Chief Legal Strategist

GLAD (Positively Partners)

GLBT Legal Advocates & Defenders

Job Description

As Chief Legal Strategist, your experience in and commitment to addressing racial justice, structural inequities, and LGBTQ+ equality will be central to your work in guiding and overseeing GLAD’s Legal Department’s litigation, legislative, and advocacy strategies.

Your vision and expertise will guide our legal strategy related to racial justice work (e.g. guiding the legal team’s work on police misconduct and brutality), foster and strengthen relationships with racial justice leaders in the LGBTQ+ community and help lead our internal work on racial justice, including participating in our ongoing work to ensure our organizational policies reflect our commitment to anti-racism. 

Leading a 10-person Legal Department including Project Directors, Staff Attorneys and Legal Assistants, the Chief Legal Strategist will oversee GLAD’s legal strategy and ensure excellence and efficacy in the execution of its work. You will leverage your exceptional ability to lead and manage a highly effective legal team, facilitate consensus-based decision making, while working to communicate and coordinate strategy across departments. You will work to prioritize the Legal Department’s caseload, based on capacity and in alignment with the team’s vision and strategy. As departmental leader, you will steward professional development, support, and advocacy for the team. Within GLAD, you will represent the legal team as a member of the Senior Management Team, aligning on organizational priorities and sharing the team’s work across the organization. 

You will be successful in this role if you can cultivate and leverage internal and external relationships, plan and support implementation of GLAD’s overall organizational and legal strategy, lead and develop a healthy and high-performing team, and predict and problem-solve gaps. An ideal candidate is a strategic visionary and innovative leader and facilitator with demonstrated competence for guiding and managing a department or organization at a similar stage of development, size, complexity, and trajectory. Applicants should demonstrate a knowledge of and concern for issues of racial equity and justice and an understanding of how structural injustice impacts the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals and people living with HIV.

Reporting to the Executive Director and serving as a member of the five-person Senior Management Team, the Chief Legal Strategist will be instrumental in furthering GLAD’s vision of advancing LGBTQ+ justice, lived equality, and racial justice both in New England and across the nation.


Key Responsibilities:

Advance GLAD’s legal strategy to expand and deepen equality for LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV at the state, regional, and federal levels

  • Steer and refine GLAD’s affirmative strategy to support and shape GLAD’s litigation, legislative, and policy work, with a focus on structural discrimination, lived equality, and racial justice.
  • Develop strategic frameworks for cases, issues, policy, and legislative work.
  • Oversee the case docket and policy/legislative/advocacy portfolio and ensure they are aligned with organizational strategies and goals.

Lead GLAD’s Legal Department with an authentic and adaptive approach

  • Consistent with GLAD’s racial justice and equity commitments, establish departmental priorities and manage resources to meet those priorities, including departmental structures, individual work plans, and evaluation processes. 
  • Oversee systems for promoting information flow, driving decisions, and increasing efficiencies, including facilitating weekly legal department meetings.
  • Model and facilitate effective and open communication within the Legal Department and throughout the organization.
  • Partner with the Executive Director and other members of the Senior Management Team on high-level organizational management and accountability.
  • Manage the department budget.
  • Prepare and present reports to the Board of Directors, and periodically attend evening and weekend board meetings.

Advance GLAD’s Constituent Engagement

  • In line with strategic priorities and racial justice and equity commitments, leverage staff attorneys, other organizational personnel, and direct participation to ensure GLAD is represented at national roundtable meetings, conferences, in the media, at community meetings, and at relevant events.
  • Participate in fundraising activities including engaging with donors and funders.
  • Foster strong relationships with legal and other advocates in state, regional, and national LGBTQ+, HIV, civil rights, and social justice organizations.

Qualifications

There are innumerable ways to learn, grow, and excel professionally. We respect this when we review applications and take a broad look at the experience of each applicant. We want to get to know you and the unique strengths you will bring to the work. This said, we are most likely to be interested in your candidacy if you can demonstrate the majority of the qualifications and experiences listed below.

  • A deep understanding of how impact litigation, legislation, policy, and education strategies are employed to expand civil rights.
  • Knowledge of the history and issues affecting LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV.
  • Sustained connection to and/or experience working in communities of color and historically-ignored communities.
  • Understanding of how multifaceted identities impact the lived experiences of the LGBTQ+ community and inform our legal strategies.
  • Progressive senior-level leadership experience with a proven track record of successfully leading, managing, and growing a performance- and outcomes-based department, organization, or enterprise, preferably within the legal, nonprofit or advocacy sector.
  • A management style that combines respectful collaboration with disciplined productivity
  • Exceptional listening and consensus-building skills to facilitate conversations and drive decisions.
  • Excellent strategic, analytical, and problem-solving skills with the ability to overcome challenges through the development of thoughtful and creative solutions. 
  • Exceptional oral and written communication, networking, and public engagement skills, including the ability to adapt style and approach to diverse constituencies and needs.
  • Ability to build sustainable and productive partnerships with nonprofits, philanthropic partners, academic institutions, and policy makers. Comfortable and capable of speaking to these constituents and other stakeholders about the power and potential of GLAD’s work.
  • Ability to compel others to action as a key storyteller of our path to impact and ongoing contributions to the communities we serve.
  • Deep understanding and experience of the law and legal strategy; JD preferred.
  • Capacity for travel and participation in events outside of regular work hours.

Compensation, Benefits + Location

GLAD offers a comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental and long-term disability insurance; 401(k) with employer contribution; three weeks’ vacation; supportive and friendly work environment dedicated to groundbreaking achievements for the LGBTQ+ community and people living with HIV.

The salary range for this position is $165,000-$175,000. GLAD is currently working largely remotely with a limited number of hours on site in GLAD’s office in Boston. The hours required in the office are expected to increase as the impact of the pandemic subsides.

This role is based in GLAD’s office in Boston and will require occasional travel within New England and, less frequently, to other U.S. destinations. More information to come about GLAD’s commitment to supporting relocation for candidates outside New England.


How to Apply

To apply to this position, please prepare a resume or CV and cover letter that addresses your relevant lived and professional experiences that prepare you for this role and your vision for advancing GLAD’s strategic priorities of racial and economic justice, state public policy work, and access to justice for the LGBTQ+ community. For confidential inquiries or for assistance in completing the application, please contact Alissa Farber via email at afarber@positivelypartners.org.