trubel&co is eager to welcome a full-time Director of Learning & Instructional Design to lead our learning & programs department at a pivotal moment in our growth, offering their experience designing, implementing, and measuring educational programs, while advancing the pursuit of justice. This is a new role, built to meet the demands of a growing portfolio of programs, a fleet of facilitators working across the country, and an emerging teacher-facing professional development practice. The Director will own the instructional vision of the organization, manage a department that includes an Associate Director of Programs, contracted instructional designers, fellows, interns, and facilitation staff, and serve as our lead facilitator for school-facing work. This role will involve a mix of instructional design, educational coaching, impact measurement, standards alignment, and curricular research, and new program development, and the role will report directly to the Executive Director. As with many start-up organizations, there may be additional ad-hoc support needed across the organization, including partnership development, communications, and client sourcing.

This is a player-coach role. You will build systems and manage people, and you will also be in the room with teachers and facilitators, modeling the practice you're asking others to deliver. The ideal candidate is a practitioner who has grown into strategy — someone who can run a social studies teacher-facing data civics workshop on a Tuesday, write a youth GIS and mapping curriculum on a Wednesday, and then hop in to advise our CTO on how to improve our GenAI curricula planning tool.

trubel&co was formally founded in 2022, and this role is to help extend our pedagogy to new communities through our workshops, webinars, and curricular support. Within an ambitious nonprofit startup, this role offers agency and potential to grow as developed. trubel&co has impacted 6000+ students and practitioners across the Gulf Coast, California, Hawaii, Michigan, Missouri, and Colorado, with strong aspirations for scale. We are looking for a creative, research-driven, and passionate candidate who has a strong interest in data civics, liberatory innovation, educational equity, and early-stage ventures. You will be a strategic thinker and a real doer, someone who takes initiative to develop and implement creative ideas to help our learners gain the skills, tools, and agency to tackle the problems they care about the most to empower our community of diverse trubelmakers. The ideal candidate has experience of designing educational programs, with a priority on experiences that center data, STEM, civics, and/or environmental justice.

trubel&co is backed by National Geographic, National Science Foundation, Echoing Green, Fast Forward, NewSchools Venture Fund, Walking Softer, Camelback Ventures, 4.0 Schools, CIV:Lab, Society for Science, and other institutional and individual donors.

Please submit an application here: https://airtable.com/app6ZzbMz9WXrYcMU/pag1XiBDIxTOwdADh/form

Responsibilities

External Curricula Development & Learning Experience (35%)

Building the learning experiences that reach teachers and school partners.

• Design and develop curricula and learning experiences for external partners: workshops, PD modules, and school/district-facing programming
• Support open access curricula development, including OER workflows, licensing, tagging, and accessibility standards
• Serve as instructional advisor for CivicScape, shaping how generative AI tool generates curriculum that fits real classroom needs across subjects using data and mapping
• Align external-facing materials to relevant standards (NGSS, C3, ISTE) so they land cleanly in a school's existing structure
• Build and maintain an internal library of PD resources for teachers, including asynchronous modules, quick-start guides, and live session guides
• Partner with the Executive Director on light customer research—simple interviews and surveys with teachers and students—and translate the findings into our offerings

Teacher PD Engagement & Ecosystem Building (30%)

Being in the room with teachers and growing the network around that work.

• Run trubel&co's teacher community of practice and research-informed PD, and be the primary facilitator for our teacher trainings and workshops, building a cohort of educators who can integrate data civics and mapping tools into their existing classroom practice
• Facilitate monthly public PD offerings for teachers across subjects, helping educators feel confident applying trubel&co tools and pedagogy without needing GIS expertise
• Travel for onsite facilitation for in-person workshops, relevant conferences, and educator convenings
• Partner with the Growth team to identify and qualify leads for teacher PD and district partnerships, while preparing tailored proposals and scopes of work
• Partner with the Growth team on conference proposal submissions, bringing the instructional voice and content clarity to the pitch
• Assist the Executive Director with presentations, events, pitches, and speaking engagements related to school and teacher engagement and new pilots

Department Strategy and Internal Coaching (20%)

Running the department and developing the people in it.

• Lead and manage the learning and programs department, including our Associate Director of Programs, instructional designers, fellows, and interns
• Develop onboarding infrastructure and ongoing professional development for contracted instructional designers, geospatial justice facilitators, and new department staff
• Design and run a structured coaching and support cycle for trubel&co's Geospatial Justice Facilitators, focused on developing their classroom delivery, instructional judgment, and curricular execution, in partnership with Associate Director of Programs
• Observe programs in the field and virtually, and translate observations into concrete, actionable feedback that builds facilitator capacity without undermining facilitator confidence
• Partner with the Executive Director to scope new program pilots and shape department strategy
• Emphasize frameworks such as critical civic inquiry, abolitionist pedagogy, liberatory design, transformative justice, virtual flipped classrooms, and strategies for supporting marginalized students

Youth & Community Curriculum Development (15%)

The content trubel&co facilitators put directly in front of students.

