work policy, the Chief of Staff should be willing to be in-person with colleagues a minimum of 40% of the time while having the flexibility to work remotely for the balance.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Organizational Accountability & Performance Management

• Maintain a real-time, organization-wide view of priorities, progress, and risks across all AGLN teams and workstreams.
• Build and steward a goal progress tracker/KPI dashboard that translates activity across the full AGLN portfolio into clear, actionable performance intelligence.
• Proactively identify when teams are lagging, projects are at risk, or decisions have stalled and bring the right issues to the VP's attention with enough lead time to act.
• Assess team composition and capacity across the portfolio; flag structural gaps and surge staff or resources where needed and make actionable recommendations to address the gaps.
• Ensure every major initiative, across all teams, has a strong project plan, clear ownership, and the infrastructure to succeed.

Systems, Legal & Operational Infrastructure

• Design and implement the planning and reporting systems that govern how the entire AGLN operates from annual goal setting to weekly check-ins.
• Build and hold the standard for the tools we use to ensure the team is running with consistency and rigor, in collaboration with AD of Fellowship Incubation.
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