Director 2

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POSITION DESCRIPTION

Executive Director

Justice for Everybody Movement (J4EM)

Yale University · New Haven, Connecticut

About the Justice for Everybody Movement

The Justice for Everybody Movement (J4EM) is a Yale University initiative dedicated to reimagining public safety as a collective, democratic responsibility - with a clear goal of becoming a fully recognized institute. Rooted in interdisciplinary scholarship and sustained through deep partnerships with directly impacted communities, J4EM works at the intersection of research, education, community engagement, and structural reform.

Founded and led by Elizabeth Hinton - the Class of 1954 Professor of History, Black Studies, and Law at Yale, and founding co-director of Harvard's Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at the Hutchins Center - J4EM advances a vision of justice through a community of scholars, practitioners, students, defenders, and advocates working to move beyond diagnosis and toward repair: widening access to justice, demanding institutional accountability, and building a democracy resilient enough to confront its own failures.

J4EM operates through four interlocking initiatives - Education, Advocacy, Reform, and Partnerships - and maintains a robust team including researchers, community engagement staff, fellows, and embedded project units such as the Challenging Discrimination in the Law Project and the Inside Knowledge journalism program.

The Opportunity

J4EM seeks a visionary, entrepreneurial Executive Director to serve as the organization's operational and strategic leader. This is an extraordinary opportunity for a leader with deep institutional fluency, intellectual range, and a genuine commitment to justice reform to shape one of the most ambitious university-based public safety initiatives in the country.

The Executive Director will partner closely with Founding Director Elizabeth Hinton to set organizational vision, manage and grow a talented team, forge institutional collaborations across Yale's schools and departments, and position J4EM as a national convening force for interdisciplinary research and community-centered change. The role demands executive-level judgment, the ability to operate simultaneously across the academy, civic sector, and philanthropic landscape, and a sophisticated understanding of the structural drivers of inequality in the American criminal legal system.

Core Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Organizational Vision

• Partner with the Founding Director to develop and execute J4EM's multi-year strategic direction, translating the organization's intellectual mission into a coherent programmatic and operational agenda.
• Represent J4EM in high-level external engagements - including with university leadership, peer institutions, funders, policymakers, and media - as a credible, articulate spokesperson for evidence-based justice reform.
• Develop an integrated strategy across J4EM's four initiatives (Education, Advocacy, Reform, and Partnerships), executing against shared impact metrics and ensuring programmatic coherence and mutual reinforcement.
• Drive strategy execution at every level of the organization - translating vision into workplans, milestones, and accountability structures that keep the team aligned and moving.
• Build and steward a culture of rigor, equity, and community accountability throughout the organization.

Cross-Yale Institutional Collaboration

A defining responsibility of the Executive Director is cultivating and sustaining deep, productive collaborations across Yale University's schools and departments. This includes:

• Yale Law School: Leading joint research initiatives, clinical partnerships, and public programming in concert with faculty across criminal law, constitutional law, and public interest practice. Yale Law School:
• Collaborating with faculty and researchers at the Yale School of Medicine on health-justice intersections, including the physical and mental health consequences of mass incarceration, solitary confinement, and community disinvestment.
• Engaging departments across the humanities and social sciences - including History, Sociology, African American Studies, Political Science, and the Whitney Humanities Center - to deepen J4EM's interdisciplinary research agenda and co-produce scholarship and public programming.
• Building relationships with professional schools including the School of Public Health, Jackson School of Global Affairs, and the School of Management, expanding J4EM's reach into policy analysis, governance, and global comparative frameworks.
• Identifying and pursuing joint funding opportunities, faculty affiliations, graduate student fellowships, and collaborative symposia that cement J4EM's position as a university-wide resource and intellectual hub.

Harvard Partnership & Peer Institution Engagement

• Maintain and deepen J4EM's institutional relationship with Harvard's Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, co-directed by Elizabeth Hinton and Brandon M. Terry.
• Develop joint programming, shared research initiatives, convenings, and publications across the Yale-Harvard axis, amplifying both institutions' contributions to national policy and public discourse.
• Cultivate complementary relationships with peer university centers and research institutes working on criminal legal reform, public safety, and democratic resilience.

