Summary

Description

About the State Innovation Exchange

The State Innovation Exchange (SiX) is a 501(c)(3) policy, strategy, and resource center for progressive state legislators. We empower, embolden, and equip state legislators to build and wield progressive governing power by/with/for the people they represent. We do this by providing legislators with the tools needed to shape impactful public policy and building their capacity to lead with their constituents. We foster long-term collaboration between legislators – across chambers, across regions, and across state lines – and with grassroots movements. Our vision is an equitable, resilient, healthy, and prosperous future for every person in the United States, which is secured and safeguarded by progressive state legislators. SiX’s sister organization, SiX Action is a 501(c)(4) that works alongside SiX to build the capacity of state legislators by providing policy development, communications tools, and technical assistance.

About this Position

The Senior Political Director, Reproductive Rights provides senior-level political and policy leadership for State Innovation Exchange (SiX)’s state-based reproductive rights work and reports to the Senior Director of Reproductive Rights. This role shapes and executes political strategy across state legislatures, serves as a trusted advisor to elected officials, and ensures the program is grounded in legislative realities, power analysis, and sound policy judgment. Highly strategic and externally facing, the Senior Political Director leads political decision-making; guides policy work by strengthening legislation and assessing risks and impacts; translates complex developments into actionable guidance for legislators; partners across SiX departments to advance integrated strategies; manages key national partnerships and a small senior team; and represents SiX Repro in high-stakes national and state-level spaces.

At SiX, we commit to equal pay for equal work. To counter pay inequity and uphold internal parity, we use a non-negotiable starting salary system benchmarked to highly competitive nonprofit-sector markets. The salary for this position is $145,000. SiX also offers comprehensive benefits, including generous healthcare options for you and your family, life insurance, a retirement match, a flexible schedule, and substantial leave, including August and December breaks and holiday schedules. This is a full-time, exempt, remote position open to candidates living in the continental United States within one hour of a major airport, and it requires frequent travel domestically and at times internationally.

Roles and Responsibilities

All staff at SiX have personalized role responsibilities – the outcomes and impacts you are expected to deliver as part of your unique role within the organization. As the Senior Political Director, Reproductive Rights, you report to the Senior Director, Reproductive Rights and will be responsible for delivering on the following expectations in your day-to-day work:

Program Strategy – Lead the political strategy, implementation, and impact of SiX Repro’s Policy Team, including leadership of the legislative strategy for our Reproductive Freedom Leadership Council (RFLC). The RFLC is a cohort of over 700 state legislators advancing reproductive health, rights, and justice in all 50 states. This role requires proven experience working inside and alongside state lawmakers. This includes fluency both ‘inside and outside the dome,’ including working in chambers and with legislative caucuses and committees. Awareness of state legislative calendars, leadership dynamics, and procedural decision points that shape how reproductive rights policy moves and stalls across states is key.

Program Oversight – Develop and execute proactive and defensive legislative strategies tailored to varied state contexts. This includes hostile, defensive, and mixed-control environments, and must be informed by substantive expertise in post-Dobbs abortion policy, including abortion bans, shield laws, medication abortion, telehealth, pregnancy criminalization, personhood, and interstate travel for healthcare. Provide senior-level political judgment and direction in fast-moving, high-stakes moments, making clear strategic calls about when to advance, pause, or disengage. Translate complex legislative and policy developments into practical, usable guidance for legislators and assess political risk across c3 and c4 lanes in coordination with internal partners. Maintain a strong understanding of national and state sexual and reproductive health policy trends and movement dynamics, ensuring this analysis informs RFLC priorities, broader program strategy, cross-program coordination, and decision-making across SiX.

Partnerships: Build national, regional and state-level partnerships that strengthen state legislators’ leadership on reproductive rights. Candidates should bring demonstrated experience managing complex coalitions and partnerships in the reproductive health, rights, and justice or adjacent progressive policy space, along with the judgment to prioritize partnerships that advance legislator power and program impact. Candidates must show an ability to exercise coalition discernment—including disengaging from misaligned or extractive spaces—and to leverage existing relationships to support coordinated state strategies without defaulting to national consensus or performative collaboration. A strong understanding of the reproductive rights landscape is required, as is experience identifying and cultivating new partnerships across the progressive ecosystem to integrate a reproductive justice lens into new spaces in direct service of state legislators.

