Our Partner is a private family foundation in Orlando, Florida committed to advancing restorative relationships between people and the planet through human dignity and environmental stewardship.

They are developing the United States Slavery & Abolition Archive (Archive) to proactively gather and preserve an expanding collection of original documents and artifacts that provide detailed information on the true nature of slavery, abolition, and civil rights in the United States.

The purpose of the Archive is to foster racial healing in America, and we aim to do this by equipping storytellers and framing a restorative conversation. Since their creation, most of these source documents have been hidden from public view, held as family heirlooms or traded among private collectors. Because each historic document embodies a rich source of rare data with a high degree of social value, the Archive is consolidating this information and making it available as a publicly accessible, non-commercial resource.

The Archive Director will provide strategic leadership to the Archive while overseeing item-level processing, digital asset management and data visualization, key collaborations, and measurement and evaluation practices.

Areas of Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership

• Partner with the Foundation President and Vice President of Programs & Strategy to design strategy and oversee annual planning
• Lead development of digital archive resources that serve to equip storytellers to inspire healing
• Facilitate the Advisory Council that provides expert guidance to current and future objectives
• Design and deploy internship, fellowship, and post-doc programs that advance scholarly research and position the Archive as a world-class resource

Guide Collaborations

• Develop world-class collaborations that leverage the archive to equip and inspire hope and restorative action in our target audience; storytellers
  
• Collaborate with mental health professionals to design, integrate and deploy industry leading resources that light the path to healing
  
• Compel other individuals or organizations with similar items in their collections to join our initiative and by doing so expand the breadth and depth of the resource
  

Process Inventory

• Manage the ascension process for items entering the archive (ex: sourcing new items, cataloging incoming items, securing long-term storage)
• Oversee the ongoing digitization efforts of items entering the archive which involves the creation of metadata, uploading items into the digital asset manager, and ensuring data hygiene practices are adhered to
• Drive community engagement activities that further the impact of the archive (ex: engaging volunteers to assist in the transcription of items)

Digital Assets Management & Data Visualization

• Oversee the maintenance of Digital Asset Management tools
• Create a user interface strategy and design user journeys that advance the archive’s mission
• Provide direction to artwork used on the website, including branding and messaging

Measurement & Evaluation

• Design metrics and milestones for the archive that enable the tracking of performance against our stated mission, values, and desired outcomes
• Mine data in order to uncover stories, patterns, themes, and correlations that equip storytellers with great content
• Provide executive leadership with prompt and insightful data monitoring and reporting of activities related to the usage of the resource

Experience

Required

• Leadership working with African American history and museum or archival collections related to African American History
• A long-standing passion for storytelling, curation, and data visualization that has successfully translated lines of data into compelling stories
• Experience developing online educational resources that utilize archival materials to engage specific targeted audiences
• Proven success in leading cross-functional teams of creatives and non-creatives alike towards a common goal

Preferred

• Ph.D. in History, M.S. in Museum Studies, or the M.L.I.S. in Archival Science; or an equivalent degree program is preferred
• Proficiency in archival standards, preservation practices, and records management
• Knowledge of digital asset management systems, metadata standards, and digitization processes
• Project management skills, vendor management experience
• Proficiency in basic conservation techniques and environmental controls for archives.
• Ability to craft compelling narratives and contextualize materials in engaging ways
• Emotional intelligence when working with difficult historical subjects and cultural sensitivity

Essential Qualities

• Long-standing passion for civil rights in the United States of America
• Able to lead, support, and role model the Foundation’s ‘culture of bridge building’
• Organized, detail-oriented, and able to bring order from unclear, uncertain, or confusing circumstances
• Demonstrates a commitment to excellence with a bias toward solutions and looks for ways to continually advance the objective
• Self-motivated and able to determine how to advance foundation goals based on a strategic plan with little directive instruction
• A proven team player who works well with others, especially under pressure
• Winsome in managing key relationships