Team Leadership & Organizational Development

• Directly supervise and develop J4EM's professional staff, including the Program Coordinator, Assistant Director of Community Outreach, research staff, and embedded project directors, fostering a high-performing, mission-aligned team.
• Lead the design and launch of a formal J4EM Fellows Program - including academic fellows, practitioner fellows, and community fellows - establishing selection criteria, fellowship structures, mentorship frameworks, and pathways to ongoing engagement.
• Build the infrastructure to support a growing organization, including operational systems, HR practices, financial management, and compliance, in close coordination with Yale University administration.
• Create a team culture that honors both scholarly excellence and the knowledge and experience of directly impacted communities.

Nonprofit Partnerships & Impact City Engagement

• Develop and steward strategic partnerships with nonprofit organizations in J4EM's priority geographies - including New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport, and other impact cities across Connecticut and the nation - ensuring J4EM's research and advocacy is grounded in and responsive to community needs.
• Work with the Director of Community Outreach and the Coalition for Communal Healing Through Justice Reform (CCHJR) to strengthen grassroots engagement, legislative advocacy, and direct community programming.
• Identify and formalize partnership frameworks with organizations working on reentry, juvenile justice, sentencing reform, civic participation, and restorative practices.
• Ensure nonprofit and community partners are meaningfully integrated into J4EM's research design, public programming, and advocacy strategy - not merely consulted but genuinely co-leading.

Fundraising, Donor Relations & External Relations

• Lead and grow J4EM's development function, building and executing a comprehensive fundraising strategy across foundation grants, individual major donors, and other funding sources - with disciplined pipeline management, cultivation timelines, and stewardship systems.
• Develop and write major grant proposals and reports, translating J4EM's research agenda and programmatic impact into compelling funding narratives for a range of philanthropic and corporate audiences.
• Design and execute a donor relations strategy that moves prospective supporters from awareness to investment - including targeted cultivation events, personalized engagement, impact reporting, and multi-year donor development.
• Build and steward meaningful community relationships across the state of Connecticut - with civic leaders, elected officials, faith institutions, school systems, advocacy organizations, and directly impacted communities - ensuring J4EM is recognized as a trusted, accountable partner in the state's justice reform landscape, not merely a Yale-based research presence.
• Develop a Connecticut-specific engagement strategy that connects J4EM's research and programming to the lived realities and policy priorities of communities in New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport, and beyond - building the local credibility and relational infrastructure that sustains long-term impact.
• Build J4EM's public profile through strategic media engagement, op-ed placements, conference presentations, and civic convenings.
• Represent J4EM on national policy and advocacy platforms, including before legislative bodies, media outlets, and peer organizations.

Teaching, Curriculum Design & Digital Learning

The Executive Director will play an active role in J4EM's education mission, not merely as an administrator but as a practitioner and innovator:

• Design and teach a course - at Yale Law School, Yale College, or in partnership with another Yale school - that embeds J4EM's interdisciplinary research agenda into the classroom, bringing together students, practitioners, and community voices around questions of law, democracy, public safety, and structural inequality.
• Lead the development of J4EM's first-of-its-kind digital learning platform on Edovo - the nation's leading tablet-based education platform deployed across correctional facilities - with the strategic goal of reaching more than half of the incarcerated population in the United States.
• Oversee the full lifecycle of the Edovo platform buildout: from curriculum architecture and content design through facility approvals, deployment, and learner engagement analytics - in partnership with Edovo's content tools and J4EM's research and outreach teams.
• Ensure that digital learning content reflects J4EM's scholarly rigor and community accountability, drawing on J4EM's research on policing, incarceration, racial inequality, and reentry to offer incarcerated learners both knowledge and agency.
• Commission, edit, and oversee the creation of original written content produced by J4EM's incarcerated partners and community contributors - including essays, testimonies, and analytical pieces - for publication in J4EM's platforms, the Inside Knowledge Quarterly, and external outlets.
• Build an editorial infrastructure that supports incarcerated writers with mentorship, editorial guidance, and pathways to publication - elevating their voices as essential contributors to the national conversation on justice reform.
• Work collaboratively with J.D. students at Yale Law School, Ph.D. candidates across Yale's graduate programs, and Yale College undergraduates - integrating student talent into J4EM's research, advocacy, editorial, and community engagement work while providing meaningful mentorship and professional development across career stages.
• Design and sustain structured roles for students at all levels - from research assistantships and clinical placements to co-authorship and community project leadership - ensuring J4EM functions as a genuine training ground for the next generation of justice reform scholars, advocates, and practitioners.

