The Roots of Progress Institute is hiring a full-time, in-house event manager to run our annual Progress Conference (at Lighthaven!) and other events. See the job ad below, crossposted in full from the link above.
Fully remote, full-time
We’re looking for a super-organized self-starter who loves bringing people together in person around a shared set of ideas and who is great at creating magical experiences.
The Roots of Progress Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to establishing a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century. We’re part of a larger progress and abundance movement, and one key role we play within this movement is to develop talent and to build community.
As the Event Manager, you’ll be in charge of our annual progress conference, which brings together 200-300 thinkers and doers in the progress community. Our first event in October 2024 was a huge success, with 200+ invitation-only attendees coming together at a unique venue for two days. Dozens of attendees shared that this was the best conference they ever attended, and that it was “THE network to connect with the founders, writers, academics, and activists working to build a better world.” You will be running the event next year, and of course get to attend it, too! You will also be in charge of other events, from smaller fundraising salon-type gatherings, to the in-person gathering at the end of our annual writer’s fellowship.
This role reports to Heike Larson, our Vice President of Programs. It is a full-time position that is fully remote within in the contiguous US or Canada, but ideally, you’ll be located in/near a city with a major airport as the role requires a couple of multi-day trips every quarter, and around ten days on-site during the time of the annual conference.
You love organizing events that bring people together and enable them to learn and form communities. You are good at creating delightful experiences and working with a wide range of partners, remotely. You’re excited about working in a small team, where you iterate on programs, learn from feedback, and improve quickly. You are thrilled when an event you put on leads to a new project, an essay written, or a partnership formed.
Event management is work with cycles of intense engagement, alternating with slower periods. You’re a high-energy person who can handle travel, power through a couple of 16-hour days during events, and can then take a day or two off to recharge.
As the Event Manager, your initial main focus will be organizing and running the annual progress conference. This will include working closely with our event partners, from an event planning firm, to the venue, to sponsors, as well as communicating with speakers and attendees.
Here are some specific areas of work that you will handle right away:
Once you’re onboarded and have successfully executed next year’s conference, we’d love for you to grow into iterating to make the conference better each year, and take on most of the conference design as well as much of the relationship management with speakers, partners, vendors, and participants. We expect you’ll also expand your work to include adding regional conferences and maybe even one in Europe within the next couple of years—all efforts you could help create and shape.
You will also be running a range of smaller regional events, such as salon dinners for donors and local community in different US cities. In 2024, we hosted events in LA, San Francisco, Boston, and New York City. You’ll also work with Emma McAleavy, our fellowship manager, on the in-person events happening as part of the fellowship program.
Since we’re a small team, expect about 30% of your time to be called upon for other projects. This could include helping Heike explore new program opportunities, managing logistics for some video production projects, assisting Jason with his book launch tour, or supporting Emma on fellowship tasks during application crunch time.
The Roots of Progress Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to establishing a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century.
Why study progress? The progress of the last few centuries—in science, technology, industry, and the economy—is one of the greatest achievements of humanity. But progress is not automatic or inevitable. We must understand its causes so that we can keep it going, and even accelerate it.
We need a new philosophy of progress. To make progress, we must believe that it is possible and desirable. The 19th century believed in the power of technology and industry to better humanity, but in the 20th century, this belief gave way to skepticism and distrust.
We need a new way forward. We need a systematic study of progress, so we can understand what is needed to keep progress going. We also need to advocate for progress. We need a progress movement that both explains and champions these ideas and puts forth a vision that inspires us to build. **Read more about the progress movement.**
We currently have three main programs, with more on the horizon:
Benefits include health insurance, a 401(k) program you can contribute to, and a $500 per year education stipend so you can subscribe to your favorite progress bloggers and buy progress books. But the most important perk is joining a small team of three passionate and highly productive people where you’ll play a key role in building an organization that is central in creating a flourishing progress movement!
We believe a good application process allows us to get to know you, and you to get a feel for what it’s like working with us. We move quickly through this general process, which we expect to have roughly these steps:
For the finalist candidates, we will require two references that we can call before making an offer.
This position went live on November 22nd, 2024, and our goal is to have someone start by no later than March 1st, 2025.