Staff Management: Provide direct supervision and strategic leadership to SiX Repro’s Policy Team and consultants, setting clear priorities and expectations aligned with legislative calendars and political realities. Candidates should bring demonstrated experience managing and developing senior staff, with a strong track record of setting direction, providing feedback, and holding teams accountable in complex political environments. This role requires the ability to support staff through sensitive, high-stakes work, foster a culture of political clarity and sound judgment, and make clear decisions about scope, sequencing, and tradeoffs to protect team capacity. Ideal candidates will have experience managing remote, geographically distributed teams and building strong team culture across distance.

Fund Development: Partner with the SiX Development team to support fundraising and donor engagement for the Reproductive Rights program. Candidates should bring experience contributing to fundraising strategy and donor-facing materials, including the ability to write programmatic summaries for use in grant proposals, reports, and funder briefings. Candidates should be able to clearly articulate political strategy, legislative context, and program impact. This role requires strong written and verbal communication skills, sound judgment in navigating funder relationships, and the confidence to ensure fundraising efforts support—rather than distort—legislator-centered strategy and political priorities.

Financial Oversight: Support the development and management of program budgets in collaboration with program and finance leadership. Candidates should bring direct experience managing program budgets, monitoring spending, and making adjustments to align resources with strategic priorities, legislative timelines, and political opportunities. This role requires comfort using operational and financial data to inform decisions, along with the judgment to respond to changing political conditions while maintaining fiscal responsibility.

Program Implementation: Oversee the implementation of core program activities, including technical assistance, legislator briefings, convenings, and rapid-response interventions. Candidates should bring demonstrated experience working in state legislative ecosystems and a clear understanding of how reproductive rights policy advances or is blocked by procedural constraints, limited staff capacity, and political opposition. This role requires the ability to deliver practical, usable support to legislators in hostile, defensive, and mixed-control states, exercise sound political judgment in fast-moving situations, and adapt strategies as legislative landscapes and political conditions shift.

External Affairs: Represent SiX Repro in national and state-level spaces with elected officials, movement leaders, funders, and media, as appropriate. Support rapid response narrative and messaging strategies that equip legislators to lead on reproductive rights in hostile or contested environments and counter misinformation and backlash. Serve as a senior spokesperson when needed, bringing calm authority and political clarity to external engagement. Candidates should bring strong written and verbal communication skills and a clear point of view on how to build power with state legislators to advance reproductive health care.

Organizational Alignment: Work collaboratively across SiX programs and departments to align reproductive rights strategy with broader organizational goals and integrate it into democracy, governance, and power-building efforts. Contribute to organizational planning and decision-making as a senior leader, bringing a state-based political lens to cross-organizational strategy and execution. Candidates should demonstrate experience supporting organizational change and culture building in dynamic, multiracial environments.

Core Competencies

All staff roles at SiX are grounded in a set of core competencies that are standardized across the organization based on the type of role you hold. As the Senior Policy Director, Reproductive Rights you will be expected to demonstrate the following core competency expectations in your day-to-day work:

Equity and Inclusion. You are able to consistently integrate your deep understanding of key equity concepts into work projects and interactions by addressing structural implications and disproportionate impacts of policies, activities, and decisions on race, gender, class and other group identities within the context of job responsibilities and projects.

