National Communications Director

## **Lead TechTonic Justice’s national communications strategy to expose AI harms, build public power, and advance justice for low-income communities**

### **About TechTonic Justice, Inc.**
Governments, landlords, employers, and other powerful actors use artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and related technologies to make decisions about how low-income people work, live, learn, and survive. When people are hurt by AI decision-making, they have few places to turn. TechTonic Justice exists to change this.

TechTonic Justice fights the ground-level harms AI causes low-income communities. We do this mainly by supporting local justice movements—legal aid organizations, frontline service providers, grassroots organizers, and affected communities—to identify and fight harmful uses of AI. We emphasize a multidimensional advocacy approach that blends litigation, community activation and organizing, public education, and narrative advocacy. We are based in Los Angeles and offer our services nationwide, with emphasis on the South and the West Coast.

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## **Description**
Governments, landlords, employers, and other powerful actors use artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and related technologies to make decisions about how low-income people work, live, learn, and survive. When people are hurt by AI decision-making, they have few places to turn. TechTonic Justice (TTJ) exists to change this.

TTJ fights the ground-level injustice AI causes low-income communities by blending legal advocacy, community organizing, public education, and storytelling to (1) reduce immediate harms and (2) build the long-term power needed to win systemic protections. To these ends, we focus on and work with local justice movements—legal aid organizations, frontline service providers, grassroots organizers, civil rights advocates, and affected communities—to identify and resist harmful uses of AI. The primary substantive issue areas our work touches on are public benefits (primarily Medicaid, SNAP, Social Security, and Unemployment Insurance), K–12 education, workers’ rights, and housing.

TTJ publicly launched in November 2024. The Communications Director will be the 13th member of our fast-growing team. We are inspired by dozens of collective years of justice work in the U.S. South with an ongoing commitment to the region, have teammates in several states/regions (California, the South, the DC area, and New England), offer services nationwide, and do state-level work in Arkansas and California.

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## **Position Description and Responsibilities**
The Communications Director is a permanent, full-time, remote role. Candidates must live in the continental U.S. (unfortunately, we cannot hire someone in Hawai’i or Alaska for this role) and, due to the many time zones involved, should anticipate working a schedule that maximizes availability between 9 am and 2 pm Pacific time.

The Communications Director will ensure we communicate effectively to key national, state, and local audiences, prioritizing:

1. Low-income communities
2. Grassroots movement partners
3. Legal aid and frontline advocates, and their direct advocates in antipoverty efforts and grassroots movements
4. Policymakers
5. Professional policy advocates who are more distant from the ground
6. Institutional funders
7. Targeted parts of the general public

The aim of all such communication is to build trust with our audiences so that we increase engagement with our issues and approach, expand the reach of our harm reduction efforts, strengthen our organizing, and maintain and expand funding opportunities. Successfully balancing various audiences, focuses, and purposes (e.g., state comms needs may differ from those of our national strategy) is a critical feature of the role.

The Communications Director will develop and execute a strategy aligned with these priorities, understanding that we see the narrative landscape as a critical front in our multi-dimensional fight against AI injustice. Put otherwise, we want someone who sees themselves as an advocate whose primary tool (or weapon) is communications.

The Communications Director will supervise TTJ’s Digital Manager, who manages our day-to-day social media work, and future Comms roles we may add. The senior-level position reports directly to TTJ’s President and includes the following activities:

### **Key Responsibilities**
– Bolstering TTJ’s presence in traditional media through strategies that could include cultivating relationships with key reporters and outlets, proactively pitching stories and securing coverage, positioning TTJ staff as expert sources, and placing OpEds.
– Bolstering “new media” presence by reaching influencers, streamers, podcasters, YouTubers, and related content creators and outlets and preparing our team to engage with them successfully.
– Supervising and expanding our digital engagement efforts, including via social media (text, photo, and video platforms), partner toolkits, newsletters, webinars, our website, and alternative spaces, with particular focus on increasing audience size, intensifying audience engagement, and recruiting activated people into our digital organizing pipeline.
– Managing the design, graphics, and distribution of written work (e.g., guides, toolkits, frameworks, fact sheets, and reports).
– Amplifying the reach and impact of a first-in-the-field model of a Story Fellow with a distinguished background in journalism.
– Building and institutionalizing TTJ’s Communications Department, including developing operating procedures, cross-team information flows, performance indicators, a departmental spend budget, and relationships with ecosystem partners.
– Strengthening organizational communications practices by developing strategy, devising narrative campaigns, building storytelling vehicles (audio, visual, animation, zines, etc.), executing plans, testing messages, training teammates, harmonizing language, and doing rapid-response work when appropriate.

