Strategic Partnership Officer

About the Role

The Strategic Partnership Officer will work with the Firm’s President to manage all aspects of the Firm’s current and potential limited partner (“Partner”)-facing functions and processes, including Partner relationship-building, acquisition, relationship-management, and due diligence. This role involves collaborating with the President to grow the Firm and manage all external communications and stakeholder management.

Discerene seeks to recruit and grow relationships with philosophically aligned long-term Partners, not acquire customers. The Strategic Partnership Officer must reimagine the traditional investor-relations or business-development role from first principles. The goal is to build an integrated, high-performing, high-trust generational investment partnership of like-minded givers.

Key questions the Strategic Partnership Officer will explore include:

• How can Discerene become the Partnership that it aspires to be?
• How should we serve our Partners in the most difference-making way?
• How can we bring our resources, knowledge, experience, and networks to bear to help our Partners succeed?
• How do we create positive feedback loops within the Discerene Partnership, such that additional Discerene Partners create value for all other Partners, not just for Discerene?
• What processes, systems, and norms do we need to establish so that small competitive advantages of the Discerene Partnership cascade and compound over an investing lifetime?

The role is about making these answers come alive in tangible, purposeful, and lasting ways.

Requirements

• Strong multitasking, organizational, and process-management skills.
• Strong relationship-building and relationship-management skills, with a passion for serving others and helping them succeed.
• Effective written and oral communication skills, particularly the ability to synthesize large amounts of facts and data succinctly and coherently.
• Intrinsic grit, perseverance, sense of ownership, drive, and will to win.
• Willingness to doggedly work at overcoming obstacles to accomplish challenging goals.
• “Doer + Thinker”: A bias toward action and willingness to roll up your sleeves, combined with strategic thinking about whether the right things are being done.
• Ability to creatively and critically solve problems from first principles, without anchoring on conventional wisdom or industry norms.
• Intellectual curiosity and genuine passion for learning, especially about value investing as a craft.
• Teamwork skills: Flexibility and willingness to contribute to a small team, uphold its culture and values, and work toward common goals. Instinctive and generous sharing of knowledge; empathetic and active listener.
• Patience, especially the ability to think and act long-term.
• Sound understanding of business and investing.
• Proven track record of success in previous relationship-building and relationship-management roles.