Sr. Associate - Strategy & Impact

NextLadder

4h • Remote

About The Position

This role serves as a critical member of the small team driving strategy and impact priorities for NextLadder. In this capacity, you will be responsible for partnering across NLV's team and partners to drive firm level strategic projects that are critical for NLV's mission. You will also lead key impact workstreams to size and report on the impact NextLadder is having - often in deep collaboration with internal and external partners and through newly developed AI-native tooling. Operating within a new and dynamic investment firm, the Senior Associate must be nimble, adaptable, and ready to address emerging and unpredictable needs as NLV scales. This is an individual contributor role with no direct reports.

Requirements

• Genuine commitment to NextLadder Ventures' mission, values, and focus on expanding economic opportunity — bringing both conviction and humility to the work
• High ethical standards, sound judgment, and discretion; handles sensitive information and situations with integrity and professionalism
• Takes ownership of their work with a strong sense of accountability — follows through on commitments, communicates proactively, and treats setbacks as information, not failure
• Hands-on, entrepreneurial work style with the ability to operate both collaboratively and independently, navigate ambiguity, and adapt quickly in a fast-paced, evolving environment. Brings urgency to the work without losing care for how it's done
• Curious and actively seeks out new information from the field, the frontier, and the people we serve, and changes course readily when something isn't working
• Kind, intentional, and warm. Listens generously, leads with humility, and assumes good intent
• Strong client-service orientation when partnering with deal teams and firm leadership
• Ability to structure ambiguous, open-ended strategic problems and translate analysis into a clear point of view
• Comfort moving between deep technical impact work and broader firm-level strategy questions
• Bachelor’s degree plus at least 4–5 years of relevant experience in strategy consulting, impact investing, corporate or investment strategy, research/analytics, or social impact professional services
• Comfort with empirical research and econometric concepts
• Demonstrated ability to develop and utilize agentic AI tools in analytical contexts
• Strong quantitative modeling skills using spreadsheets and other data tools
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and manage multiple workstreams
• Experience producing polished, decision-ready deliverables
• Demonstrated experience scoping and delivering strategic projects (e.g., market landscaping, competitive analysis, business or investment strategy), not only impact or research analysis

Nice To Haves

• Graduate degree in economics, public policy, or a related field
• Experience with social ROI and other impact measurement frameworks (e.g., Impact Multiple of Money ROI analysis)
• Familiarity with economic mobility domains (housing, workforce, financial inclusion, education, health)
• Experience in venture capital, private equity, or grant-making environments
• Experience in a strategy consulting or in-house corporate strategy function
• Proficiency with data visualization or analytical tools (Python/R, Tableau, or similar)

Responsibilities

• Partner with NLV leadership and principals on firm-level strategy and emerging priorities with structured thinking and quantitative rigor, e.g., investment thesis development; demand activation and market enablement strategies
• Lead key workstreams in emergent strategic projects, taking end-to-end ownership from structuring ambiguous, open-ended questions, to scoping clear analytical workplans and stakeholder engagement, through synthesis and decision-ready recommendation
• Build the analyses and materials that inform firm-level decisions, including market maps, sizing, competitive landscapes, and portfolio construction questions
• Be accountable for the impact modeling workstream during active diligence, including intake assessment, impact pathway development, literature review, building the ROI model, and providing impact summaries that facilitate decision making. Facilitate external partners that conduct the hands-on modeling work
• Drive continuous improvement in partnership with key external partners (e.g., AI Labs) of agentic AI tooling that NLV and partners use to efficiently generate accurate and robust impact models
• Partner with portfolio relationship owners to onboard new investments into the impact reporting framework, including identifying measurement capacity gaps and how to address them
• Develop and help coordinate/deploy external partners (e.g., Opportunity Insights, 60dB) to support portfolio company’s measurement capacity and impact validation
• Support relationship owners as needed as they monitor portfolio reporting, and delivers standard and ad hoc portfolio-level roll-ups, board reporting, and strategic analysis
• In partnership with the Principal, Strategy & Impact, refine and implement impact data and reporting architecture

Benefits

• medical, dental, and vision coverage
• retirement savings benefits
• paid time off
• other employee programs
• annual bonus
• equity opportunities

What This Job Offers

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