Community Outreach Lead – New Orleans

CDM Smith • New Orleans, LA

12d • Onsite

About The Position

This position is for a community engagement expert looking to use their passion to improve public health through infrastructure projects around the United States, starting in New Orleans. You will join CDM Smith’s growing, cross-discipline strategic communications team, leading community outreach and engagement for municipal drinking water projects. Projects you may work on include leading vast community engagement teams comprised of different firms working towards a unified goal and approach, planning and facilitating internal and high-stakes public meetings, developing presentations for internal and external stakeholders, helping develop guidance and communication strategies for a variety of programs, and reviewing communications deliverables for consistency and accuracy. Passionate about organizational efficiency, you think through processes to ensure the right people get the right information at the right time – and you think about how to best present data for efficient understanding. With a strong sense of plain language and the ability to tailor to any audience, you dig deep into material to ensure it communicates its key message. When someone thinks something cannot be done, your first instinct is to find a solution anyway. You are comfortable jumping from one technical topic to another and applying your expertise to different scenarios. The core of your work will be directing large-scale communication and engagement efforts related to drinking water infrastructure improvements.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree.
• 7 years of related experience.
• An appropriate and valid driver's license is required.
• Strong knowledge of corporate governance practices, organization design principles, accounting principles, finance, supply chain management, and organization management.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Ability to understand highly complex technical, professional and business materials.

Nice To Haves

• Equivalent additional directly related experience will be considered in lieu of a degree.

Responsibilities

• Leading large teams of communications experts; ensuring communications tasks are executed
• Facilitating discussions within your respective programs and creating plans to promote better organizational coordination and management
• Creating and implementing communication plans to ensure stakeholders receive information needed appropriately when being asked to make a decision
• Writing and editing documents to specific reading levels while ensuring they meet brand and style guidance
• Translating highly technical textual information into a visual story that the audience can relate to and make decisions about
• Proving highly detailed quality control and readability reviews
• Managing and mentoring junior staff working on project communications
• Teaching technical staff communications best practices
• Interacting with the public, especially disadvantaged communities, via virtual and on-the-ground community forums
• Facilitating community engagement forums, like public meetings, hearings, and listening sessions
• Working with social media and electronic methods of survey and data collection; analyzing that data efficiently
• Creating forums to brainstorm and act on ideas to improve communication best practices, and/or creatively address specific client challenges
• Contributing to proposals to win more work, including writing public-engagement related scope, building up a team, and estimating cost

Benefits

• CDM Smith is committed to offering an unmatched employee experience.
• Challenging, progressive and inclusive work environment
• Personal leadership, career growth and development
• Career opportunities that span a variety of disciplines and geographic locations
• CDM Smith Inc. and its divisions and subsidiaries are an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer.
• Background checks are conducted after an offer of employment has been made in the United States.
• CDM Smith will conduct interviews of qualified individuals prior to requesting a criminal background check.
• CDM Smith is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices.
• All bonuses at CDM Smith are discretionary and may or may not apply to this position.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level