Strategy and Implementation. You are able to provide strategic consultation and advice in the formation, oversight, and execution of your team’s work and their deliverables. You ensure ongoing programmatic excellence and accountability for your team in alignment with SiX’s organizational strategic plan and funder requirements. You are able to successfully implement the core activities of your department/issue area through direct program implementation and/or the management of staff who are responsible for program implementation.
Staff Management. You are able to support and cultivate staff. You effectively engage in and resolve conflict and you are able to adeptly manage across lines of difference within a multi-racial organization.
External Partner Management and Movement Building. You are able to identify, cultivate, and maintain successful partnerships with external stakeholders in the implementation and impact of your department/issue area. You possess the ability to identify, recruit, hire, delegate, and manage contractors and/or vendors to implement components of the work, on an as needed basis.
External Communications and Brand Management. You are able to adeptly represent the organization and serve as a spokesperson and thought leader with legislators, the public, and members of the press. You advance the organization’s reputation, profile, and brand with key stakeholders. You possess excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Knowledge Management. You are able to provide consultation and input on the design of systems, processes, and tools to better support the facilitation, collection, and sharing of knowledge that is generated by your portfolio. You ensure consistent data collection and analysis on key project outcomes. You work collaboratively with the senior management team to integrate cross-program activities and functions.
Financial Oversight. You are able to assist with managing the resources of your department/issue area. You manage your team to provide timely, accurate financial information, as needed, and comply with all internal financial protocols.
Fund Development. You are able to successfully secure resources for your department/issue area. You are able to effectively design funding requests, and communicate those ideas, both in writing and in-person, to targeted audiences.
Compliance. You are able to ensure that all activities within your program area/department, as well as the staff you manage, comply with relevant nonprofit laws and adhere to internal policies, practices, and protocols.
Organizational Culture and Values. You are able to ensure that you and the staff you supervise practice and uphold the organization’s values in your day-to-day and long-term work. You steward and exemplify an organizational culture that is productive, collaborative, and equitable.

Organizational Values

All staff at SiX are responsible for upholding our organizational values, which were developed collaboratively by all staff. These describe the way we strive to do our work together and the kind of organizational culture we want to build. As the Senior Policy Director, Reproductive Rights, you will be responsible for demonstrating the following behaviors in carrying out your day-to-day work:

Adaptability and Imagination

We believe there are multiple ways of knowing and welcome opportunities to learn from our past, present and future.
We remain open to learning, sharing, and shifting our approach, perspective and process.
We embrace the necessity of change within ourselves, our communities, and organization.
We have both the audacity to dream beyond what seems impossible and the boldness to pursue those possibilities with tenacity.

Connection, Relationship, and Collaboration

We believe that authentic relationships and principled partnerships are the foundation for building people-centered power within systems that will lead to communities living the lives that we deserve and are fighting for.
We cultivate relationships, grounded in trust and respect, to work toward a common purpose and shared vision.
We believe that the quality of our work is just as important as the path we take to achieve it, so our passion for excellence does not outweigh accountability to our partners, communities, and each other.
We operate with integrity, acknowledging our mistakes and attending to the impacts.
We are honest, kind, and direct in instances of conflict and believe that principled tension is necessary for the advancement of our work.

Wholeness, Consideration, and Care

We are whole human beings and honor the fullness of our lives and the lives of those around us.
We believe that all people and communities are deserving of joy, rest, safety, and respect.
We are flexible in how we work while respecting the space, boundaries, and care of ourselves and those around us.
We are responsible for our own emotions and how those emotions shape how we respond to and engage with others.

Belonging and Difference

We believe in the power of our shared humanity and are committed to upholding the inherent value of people, across identities, experiences, and perspectives.
We acknowledge the systems that work to oppress the communities we are a part of and collaborate with and are actively working against them to build the world we want to live in.
We oppose all forms of racism and are committed to learning and proactively shifting how our behaviors, beliefs and policies reinforce racist ideas and actions.

Sustainability and Perseverance

We prioritize the sustainability of ourselves, communities, and organization by pausing when necessary and reducing harm wherever possible.
We understand the value and importance of access to information and learning and operate in a stance of abundance and generosity of resources, ability, and knowledge.
We recognize the “long arc” of systematic change work and are deeply invested in the generational commitment and organizing necessary to realize the world we want to live in and can thrive.

How to Apply

To help us fairly and efficiently assess candidates’ experience, all applicants are asked to complete a brief screening questionnaire and upload their resume and cover letter as part of the application process. For further assistance, please contact jobs@stateinnovation.org with “Senior Political Director, Reproductive Rights” in the subject line. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled, with priority given to candidates who apply by February 20, 2025. Please note that the start date for this position will be on or after April 15, 2026.

The State Innovation Exchange is an equal-opportunity employer committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We strongly encourage people of color, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, and others who are underrepresented in the political and nonprofit sectors to apply. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, national origin, age, marital or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.

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