Executive Director of UC Eco-Resilience Initiative

Job Summary

This position is for an Executive Director role of a UC wide initiative. The Eco-Anxiety Initiative is an psychoeducational and community building project for UC students and faculty that takes place at all 10 UC campuses, in person, as well as unites campuses through virtual events and occasional in person retreats or summer institutes. The Initiative involves delivering for credit educational classes to undergraduates as well as research projects evaluating the impact of the class on student and faculty skills and mental health.

About the Role

Applies wide-ranging experience to manage and lead this complex and unprecedented project that impacts the UCSF campus, all UC campuses, and makes bridges with community partnerships. Leads projects with no campus or University of California Office of the President precedent where strong leadership in coalition building across all levels of UC, departments and centers, UC campus undergraduate education leadership roles is required, as well as analysis of situations and data that requires an in-depth evaluation of variable factors. The incumbent for this leadership role is a subject matter expert in the topic of personal and social resilience to the polycrisis and specifically the ecological crisis, and helps with curriculum building and optimization. The incumbent works with teaching teams and administration leaders at each campus, as well as helps disseminate the curriculum to other universities. The incumbent works with the Eco-Resilience team leaders at UCSF, UC Davis, and UC San Diego to plan related projects to serve the initiative, such as a year long set of meetings for the undergraduates to build psychoeducational training among a group of new Eco-Resilience Fellows. The incumbent will influence and guide the project management methods and processes used across all projects. Projects may be passed off to the Leadership Team and staff to implement and maintain. Requires level of expertise in project management of educational and health initiatives, as well as experience working with the Eco-Resilience Initiative.

Department Summary

The role will be housed in the Center for Health and Community (CHC) of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. The CHC is an interdisciplinary research center focused on understanding differences in health across communities and creating better health for all subpopulations of the community. The Eco-Resilience Initiative is based at the CHC, and is also part of the UC Wide Center for Climate, Health and Equity (CCHE). The CCHE oversees educational, health, and policy initiatives to help mitigate the negative impact of extreme weather disasters and the changing climate.

Responsibilities

• Supervision and collaboration of projects across 10 campuses: Manages the highly sophisticated project management process for products and services with broad, multi-institutional scope. Provides guidance to internal and external personnel: UCSF team, and 9 campus teams (faculty, teachers, administrators, and student leaders) on the class, research evaluation, and related projects. Directs, initiates, and designs projects critical to support enterprise level projects. Has overall project management responsibility for these broad, cross campuswide, projects.
• Leads and organizes the multi institutional activities, identify and escalate risks and facilitate innovative solutions and negotiate additional resources to complete the project or achieve the project goal. Accountable for completing the project on schedule and within budget constraints. Interacts with senior internal and external personnel from staff to deans and UCOP leaders.
• Teacher Training at UC and External Dissemination of Class: Works with the UC leadership team in maintaining training of UC teachers and identifying qualified teachers across UCs and outside institutions. Leads dissemination of the course to outside institutions, helping select campuses and teachers. Serves as liason with the external teachers, both mindfulness teachers and university faculty, develops timeline and program for training, oversees the in person and virtual training. Oversees dissemination of curriculum materials using digital and in person components.
• Affords assistance to the leadership team with grant writing

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in related area and minimum five years of experience / or equivalent experience / training.
• Graduate degree in medical or health sciences (MD or PhD).
• Teaching experience in mindfulness and psychosocial resilience skills.
• Experience in management of educational initiatives or networks in healthcare and in mindfulness.
• Demonstrated ability to integrate critical information across disciplines.
• Advanced knowledge of climate resilience psychosocial education initiatives and an understanding of impact to the organization of such initiatives.
• Demonstrated attention to detail.
• Demonstrated ability to determine relevance and prioritize tasks.
• Demonstrated writing skills for research publications, and for grants.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively communicate with executive-level management on a regular basis.
• Experienced mentor and leader of teams of professionals.
• Project management certification from a reputable organization such as PMP, CSM or ACP to include a qualifying exam and / or quality assurance processes like Six Sigma or Lean or equivalent project management experience required.