Global Comparative Research & International Convenings

J4EM's intellectual mission is strengthened by rigorous cross-comparative engagement with carceral systems, legal traditions, and social movements beyond the United States. The Executive Director will:

• Organize and lead international off-sites and comparative study delegations - including to sites in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East - examining how different political, legal, and social landscapes shape approaches to incarceration, punishment, policing, and public safety.
• Develop a cross-comparative research agenda that situates the American carceral system within a global framework, drawing on the policy architectures, reform movements, and abolitionist traditions of peer and contrasting nations to sharpen J4EM's domestic advocacy and scholarly contributions.
• Cultivate institutional relationships with international scholars, justice reform practitioners, and civil society organizations working on incarceration and public safety across diverse legal and political contexts - including civil law systems in Europe, postcolonial legal frameworks in Africa, and constitutional and religious law traditions in the Middle East.
• Examine how historical applications of law - colonial legal inheritance, structural racism codified in statute, and evolving theories of state power - have shaped carceral systems both in the United States and abroad, and what those comparisons reveal about the possibilities and limits of legal reform.
• Integrate findings from international comparative work into J4EM's educational programming, Edovo platform content, public scholarship, and policy advocacy, ensuring that J4EM's vision of justice is informed by the full range of human experience with incarceration and its alternatives.

Financial Management & Budget Oversight

• Hold full responsibility for J4EM's organizational budget - including program budgets, personnel costs, grants, and institutional funds - ensuring fiscal discipline, transparency, and alignment between resources and strategic priorities.
• Develop annual budgets in coordination with Yale University's administrative infrastructure, maintain accurate financial reporting, and manage cash flow across multiple funding streams.
• Establish internal controls and financial management systems appropriate to a growing, multi-program organization embedded within a major research university.
• Work with Yale's sponsored research and finance offices to ensure compliance with grant terms, manage restricted and unrestricted funds appropriately, and prepare financial reports for funders and institutional leadership.
• Identify and close structural resource gaps as J4EM scales its programming, fellows infrastructure, and digital reach - making the financial case to institutional and philanthropic partners for sustained investment.

Qualifications & Competencies

Required

• Advanced degree required; a J.D. from a top law school is particularly valuable and strongly preferred. Deep fluency in constitutional theory - including Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, due process, equal protection, and Eighth Amendment doctrine - as well as theories of justice, punishment, victimhood, and victimization will be essential to developing and executing J4EM's scholarly agenda, engaging peer faculty across Yale and Harvard, and grounding the organization's advocacy strategy in rigorous legal reasoning.
• Minimum three years of progressive leadership experience in higher education administration, nonprofit management, research institutions, advocacy, or a combination thereof.
• Demonstrated fluency in the scholarly landscape of criminal legal reform, public safety, mass incarceration, and racial inequality - sufficient to engage credibly with leading academics, practitioners, and policymakers.
• Proven ability to develop institutional strategy and execute against it - building systems, managing people, and delivering results in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
• Proven ability to build and sustain institutional collaborations across complex organizations, including universities, government agencies, and community-based groups.
• Teaching experience at the university level, with the ability to design and lead a course that integrates research, lived experience, and civic engagement.
• Track record of successful fundraising, grant management, and budget oversight at significant scale, including fluency with restricted funding, compliance requirements, and multi-stream financial management.
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills, including the ability to translate complex research for general audiences and to advocate compellingly in public forums.
• Experience with or genuine appetite for digital content development and technology-enabled education platforms, including tools designed for populations with limited internet access.
• Demonstrated commitment to centering the perspectives and leadership of directly impacted communities - including incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people - as authors, partners, and leaders in organizational strategy.

Preferred

• Experience working within or alongside Yale, Harvard, or comparable research universities.
• Existing relationships within Connecticut's justice reform advocacy ecosystem.
• Experience designing and managing fellowship programs or leadership development pipelines.
• Familiarity with Edovo, the Marshall Project, or other digital platforms serving incarcerated audiences.
• Editorial experience commissioning, developing, or publishing writing by incarcerated or justice-impacted contributors.
• Track record of managing interdisciplinary research projects that span academic and applied settings.
• Experience with media and public communications in the justice, policy, or higher education sectors.

