Communications Officer

Position description

Established in July 2022 and based in New York City, Columbia Global (CG) brings together major initiatives from across the university to advance knowledge and foster global engagement to address complex global challenges. Through interdisciplinary research, education, collaboration, and directed action, Columbia Global fosters groundbreaking scholarship, facilitates leadership development, advances cutting-edge thinking, and implements projects designed for social impact.

Position Summary

Reporting to the Senior Director of Communications, the Communications Officer (CO) will support communications activities and efforts designed to raise awareness and increase the visibility and profile of CG programs, activities, events and thought leadership. As a key member of the communications team, the CO will be responsible for working closely with teams across Columbia Global entities to promote their work to key stakeholders, execute on key events, identify the most compelling stories of impact and find synergies across programmatic work that can be elevated on Columbia Global platforms, including internally.

Responsibilities

Project communications (50%)

• Work together with the Director of Communications to support project teams across Columbia Global in producing the communications outputs related to the promotion of programming in priority CG thematic areas.
• Write, edit and distribute various types of content, including material for Columbia Global web properties (CG, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia World Projects), press releases, marketing material and other types of content that take programmatic messages to the public
• Manage design, content, and delivery of targeted e-newsletter and event communications.
• With Senior Director oversight, produce materials for strategic fundraising and development.
• Collaborate with the Digital Communications Officer to design and produce branded communications materials and to post content either originating from the communications team or provided by other teams (e.g., brochures, web stories).
• Identify, write, and/or edit high visibility stories, news, and print projects.
• Assist in writing and producing organizational reports.
• Help to design presentations and collateral, as needed.

Events Marketing & Promotion (20%)

• Manage the promotion of internal and external activities and events in New York where the CG brand is engaged.
• Support project teams in the strategic planning, producing, and publicizing of events
• Liaise with the CG Administration team and other University offices associated with campus event logistics.
• Manage event contractors including photographers, videographers and film-makers.
• Work with Digital Communications Officer to gather data and conduct analysis on special projects or event communications.

Communications planning, protocol, processes and implementation (15%)

• Identify and create templates and protocols necessary to train teams on communicating effectively on behalf of Columbia Global.
• Maintain global events and editorial calendars.
• Work with the CG finance team to manage payment processing for vendors.

Management and production of internal news and reporting (10%)

• Develop, maintain, and continuously improve comprehensive internal news reporting.
• Assist in writing content and producing internal reports for senior management (e.g., quarterly impact reporting) using data collected by Communications team members.
• Support the rollout and promotion of the Columbia Global brand internally as well as the templates and protocols developed by the Communications team.

Other Duties as assigned (5%)

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• A Bachelor’s degree in communications, marketing, public policy, or a social impact-related field and 3-5 years of related experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing strategic communications and collateral and marketing in public policy, social impact, or a related field.
• Excellent writing and editorial skills.
• Ability to synthesize complex technical/scientific language for layperson understanding.
• Experience with managing vendor relationships, including processing contracts and invoices.
• Strong presentation skills and the ability to do basic graphic layout.
• Skills in measuring, reporting, and analyzing communications metrics.
• Strong interpersonal, time management, and coordination skills.
• Advanced degree preferred.

Other Requirements

Hybrid Schedule

Columbia Global maintains a hybrid work environment that ensures that we preserve the important aspects of our unique in-person university campus culture that support meaningful collaboration and advancement of CG key initiatives. Colleagues will work onsite three of five work days and two virtual days.

Application instructions

Please be sure to indicate you saw this position on tendersglobal.net