• Drive the design, piloting, and iteration of new curricula, including data civics workshops, GIS-integrated lessons, and civic inquiry modules, to be implemented by our facilitators
• Build and maintain an internal library of student-facing data civics and GIS content: lesson modules, assessments, workshop-in-a-box materials, and supporting media
• Begin orchestrating asynchronous learning modules for GIS and data civics instruction, building toward a self-paced student track
• Connect curriculum to internal impact measures and host office hours for staff support

The role is a full-time employee position, with benefits. 100% remote, however some travel will be required. Must be legally authorized to be a full-time employee in the US. Responsibilities may evolve over time, upon mutual terms and as opportunities open up. Candidate will report directly to the Executive Director.

What the First Year Looks Like

By 6 months, you will have stood up the core infrastructure: an internal PD library for teachers, a coaching cycle for Geospatial Justice Facilitators, and a working system for how curriculum moves from idea to classroom. trubel&co has two semester cycles of teacher Community of Practice to run in Fall 2026. This role will also act as the trusted advisor on CivicScape's curricular direction. Teachers across multiple subject areas will see you as the person who can turn a rough idea into a data civics activity that lands in their classroom, regardless of subject, geography, or technical background.

By 12 months, you will be setting direction rather than just executing it. You will be identifying where new curricula pilots and program design opportunities should go next, expanding trubel&co's library of data civics and GIS content, and running the department with the standards and rhythm to scale past you. trubel&co expects strong partnership with the Growth Team to identify additional leads and opportunities to drive revenue through teacher professional development and curricula provisioning. The Executive Director will be coming to you with strategy questions, not just checking in on delivery.

What we’re looking for

In line with our commitment to equity, candidates do not need to have certain degrees or come from a specific background. What’s important is that you have/are:

• Entrepreneurial Mindset: This is a startup. You are a self-starter, able to build your own structure. You will wear multiple hats, build things that don't exist yet, pivot quickly, and occasionally need to figure things out without a playbook. You bring an ownership orientation, a growth mindset, and a genuine hunger for feedback. You come to the ED with solutions, not just problems.
• Instructional Leadership: You have designed and led curriculum development at an organizational level, not just as an individual contributor. You know how to set quality standards, give teachers and designers feedback that sharpens their work, and build systems that make good instruction reproducible across facilitators and contexts.
• Facilitation Excellence: You are a skilled facilitator who is comfortable leading learning experiences for teachers, youth, and mixed audiences. You make rooms feel safe and rigorous at the same time. You know how to read a room and adjust without losing the thread of the lesson. We are especially looking for candidates with experience training formal educators.
• Data Civics and Content Fluency: You bring experience in one or more of the following trubel&co topics: GIS/maps, data literacy, STEM, civics, social studies, or environmental justice, and you can make that content feel relevant and grounded for learners who don't see themselves as data people. Familiarity with ArcGIS Online is a strong plus. We are especially looking for candidates with strong social studies/civics and/or environmental science background.
• Coaching Orientation: You know how to give feedback that builds people up rather than diminishing them. You have coached facilitators, teachers, or instructional designers and you understand that the goal is capacity building, not compliance.
• Strategic and Operational Range: You can think about where a program or department needs to go in 12 months and then sit down and write the rubric that moves it there. You’d led teams and departments in the past and are excited to bring this leadership to trubel&co. You are comfortable holding ambiguity, making decisions autonomously with incomplete information, and proactively flagging when you need help.
• Justice Commitment: You carry an unwavering commitment to educational equity and liberatory pedagogy. You understand that communities closest to harm have the most legitimate knowledge to address it, and that philosophy shapes how you design and deliver learning.

Department Structure

The Director of Learning and Instructional Design manages the following:

• Associate Director of Programming (direct report; this role manages our Geospatial Justice Facilitators day-to-day)
• Contracted Instructional Designers
• Fellows and Interns (to support learning and programmatic efforts)

Geospatial Justice Facilitators report to the Associate Director of Programming but receive instructional coaching and curricular feedback directly from the Director.

How to Apply

Please submit an application here: https://airtable.com/app6ZzbMz9WXrYcMU/pag1XiBDIxTOwdADh/form

with any available accompanying materials (e.g., cover letter, lesson plans, blog posts, portfolio, strategy decks). Please reach out if you have any questions; we want to set you up for success. Send a note to hiring@trubel.co with the Subject: “Director Learning Application”.

Pay: $90,000.00 - $95,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Paid time off

Work Location: Remote