Director of Operations, Deliberations

Change.org is searching for a Director of Operations, Deliberations to lead and scale the operations engine behind our local civic dialogues. You will report to our GM of Civic Dialogues. As the leader of our program manager team, you will own the delivery of dialogues across cities, develop the team that runs them, and keep improving how the whole program works, so we can run high-quality, non-partisan deliberations with more cities, faster.

Change.org is the world’s largest platform for democracy. At a time when dissatisfaction with democracy globally is at an all-time high, we’re investing heavily in using AI to build the most powerful tools in the world to give people greater voice, while bringing people across the political spectrum together to identify shared solutions.

Our core petitions platform, used by more than 100 million people annually, is growing rapidly - and we are rebuilding it from the ground-up using new tools to turn anyone into a powerful civic leader on the issues they care about. Soon we will launch a new platform to identify the >80% of issues that most people agree on, locally and nationally, and to mobilize hundreds of millions of people to advocate for those common-ground solutions.

To realize this vision, we’re expanding the most talented team in the world at the intersection of technology and social impact - all focused every day on building healthier democracies globally.

Key Outcomes:

• Own end-to-end delivery of civic dialogues, holding a biweekly launch cadence at high quality across all active cities, from recruitment through facilitation to post-dialogue reporting.

• Lead and grow the program manager team, hiring and onboarding PMs as the program scales and developing them into confident, independent operators.

• Redesign and document the 12-week dialogue playbook into a repeatable system with AI-powered workflows (participant matching, synthesis, insight extraction) that scale across cities.

• Build trusted relationships with city offices (mayors, staffers) across the political spectrum, working comfortably with both Republican and Democratic leaders and protecting our non-partisan credibility.

• Act as a strategic partner to the GM and policy directors on the growth and direction of the Deliberations program.

The most important core competencies for the role are:

• People and team leadership: Leading, hiring, and developing a distributed team of experienced program managers, often in ambiguous, early-stage conditions.

• Operations and program management: Running multiple complex programs concurrently (staggered 12-week cycles) at a reliable cadence and consistent quality.

• Systems thinking and AI fluency: Turning one-off work into repeatable, documented processes that improve over time, with AI woven throughout.

• Strategic program design: Partnering with leadership to set the direction of the program as it scales, not just executing how it runs today.

• Civic dialogue and deliberation: Understanding what makes structured, cross-partisan dialogue genuinely productive rather than performative, and building programs around those principles.

• Cross-partisan stakeholder management: Building trusted relationships with city officials and partners across the political spectrum, with a genuinely non-partisan, bridge-building orientation.

• Policy development: Developing effective, implementable policy at the city government level.

Target experience:

• 8+ years in operations or program leadership, ideally including a Chief of Staff or senior ops role in a government office or civic/political organization.

• Proven people manager, with experience developing senior or expert-level individual contributors.

• Direct experience in or with city governments, working alongside officials and staff.

• A track record of building from scratch, scaling a program or process from an early stage.

• Experience running structured dialogue, whether civic deliberations, deliberative processes, or community engagement programs.

• Cross-partisan experience, working with both conservative- and liberal-leaning stakeholders.

Interested? Great! Here's what you should know:

This is a full time remote role based in the United States.

Our compensation philosophy is based on pay equity. All of our salaries are determined before we launch a role – they are based on a predetermined salary scale, the level on that scale and the cost of labor for that location. The annual salary of a Director of Operations, Deliberations is $241,500 in SF/NYC, $229,500 in Austin/Boston/LA/Seattle/DC/Chicago and $205,500 in all other cities.

Benefits and perks also vary based on location.

Our evaluation process is as follows:

• Recruiter Screen (40 min)

• Hiring Manager Screen (30 min)

• Take-Home Task (we will compensate you for ~4 hours of work at the prorated hourly rate)

• Follow-Up Discussion (30 min)

• Team Interviews (2 hrs)

• References

We recognize that people assess their qualifications differently, and you may not meet every requirement listed. If you believe you could be successful in this role, we encourage you to apply.

Change.org is an open platform designed to serve people across the full range of viewpoints. Effectively supporting that mission requires teams with a wide variety of experiences, skills, and perspectives, which we consider essential to our work.

We are an equal opportunity employer and consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity [or expression], national origin, protected veteran status, disability, age, or any other status protected by law.

We're committed to protecting your data. To learn more, please review our Change.org Job Applicant Privacy Policy.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities throughout our recruitment process. If you need assistance or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know.

Change.org voluntarily collects limited demographic information for government reporting and to support our diversity and inclusion efforts. Providing this information is entirely optional and anonymous, and is not used in hiring decisions.

The categories in this survey are standardized and may not reflect how everyone describes themselves.

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