Embedded Operations Partner — Work Side by Side with Incarcerated Leaders Reshaping Justice

The Role

You'll spend one four-hour session per week on-site at San Quentin, embedded with the incarcerated leadership team during a structured working block. You're not observing. You're in the work.

The leadership team sets the direction. Your job is to help them execute it — in real time, in the room, with the tools and access they can't reach on their own.

What a working session looks like:

• No two sessions are the same. In a given week you might be building an event timeline, capturing metrics across a program area, drafting a follow-up to a VIP partner, updating project boards, or jumping on a Zoom call and taking notes while the conversation is live.
• The common thread: the leadership team sets direction, and you help them move it forward.

Who This Is For

• You're organized, resourceful, and comfortable walking into a working session without a rigid script.
• You can take direction from incarcerated leaders and add value without needing to lead.
• You're the kind of person who hears a plan and immediately start thinking about what needs to happen next.

What you bring

• Operations, project management, or program coordination experience — professional or volunteer
• Comfort with tools like Google Workspace, Zoom, and Monday.com (or similar)
• Strong follow-through — if you take a note, it becomes an action
• The ability to work as a peer alongside people whose lives and context are very different from yours
• Reliability — the team builds their week around these sessions, and your presence is what makes them possible

Helpful but not required

• Nonprofit, civic, or community organizing experience
• Familiarity with event production or stakeholder management
• Background in data, metrics, or program evaluation

The Impact

Most organizations keep their most important people farthest from the work. SkunkWorks does the opposite. The people leading this organization are incarcerated — and we are building something that is changing how the country thinks about justice, rehabilitation, and who gets to lead.

Location

#484