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## **Requirements**
The successful candidate must possess the skills and experience needed to fulfill the responsibilities above, including:

– Extensive experience working as a communications professional with high-stakes responsibilities meeting deadlines in a fast-paced environment, including at least modest experience supervising paid full-time teammates.
*Note: To succeed in this role, we estimate that a person would need at least 8–10 years of experience and at least 2 years of supervisory experience, but these are not strict thresholds.*
– Experience thriving in a dynamic start-up environment where systems and processes are still being built, immediate needs may shift, and teammates must adapt flexibly.
– Extensive networks among some combination of established journalists and news outlets, new media creators and platforms, and social change organizations or movements, with concrete plans to build out missing networks.
– Deep familiarity with current topics, trends, and personalities sufficient to take advantage of often-narrow windows of cultural relevance.
– Outstanding writing skills.
– Strong sense of visual design and experience working iteratively with and managing graphic designers.
– Ability to work independently with minimal supervision, including proactively identifying needs, exercising good judgment, executing tasks with attention to detail, synthesizing complex topics into digestible written work, and knowing when to ask questions.
– Significant experience in justice-focused work in a nonprofit or nonprofit-adjacent environment, preferably within anti-poverty, tech justice, or civil rights ecosystems.
*Note: We do not expect the Communications Director to possess all needed substantive expertise upon starting; we will provide support and time to learn.*
– Empathy, righteous fury, and a sense of humor.
– Collaborative spirit, cultural competence, and skills needed to work affirmingly with diverse teammates, partners, coalition members, consultants, and the communities we serve.
– Comfort articulating intersections between poverty, race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, language, age, disability, and related characteristics.

### **Desired but not required**
– Ability to create compelling graphic designs.

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## **Be Encouraged to Apply**
If you meet many, but not all, of the requirements, please still consider applying or email us to ask about where you fall short.

We encourage applications from Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, women, LGBTQI+ people, people with disabilities, formerly incarcerated people, and people most impacted by systemic injustice.

Employment decisions are made based on qualifications and organizational needs, without regard to race, national origin, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, citizenship status, disability, marital status, veteran status, or any protected characteristic under applicable law.

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## **Salary**
$120,000 – $140,000 per year, depending on experience. Current budget projections anticipate annual cost-of-living salary increases. Service time raises are anticipated but still to be determined. The position is exempt. Employment is at-will.

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## **Schedule Flexibility**
TechTonic Justice allows flexibility in scheduling regular work hours to fit the successful candidate’s personal situation, including health needs or caregiving responsibilities. This flexibility is limited by organizational needs, including availability for internal and external meetings.

Candidates should anticipate working a schedule that maximizes availability between 9 am and 2 pm Pacific time (with some flexibility). Candidates should also anticipate regular deviation from scheduled work hours to complete deadline-driven projects.

***Presently, we do not anticipate offering regular four-day workweeks.***

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## **Benefits**
The benefits package presently includes:

1. 100% of the employee’s platinum-level medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance
2. 50% of dependents’ medical, dental, and vision
3. Automatic TTJ contribution of 4% of annual salary to a Vanguard 403(b) retirement account (vests after one year)
4. Unlimited paid time off, subject to approval
5. Monthly internet reimbursement up to $75
6. Professional development fund of $1,500

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## **Travel**
Anticipate 2–4 trips per year, plus 2 in-person staff retreats. TechTonic Justice covers mileage, airfare, hotels, meals, and other necessary travel costs.

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## **To Apply**
Submit the following via our Careers page by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time on August 16. Late applications will not be considered.

### **Application Questions (in lieu of a cover letter)**
– Up to 150 words: What specifically about TechTonic Justice’s mission and approach interest you? How will joining us advance our work and your career development?
– Up to 200 words: Describe your experience fighting for justice through narrative advocacy. Include specific examples of campaigns and explain how your work contributed to their success.
– Up to 150 words: What differences do you perceive between your past communication experiences and communicating about AI injustice with an anti-poverty lens? How does your experience prepare you to succeed here?
– Up to 100 words: Other relevant information you want to expand on.

### **Required Materials**
– Resume (up to 5 pages)
– Relevant writing sample (up to 5 pages) plus up to 1 page of explanatory context
– One up-to-4-minute sample of “new media” content you created or contributed to, plus up to 1 page of explanatory context (include working links and time markers)

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## **Process**
TTJ aims to review all applications within two weeks of the deadline. Promising applicants will be selected for a first interview in early-to-mid September. Selected interviewees will move to a second round within two weeks. We will check finalists’ references and may request a short exercise. A third round may occur if needed.

We plan to extend an offer by early October with a likely start date in late October or early November.

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## **Accommodations**
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities during the application process and after hiring. Please write to [email protected] to request accommodations.

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## **Questions**
Please submit any questions to [email protected]. Please do not call unless needed for accommodation purposes.