Principal Consultant

As a Principal Consultant, you will play an essential role in helping EA achieve our mission of creating more equitable educational and workplace settings by bringing in new engagements as well as leading engagements with higher education and workplace clients seeking to utilize Equity Accelerator’s evidence-based practices to advance Cultures of Growth. Principal Consultants are full-time employees who report to our Director of Technical Assistance (TA) and Consulting and work closely with internal project teams and client-side points of contact to ensure the successful shaping and delivery of client engagements in alignment with EA’s subject matter expertise and values and client’s desired outcomes.

Our Principal Consultants manage complex engagements ranging from shorter term standalone assessment or professional development training work to multi-site, multi-year transformational work. Principal Consultants are the primary client-facing team member in these engagements, leading the engagement’s delivery as the subject matter expert in organizational change management and collaborating with other EA subject matter experts where needed to bring in additional project management and research expertise.

The Principal Consultant will be the first hire joining the Director of TA and Consulting and will be a full-time employee building out EA’s consulting services, internal consulting processes, and advising internal and external partners.

Duties and Responsibilities

Principal Consultants report to EA’s Director of Technical Assistance and Consulting

Client Engagement + Relationship Management

• Serve as a key point of contact with clients across workplace and higher education markets, liaising with senior and executive members of client teams to advance clients’ desired outcomes and scope of work with EA. Coordinate with other EA team members to create and leverage EA's research expertise and tools and resources to provide cutting-edge, evidence-based support to clients.
• Translate strategies into concrete, actionable plans within the TA and Consulting service line and in consulting work across other service lines, as applies. Working with the Director of TA and Consulting, scope projects and coordinate efforts of additional team members.
• Manage client relationships directly and work cross-functionally across teams to ensure project timelines are met and deliverables are successfully achieved for clients.
• Communicate to a variety of audiences, including corporate leaders, faculty, and university administrators, as an effective spokesperson for EA's approach, process, and evidence base. Foster relationships at all levels, including with external executives at leading universities and companies. Clearly articulate the what, why, and how of the evidence-base to relevant parties, effectively and appropriately integrating EA evidence into consulting services.
• Lead client delivery - Create aesthetically pleasing and informative deliverables to convey EA’s evidence base and outcomes of our work. Facilitate client meetings of various types, including alignment meetings, informational meetings, focus groups, professional development and interviews, etc.
• Utilize subject matter expertise in organizational change management to shape and deliver EA’s evidence base to advance client goals. Use specialized knowledge to make recommendations regarding the way the work should be performed and can tailor change management approaches to meet the needs of individual(s) or context(s).
• With the Director of TA and Consulting, lead efforts to continuously improve customer satisfaction, delivery design, and delivery efficiency with respect to resource allocation and cost effectiveness toward project outcomes.
• With the Director of TA and Consulting, consult with and provide guidance to senior management and others working in/with EA on matters of technical assistance and consulting.

Project Planning and Management:

In projects without an additional project manager,

• Serve in a project manager capacity by leading an interdepartmental team to complete an assigned project on time, to specifications, and with accuracy and efficiency. Assign and monitor completion of tasks executed by project team members including EA staff, senior leaders, and contracted experts, as applied.
• Develop work plans with a timeline for project milestones and deliverables, map backwards to ensure all project activities can be accomplished on time.
• Manage project budgets and make recommendations on engagement pricing and optimal ways to manage engagements.
• Set interim deadlines for subtasks as needed to ensure project progress is consistent with overall timelines. Schedule and implement internal meeting schedules (project check-ins, monthly leadership-team updates) and prepare agendas, meeting notes, and project summaries.
• Integrate tasks for completion by project team members into work plan / project management system (e.g., Clickup).
• Monitor task progress and completion, keeping all EA project team members and stakeholders apprised of approaching deadlines for project milestones and deliverables.
• Conduct risk assessments; report identified risks to management; provide recommendations for mitigation of risk (including termination of the project if appropriate).
• Prepare and maintain full set of tasks, status, owners, timelines and deliverables to track decision making, preserve learning, and ensure effective knowledge sharing over time and across projects.
• Model clear and transparent communication, ensuring that all EA collaborators (e.g. staff, independent contractors) have appropriate and explicit information necessary to execute their roles and client points of contact are kept apprised of key milestones and updates for their role.

Business Development and External Communications:

• Serve as an ambassador for Equity Accelerator in the community to grow EA’s client portfolio and support clients broadly in their efforts to create and sustain a culture of growth.
• Working with the Director of TA and Consulting, support market research and proposal development for prospective engagements.
• Contribute to external facing communications including project materials (flyers, memos, resources), project reports, and academic presentations or publications as needed.
• Identify and support strategic opportunities to promote EA’s brand, and share EA’s subject matter expertise through writing, speaking engagements, and social media. Present/facilitate and participate in conferences, workshops, and webinars hosted by Equity Accelerator and other industry groups.
• Support follow up communications with potential clients to develop client relationships.

Mentorship and Influence

• Influence consultative culture across the organization and responsible for contributing substantially to vision around consulting in the organization, in coordination with the Director of TA and Consulting.
• Find ways to scale their impact across the team (via documentation, mentorship, training, tool/process creation, etc.) and to scale the ability of the organization to manage more engagements while maintaining quality.
• Use knowledge of organizational strategy and goals, trends in the industry at large, and relevant competition to identify opportunities for the organization to take on new work or significantly streamline existing work.
• This role is currently an individual contributor (IC) role, without direct people management responsibilities. Over time, the Principal Consultant may manage hiring and performance of direct reports. In these cases, develop a high-functioning and successful team. Lead team goal-setting and define deliverables and timelines.
• A career mentor for other people, sought after for advice. Strong influencer of team culture through the enforcement and modeling of organizational values. Give actionable constructive feedback to help make the cross-functional teams working on consulting engagements better.

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time.

More details on key competencies and preferred qualifications are on our website posting, which is here: https://accelerateequity.org/jd-principal-consultant/

Full-time regular employees enjoy:

• Fully Remote work - work from anywhere in the US
• Flexible schedules that balance autonomy and collaboration
• 42 days of paid time off (vacation, PTO, and paid holidays) annually
• 15 days of sick leave, earned at 1.25 days month
• Laptop computer for work tasks, plus additional $150 equipment stipend
• $500 a year of discretionary professional development funds
• Collaborative, genuinely awesome colleagues from a wide range of professional and personal backgrounds
• Medical benefits for employees and family members
• Dental insurance and vision discount plan
• Healthcare flexible spending account
• Dependent care assistance spending account
• 401k with 10% employer match at 5% employee contribution, beginning after 6 months of employment
• Employer provided life insurance
• EA provides a one-time bonus after 4 years of full-time employment, and a paid sabbatical of 4 weeks after 7 years of full-time employment, based on approval of the sabbatical project