Northwest Arkansas Bike Business Innovation Team Director

Title: Northwest Arkansas Bike Business Innovation Team Director

Location: Benton County, Arkansas (PeopleForBikes is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado)

Industry: Bicycle Industry Nonprofit

Employment and Classification: “At will” employment status; full-time position

Position Summary

PeopleForBikes (PFB) seeks a full-time Director for its Northwest Arkansas Bike Business Innovation Team (“team”), based in Benton County, AR. The ideal candidate will work alongside the Northwest Bike Business Innovation Team Manager, leading the team of innovation and solutions experts who will guide Benton County employers, large and small, toward workplace-based programs that rapidly increase the number of employees who bike for transportation and recreation through programmatic and infrastructure interventions.  

Qualifications

• Leadership in program design, delivery and communications, around transportation demand management and commute programs, ideally with municipal, university and/or corporate transportation programs.

• Four-year college degree, all majors considered; experience can be substituted for years of advanced education.

• Thought leadership in planning principles and national and global strategies that increase bicycle use, as well as familiarity with the concepts of behavior change around mobility.

• Demonstrated success leading and managing teams and projects, in facilitation, and establishing mutually beneficial relationships with partners of all kinds.

• Demonstrated experience using verbal and written communication to achieve goals.

• Experience working with foundations, and receiving and/or dispersing grants. 

• Collaborative team approach to work and the ability to interface with external partners, people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

• The ability to self-direct, work independently (including from a remote office), comfortably juggle multiple projects and work on tight timelines.

• Understand and can speak to the importance of bicycling as a tool for promoting equity and opportunity for disadvantaged groups. 

• Experience developing strategies to address shared and unique barriers that prevent people of different cultures, backgrounds, and experiences from adopting bicycling.

• Willing to travel 10% of the time.

• PeopleForBikes will consider alternative ways that an applicant may have gained the required qualifications, outside of traditional pathways. 

Responsibilities 

The Northwest Arkansas Bike Business Innovation Team Director will lead a team and strategic partnerships, and use proven tactics designed to accelerate solutions for creating safe and inviting bicycling cultures in businesses in Benton County. Overcoming these challenges requires a dynamic, accelerated approach that leverages internal and external resources from PeopleForBikes, the business and outside partners. This is a leadership position that is designed to foster collaborative relationships with senior staff at Northwest Arkansas businesses as well as regional civic leaders, community partners, and organizational collaborators; inspire ideas and cultivate growth of pilot projects and other community-wide initiatives; bridge divides in perception; and build united coalitions of community partners; all in service of increasing employee-based bike riding. 

The director will also be expected to:

• Administer all aspects of this program, including but not limited to PeopleForBikes project managers, budget, schedules, external relationships and all project elements. 

• Oversee the design, implementation and management of action plans, communications and marketing methodologies.

• Make the business case and ROI to leadership as to why encouraging, incentivizing and measuring bicycling and active transportation in general helps foster a happier, healthier, more productive workforce.

• Present policy and communications solutions that mix bike mobility into broader community-wide transportation and economic solutions, with a focus on accelerated implementation and developing new approaches, and sourcing new innovative approaches for success based on best practices from around the world. 

• Provide insightful, practical recommendations to partners and team members about how to resolve difficult issues and find common interests.

• Focus relentlessly on impact and performance measurement: how initiatives perform, what stands in the way and what needs to change in order to reach targets. 

• Foster and leverage collaborative relationships with outside organizations, advisory board members, departments, funders, regional civic leaders, consultants, experts, community partners and external partners to achieve common goals, offer practical advice and confront barriers to change. 

• Work with and relate to people of different races, genders, socioeconomic classes, job types and other diversity of culture, background and experience. 

• Keep senior leadership informed and engaged on key decisions.

• Develop and manage partnerships and contracts with consultants and outside advisors. 

Compensation and Benefits

• This “at will” position offers a competitive salary commensurate with experience. A comprehensive benefits package is offered, which includes health insurance (at least a taxable stipend towards individual coverage), generous paid time off and optional participation in a deferred compensation plan, with immediate vesting. 

• The salary range for this position is $85,000 - $95,000. 

To Apply

Interested applicants should submit a resume, cover letter and one writing sample in one, single PDF file, via email, with “Bike Business Innovation Team Director” to PeopleForBikes director of state and local policy Morgan Lommele, at jobs@peopleforbikes.org. 

• The cover letter should be no longer than one page, and briefly explain the candidate’s interest in working at PeopleForBikes and applicable experience. 

• Telephone, in-person inquiries to PeopleForBikes staff or incomplete applications will not be accepted. 

• The position is available immediately and will remain open until July 17, 2020. 

• Interested applicants are encouraged to visit PeopleForBikes.org for general information and organizational background. 

• PeopleForBikes is an equal opportunity employer.

About PeopleForBikes

PeopleForBikes works to unite millions of Americans, thousands of businesses, and hundreds of communities to make every bike ride safer, more accessible, and more fun. We are a member-based organization whose constituents consist of companies in the bike industry, institutions with an interest in bicycling and 1.3 million grassroots supporters. PeopleForBikes has a Coalition that is the U.S. bicycle industry’s trade association and a Foundation that supports and promotes bicycling’s benefits and backs crucial bike infrastructure projects and programs.