Ashoka - Youth Years Leader (Europe) - UK

For a general introduction to Ashoka and how this leadership role fits into the European and global Ashoka work, see the broader context and overview text further below.

Over four decades of work, Ashoka has distilled four essential changemaking elements. Its mission now is to ensure that every person has an opportunity, from childhood, to master them. We realised that these changemaking skills are now as necessary as literacy was in the Industrial Age. They are essential for living and working in our fast-changing world.

At Ashoka, we believe the following elements are essential for living and working in our fast-changing world:

• Conscious Empathy: The ability to be aware of and understand our own, other individuals’ and groups’ perspectives, and to use that understanding to recognise patterns over time and guide one’s actions to contribute to the good of all.
• Sophisticated Teamwork: The ability to contribute and thrive in a fluid ecosystem of teams that mobilises around a problem or opportunity.
• New Leadership: The capacity, as a leader, to envision, enable, and ensure that every player is an initiator and sees the big picture.
• Practicing Changemaking: The process of creating a novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society rather than to private individuals.

You will lead Ashoka’s efforts across Europe to reform the institutions that shape how young people grow up to ensure every young person leaves secondary school having mastered these four changemaking elements.

Specifically, you will create strategic and deeply rooted partnerships with ministries of education, public school systems, teacher unions, educational publishers, teacher training schools and other relevant organisations to put changemaking at the core of their strategies. A key ambition is to quantifiably influence the education systems and youth-focused media to prioritise graduating changemakers through new curricula and syllabi and related teaching materials.

You will not do this alone. Ashoka has a wealth of proven tools to build strategic partnerships. For example, one core program – Ashoka Young Changemakers (AYC) – involves a rigorous selection process that engages directly with young people and supports them in becoming changemakers through the transformative experience of launching and leading their own community-minded ventures.

Success in the first year in this role would: (a) agree two partnerships with influential players and (b) advance at least one place-based model that is tracking to decreasing direct support from Ashoka. Within five years we would expect to see progress on two metrics that illustrate what societal paradigm change looks like in practice: (1) the percentage of secondary school students in Europe who self-identify as changemakers, and (2) the proportion of school leaders who define success by the extent to which their schools are graduating changemakers.

We are looking for extraordinary leaders. Ashoka’s vision is Everyone A Changemaker (EACH). We want the world’s most influential organisations to commit to working in ways that activate the potential for every individual to contribute for the good of all – i.e., to be changemakers.

This document is written for experienced leaders who might be interested in this full-time staff role, or who may wish to nominate someone.

For more than 40 years, Ashoka has been identifying and connecting world-leading social entrepreneurs to drive systems-changing solutions to our biggest problems. We have learned from Ashoka Fellows how to create communities of changemakers, and how to create ecosystems of support for changemaking.

The tools of our trade are conscious empathy, sophisticated teamwork, new leadership, and practicing changemaking. Amongst other things, they constitute our distinctive way to the egalitarian democratic promise of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

If you are ready, willing, and able to lead this work, we look forward to getting better acquainted, answering your questions, and asking some of our own.

Ashoka’s recruitment team wants to have an authentic, collaborative conversation with you that foregrounds your interests and aspirations as we reach for the fit between you and Ashoka.

The small print:

• Annual gross base salary: £103,685 - £110,000 (with flexibility for the right candidate based on skills and experience)
• Discretionary annual performance-based bonus (up to 10%) and discretionary Senior Leader Equity Pay.
• 25 annual leave days per year (pro-rata) plus bank holidays; up to 5 days can be carried over to the next year.
• Flexible working arrangements.
• Occupational maternity and paternity pay.
• Occupational sick pay and leave.
• 3% employer pension contribution.
• Flexible Leave Days (approval needed in advance): Birthday leave, bereavement leave, emergency leave, unpaid leave, religious observance, family/personal events leave, study leave, volunteering days and other types of leave as needed.
• Mental health support.
• Professional development budget.
• Employee referral scheme.
• Employee Assistance Program.

Ashoka is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive and welcoming environment for every person who walks through our doors. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need. Ashoka celebrates and embraces diversity.