Landscape Design Manager, ECHO Grow Outdoors South Carolina

Founded in 1936, the National Wildlife Federation has grown into America's largest and most trusted grassroots conservation organization with 52 state and territorial affiliates and more than seven million members and supporters, including hunters, anglers, gardeners, birders, hikers, campers, paddlers, and outdoor enthusiasts of all ages and stripes. The mission of the National Wildlife Federation is to unite all Americans to ensure wildlife thrive in our rapidly changing world. We advance this mission through programming focused on conserving wildlife, restoring habitats and waterways, expanding outdoor opportunities, connecting children with nature, advancing environmental justice, and addressing the causes and consequences of climate change.

The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has a longstanding commitment to expanding opportunities for children, families, and communities to receive the benefits of time spent outdoors, developing lasting connections with the natural world. The vast majority of children in America spend most of their daily time indoors at child care centers, schools, parks, libraries, or at home. Time in nature-based environments offers lifelong benefits to rapidly developing bodies and brains, along with a greater inclination to become nature lovers and supporters as adults. Therefore, it is critical to advance the creation, activation and stewardship of high-quality outdoor spaces that become places where children, their caretakers, and families can engage with nature and the outdoors on a daily basis.

An initiative of NWF, Early Childhood Health Outdoors (ECHO) envisions a world where every young child experiences nature daily. Launched in 2017, ECHO has been working with communities throughout the United States to transform children’s daily environments by enhancing opportunities to engage meaningfully in nature. By providing a combination of thoughtful landscape design and professional development opportunities for early childhood professionals, ECHO employs a health equity model that improves access to the benefits of nature for the children and caregivers who face the greatest barriers. 

To meet our mission, we are seeking a Landscape Design Manager for Early Childhood Health Outdoors (ECHO) to oversee the application of this model through the Grow Outdoors South Carolina initiative.  A joint effort of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity Prevention at the SC Department of Public Health (DPH) and ABC Quality at the SC Department of Social Services (DSS), Grow Outdoors South Carolina (GO SC), aims to transform early childhood outdoor spaces into naturalized environments that spark play and learning. The Landscape Design Manager will provide leadership for the ECHO Grow Outdoors South Carolina multi-disciplinary education and design team to implement the program’s overarching initiatives.

The Landscape Design Manager will report to NWF’s Senior Director of Design and Engagement, and will supervise the ECHO Grow Outdoors South Carolina team, based in Columbia, South Carolina. This is a full-time, hybrid position (see definition below).  The anticipated start date for this position is Fall 2024.

Principal Duties:

The primary focus of the Landscape Design Manager will be to oversee the Early Childhood Health Outdoors (ECHO) Grow Outdoors South Carolina (GO SC) design team, consisting of landscape designers, in tasks related to engaging and training child care professionals and designing outdoor environments for young children to promote play, learning, and healthy development.

 In this role, the Landscape Design Manager will be expected to:

• Apply evidence-based, best-practice design principles for outdoor learning environments at child care facilities, and create developmentally appropriate, custom design solutions driven by the programmatic needs expressed through authentic engagement with programs and community members.
• Work collaboratively with the Senior Director of Design and Engagement and the Colorado-based ECHO team to align and refine design standards and systems to ensure efficiency and innovation.
• Develop participatory design processes and workflows to ensure that milestones are met according to project schedules and program and community expectations.
• Oversee design team staff in the creation of site base plans, schematic designs, planting plans, cost opinions, and phasing plans, coordinate with landscape contractors to implement phased construction projects and provide on-call technical assistance to programs.

The candidate should be able to communicate design concepts and ideas through hand sketching, graphics, and rendering skills, have a strong attention to detail, have excellent organizational skills, be flexible, and have strong technical skills (grading, construction knowledge). Candidates must be self-mot