Senior Program Manager (Storytelling)

Overview

Established in 2010, the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM) is Boston's pioneering civic research and design team. Now integrated with the city's Data & Analytics team, our expanded group leverages cutting-edge skills in civic design, strategy, and data to drive evidence-based innovation. We partner with city departments to develop and operationalize solutions that spark public imagination and advance mayoral priorities, delivering tangible improvements for Boston residents. See the team’s portfolio of work from last year here.

 

MONUM is seeking a Senior Program Manager with a focus on Storytelling to join our dynamic team.  Reporting to the MONUM Director or their designee, this pivotal role involves leading a portfolio of projects and providing strategic creative direction that significantly elevates and guides our team's storytelling efforts. This includes championing new approaches to narrative and visual communication. Additionally, they will manage key components of team operations, as all members of the team do, contributing to the team's overall effectiveness, especially involving strategic communications and sharing the impact of the team’s work broadly.

 

The ideal candidate is a master storyteller, capable of translating complex civic challenges into compelling narratives using diverse creative methods (visual design, illustration, video) to inspire action and build momentum. This role requires a strong ability to think creatively within complex systems and possess an entrepreneurial, collaborative spirit for seamless cross-team engagement, drawing expertise from human-centered design, service design, and/or visual design.

Responsibilities

• Explore and develop a portfolio of projects that flexibly use MONUM’s “model” of explore, experiment, and evaluate to deliver exceptional services to Boston’s residents, workers, visitors, and more. You will bring design and storytelling practices to bear on the team’s portfolio of projects. This will range from developing strong visual components to the work to helping shape large city initiatives through a civic design and storytelling lens.
• Elevate storytelling across the team. You will be charged with designing and workshopping storytelling efforts with project managers across the MONUM team to ultimately support the Mayor’s priorities. You will work closely with the MONUM and Analytics leads to elevate qualitative research alongside robust quantitative data practices to better reflect resident experiences and needs.
• Contribute to building MONUM’s strategy for civic design practice and storytelling work. Your work will center on utilizing and sharing design and storytelling tools meant to prioritize residents’ experiences in order to exercise a more inclusive practice.
• Effectively communicate the impact and value of our work through compelling and creative storytelling. This includes developing engaging narratives, utilizing visual design, illustration, video, or other methods, and creating both print and digital design artifacts to build momentum for this work.
• Forge inclusive new partnerships. You will work to form new relationships and constructive partnerships within and external to the government. Identifying opportunities for collaboration between the City, design institutions, and civic groups. You will spearhead new engagement strategies with residents that break the current mold.
• Mentor & inspire the next generation of Civic Designers. Use this position to engage young people and aspiring designers to consider public sector opportunities as a potential path for their careers. Work with MONUM leadership to develop and experiment with fellowship opportunities.
• Thoughtfully mentor Program Managers, summer fellows, and youth fellowships as constructed.
• Support the entire team as a coach and mentor. This includes consultation, construction of materials, thought partnership, critique of prototypes in various stages, and thought leadership on civic design and storytelling.
• Participate in internally facing work, such as hiring for our summer fellowship programs, quarterly review and goal setting, helping other departments with tactical requests, and other things that invariably will come up when working in a dynamic, responsive environment. 
• Document and share what you learn through your work: writing, visually representing, speaking at classes and at conferences, participating in MONUM’s “front door” approach to taking meetings, and talking about the work.
• Other duties as determined or specifically requested by the team’s Director.

Minimum Ent