Director of Equity Planning & Technical Assistance

Job Description

The Agency You’ll Join:
The NYC Mayor’s Office of Equity & Racial Justice (MOERJ) was established in October 2023 as the City of New York’s centralized agency to advance equity. Our mandate is rooted in a simple but powerful belief that every New Yorker deserves the chance to live, work, and thrive with dignity.

To realize that vision, MOERJ brings together several key initiatives and offices, including the NYC Commission on Gender Equity (CGE), NYC Her Future (NHF), the NYC Young Men’s Initiative (YMI), and the NYC Unity Project (UP), as well as cross-agency bodies like the NYC Pay Equity Cabinet (PEC) and the NYC Taskforce on Racial Inclusion & Equity (TRIE). Together, we create a unified framework for addressing the many ways inequity shows up in daily life.


The Problems You’ll Solve:
As a senior leader reporting to the Deputy Commissioner, the Director of Equity Planning & Technical Assistance will lead a team of ten Equity Planning Managers (EPMs) who will implement the first Citywide Racial Equity Plan, a mandate in our city’s Charter.

The Director is responsible for providing direction and guidance to this team. Each Equity Planning Manager (EPM) will work directly with a suite of City agencies in preparing, implementing, and tracking progress of racial equity plans on an ongoing basis as well as meet specific standards set by the Mayor’s Office of Equity & Racial Justice. City agencies will rely on their EPM for technical assistance – they are trainers, explainers, and thought partners. EPMs communicate guidance from MOERJ, support agencies step-by-step through the planning lifecycle, and help them navigate challenges.

The Director will collaborate with EPMs to hold agencies to a standard, one that meaningfully moves agencies and our city toward racial justice. As the preliminary plan is released and then finalized following a public feedback period, the EPM team will continue working with agencies to support them in implementing their racial equity plan strategies, tracking and reporting progress, and accomplishing their goals. The Director will also lead the EPM team in identifying and testing new methods for resource sharing, training, and communicating that lead to successful agency change. When MOERJ develops policies, programs, communications, or culture products, the Director will ensure the EPMs are equipped to disseminate those knowledge products and can help agencies deploy to maximum effect.

Recognizing that racial equity planning is a living process, the Director will also refine procedures as well as develop and build on reporting standards that support an effective planning process for agencies and the public, incorporating feedback from agencies and other stakeholders and learning from leaders (both local and national) in this space.

The EPM team will be the primary point of contact to 40+ agencies on behalf of MOERJ. The quality of the team’s work helps agencies appreciate the value of working with our office to advance racial equity and justice, signals the office’s efforts and standards throughout the City, and reflects upon the City’s commitment to equity.


Key Responsibilities:
- Leads creation, implementation, tracking, and reporting of the city’s Racial Equity Plan in coordination with Equity Planning Manager (EPM) team. This includes but is not limited to, collaborating with 40+ agencies, partnering with leadership on review and process to publishing, communicating updates to agencies in various ways, as well as developing and managing progress reports.
- Supervises, coordinates, and develops the full-time EPM team which manages a portfolio of City government agencies through the full racial equity planning process.
- Meets with individual Equity Planning Managers and full team on a regular basis, including connecting with team committees and troubleshooting where needed.
- Spearheads the development, implementation, and refinement of training/workshops and technical assistance practices, tools, and protocols to relay MOERJ’s standards and guidance as well as enable EPMs to provide strategic guidance to portfolio agencies.
- Co-develops and maintains internal tools to communicate MOERJ’s developments in racial equity policy, programs, messaging, and ideas to agencies.
- Co-develops, implements, and refines standards that help MOERJ assess whether agencies are successfully executing racial equity plans and the City is making progress towards overarching racial equity north stars.
- Develops and maintains organizational tools to track agency progress and EPM teamwork management using tools such as Airtable and Microsoft Sharepoint.
- Ensures the EPM team’s success in providing ongoing management and support to agencies so they can meet their racial equity plan goals.
- Refines the racial equity planning process dur