Leadership Profile

The ideal Executive Director brings together the intellectual seriousness of a scholar, the operational discipline of a senior administrator, and the relational intelligence of a movement builder. This is someone who understands that the work of justice reform happens simultaneously in the seminar room, in the statehouse, in the prison yard, and on the street - and who can move fluidly across all of these worlds without losing the thread that connects them.

This leader is not content to manage what exists. They are excited to build - to imagine a fellows program that becomes a national model, to forge a Yale-wide coalition that makes J4EM a genuine institutional force, to deepen the Harvard partnership into something generative and enduring, and to stand alongside community partners in Connecticut and beyond as a genuine co-conspirator in the project of structural repair.

Above all, this is someone who believes, as J4EM does, that justice is not a destination reserved for the few - but a shared condition that must be actively built, defended, and extended to everybody.

Institutional Context

J4EM operates within Yale University and is formally affiliated with Yale Law School. The Executive Director will report to Founding Director Elizabeth Hinton and work in close collaboration with Yale Law School's administration and faculty. The organization maintains a formal intellectual partnership with the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at Harvard's Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, co-directed by Elizabeth Hinton and Professor Brandon M. Terry of Harvard University.

Yale University is committed to banning discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status. J4EM strongly encourages applications from candidates with lived experience in the communities most affected by mass incarceration and criminal legal system inequality.

Principal Responsibilities

1. Directs one or more functional areas within an administrative department of the University and ensure compliance with University policies and procedures. 2. Directs analytic and research support for educational policies and planning and develops and approves administrative policies affecting assigned functional areas of the University. 3. Directs and establishes parameters for major projects for the department and University. 4. Interprets federal policies and regulations and educates staff and administration about regulations, restrictions, and the legal responsibilities of the University. 5. Directs and implements policy and program modifications and develops standards to ensure compliance with federal, state and local regulations. 6. Develops and administers an operating budget for the assigned department consistent with University policies and procedures. 7. Develops cost savings objectives and goals; authorizes major purchases and negotiates contracts that range from routine to complex in nature. 8. Establishes and implements long- and short-range goals for the functional area consistent with University goals and objectives. 9. Directs the development of related automated systems to support the function; determines office policies and procedures for use of automated systems. 10. Directs the evaluation and selection of vendors and negotiates contract details including work steps and pricing with the vendors on behalf of the assigned functional area. 11. Works with internal and external contacts to solve problems that range from routine to complex in nature. 12. Represents the University in discussions and negotiations with various governmental agencies. 13. Directs a staff of exempt and nonexempt employees. 14. May perform other duties as assigned. Required Education and Experience Bachelor's Degree in related field. Six years of experience or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

Job Posting Date

07/14/2026

Job Category

Manager

Bargaining Unit

NON

Compensation Grade

Administration & Operations

Compensation Grade Profile

Leader (27)

Salary Range

$105,000.00 - $174,000.00

Time Type

Full time

Duration Type

Staff Fixed Duration (Fixed Term)

Work Model

Hybrid

Background Check Requirements

All candidates for employment will be subject to pre-employment background screening for this position, which may include motor vehicle, DOT certification, drug testing and credit checks based on the position description and job requirements. All offers are contingent upon the successful completion of the background check. For additional information on the background check requirements and process visit "Learn about background checks" under the Applicant Support Resources section of Careers on the It's Your Yale website.

Health Requirements

Certain positions have associated health requirements based on specific job responsibilities. These may include vaccinations, tests, or examinations, as required by law, regulation, or university policy.

Posting Disclaimer

Salary offers are determined by a candidate's qualifications, experience, skills, and education in relation to the position requirements, along with the role's grade profile and current internal and external market conditions.

The intent of this job description is to provide a representative summary of the essential functions that will be required of the position and should not be construed as a declaration of specific duties and responsibilities of the position. Employees will be assigned specific job-related duties through their hiring department.

The University is committed to basing judgments concerning the admission, education, and employment of individuals upon their qualifications and abilities and seeks to attract to its faculty, staff, and student body qualified persons from a broad range of backgrounds and perspectives. In accordance with this policy and as delineated by federal and Connecticut law, Yale does not discriminate in admissions, educational programs, or employment against any individual on account of that individual's sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion, age, disability, status as a special disabled veteran, veteran of the Vietnam era or other covered veteran.

Inquiries concerning Yale's Policy Against Discrimination and Harassment may be referred to the Office of Institutional Equity and Accessibility (OIEA).

Note

Yale University is a tobacco-free campus.