Executive Director

Povolania

Opis pracovnej pozície

The Positive Deviance Initiative is seeking an exceptional, dynamic person to serve as Executive Director, and to exponentially increase the scope and impact of the Positive Deviance approach on intractable problems by leveraging, guiding, and being guided by the emergent Positive Deviance community. Positive Deviance is a behavioral and social change approach, based on the observation that in every community or organization there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon practices and behaviors enable them to find better solutions to prevalent problems than their neighbors or colleagues who have access to the same resources. Located at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, the Positive Deviance Initiative (PDI) facilitates a global network positioned to identify and implement solutions to a myriad of systemic problems faced by communities around the world. Most commonly used with demonstrated success with vulnerable populations in the sectors of public health, healthcare, education, and nutrition, the Positive Deviance (PD) approach has most recently been applied to diverse sectors such as child protection issues, corporate issues, penal systems, conflict resolution, and public extortion. PD identifies and optimizes existing successful solutions and/or strategies within communities and/or organizations in order to solve problems that require behavioral and social change. PDI’s mission is to catalyze the use of the PD approach to measurably and sustainably improve the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people. Its vision is to improve the lives of 15 million people by 2015 by leveraging and connecting a thriving global PD community coalescing in a global movement. PDI is a young organization created in 2008 with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Collaborating with organizations and practitioners, the PDI offers workshops, trainings, technical support and online resources, as well as creates opportunities for convenings, to push the PD approach past the “tipping point” to be applied to complex problems around the world. As a networked organization, the PDI will act as a catalyst to help create, develop, and expand the global PD network. Reporting directly to the PDI Steering Committee, as well as a senior member of Tufts University’s Friedman School Administration and Finance division, this is not a typical Executive Director position. The successful candidate will possess an unusual mix of skills and experience required to further expand and diffuse the reach of the PD approach worldwide, beyond the foundation laid by the founders Jerry and Monique Sternin. The Executive Director has overall responsibility for leading, motivating, and setting the strategic direction for the PDI organization. In collaboration with key practitioners, organizational partners/funders, and existing advisors and leaders, s/he will be responsible for building overall strategy, functions, initiatives, and activities that support and influence PD’s global network. The end goal is not to build and promote an “organization” per se, but rather to develop an innovative and cutting edge global enterprise for the sole purpose of elevating PD, its worldwide network of practitioners, and the communities transformed by its work. Rather than implementing PD projects, the Initiative aims to support others in their efforts to deploy and continue to improve the methodology. The Executive Director will create a financially viable and operationally streamlined organization in order to achieve sustainable global impact through reliable income streams and the effective deployment of resources.

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