Associate Director, Advocacy Impact

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) helps people affected by humanitarian crises to survive, recover and rebuild their lives. We deliver lasting impact by providing health care, helping children learn, and empowering individuals and communities to become self-reliant, always with a focus on the unique needs of women and girls. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, we now work in over 40 crisis-affected countries as well as communities throughout the U.S., Europe and Latin America.

The Global Policy and Advocacy team is a dynamic part of the External Relations Department that leverages the power of IRC’s ideas to solve the biggest challenges facing IRC’s clients across the “arc of crisis.” The Policy and Advocacy team are leaders in understanding crisis, seeking to mitigate it and connecting our analysis to actionable recommendations. We work to make impacts at scale and drive policy solutions forward from the ground up and top down. We remain focused on delivering funding for fragile states and communities and creating the conditions on the ground to support the uptake of our solutions. We are connectors, entrepreneurs, and experts in solutions. We translate IRC research and program evidence into actionable, policy-relevant recommendations.

Job Overview/Summary:

Under Strategy 100, the IRC has committed to reaching 40 million clients annually by 2033. Advocacy is how the IRC turns frontline experience into the public pressure, political will, and resources needed to close that gap, and this role will be at the center of making that advocacy sharper, more creative, and more effective.

The Associate Director, Advocacy Impact will define targeted advocacy strategies that advance IRC's highest-priority objectives, and will ensure those strategies translate into measurable, at-scale impact for people affected by crisis. This role will lead the development of integrated advocacy strategies that connect country program crisis priorities with Refugee, Asylum, and Integration (RAI) priorities, identifying where the two portfolios can reinforce one another and amplify a single, cohesive IRC voice, including at high-profile global advocacy moments.

This is a role for someone energized by breakthrough thinking: pushing IRC's advocacy beyond the expected, through bold campaigns, high-impact visits, and sharp written products that command attention. The Associate Director will spearhead new models for advocacy engagement — including virtual visits to IRC country programs and mechanisms to coordinate advocacy in locations where IRC does not currently have a dedicated advocate — extending the reach and influence of IRC's global advocacy network into places it hasn't yet touched.

Working closely with the Policy and Advocacy team's System’s Change for Aid Impact and Policy and Solutions teams, this role will help craft advocacy strategies that advance IRC's Impact at Scale priorities, and will lead a collaborative, IRC-wide effort to power map influential advocacy stakeholders, sharpening and targeting IRC's advocacy wherever it engages. Success in this role depends on building and sustaining strong relationships and processes at every level, working fluidly across the Policy and Advocacy team and the broader IRC to keep advocacy impact at scale at the center of the organization's agenda.

This is a strategic, cross-cutting role for someone who can move fluidly between setting advocacy priorities across a complex portfolio and getting into the weeds of campaign tactics, government engagement plans, and impact tracking.

Major Responsibilities

Drive advocacy impact at scale: Champion IRC’s priority of achieving advocacy impact at scale by ensuring Policy and Advocacy strategies are designed, resourced, and sequenced to deliver influence commensurate with the scale of crises IRC responds to. Work with team leads to define what impact at scale means for their portfolios, and build the frameworks needed to advocate to key stakeholders, track success, and report on it.

Maximize global advocacy moments: Lead cross-team planning and coordination to maximize IRC’s influence around high-profile global moments, such as the UN General Assembly, ensuring the organization speaks with one voice, sequences asks and products effectively, and converts moment-specific attention into durable advocacy gains. Identify moments within multilateral processes (board meetings, replenishments, high-level assemblies, negotiations) where targeted advocacy can shift outcomes.

Expand and diversify advocacy engagement models: Identify, pilot, and scale new approaches to advocacy engagement, including virtual visits to IRC country programs that bring external decision-makers and influencers closer to IRC’s field operations, and mechanisms to coordinate advocacy in geographies where IRC does not currently have a dedicated advocate on the ground, ensuring these locations remain connected to and represented within IRC’s global advocacy strategy.

Drive creative campaigns to achieve IRC's advocacy objectives: Support market directors in power-mapping key stakeholders, identifying creative advocacy strategies, and developing breakthrough ideas that bring IRC's policy products to life.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to: Senior Director or Vice President

Position directly supervises: N/A (Potential to supervise staff in the future)

Other Internal and/or external

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