Senior Policy and Training Associate - J-PAL North America

J-PAL North America, a research center within the Economics department at MIT, seeks a Senior Policy and Training Associate to join its team and contribute to its mission to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. J-PAL North America conducts randomized evaluations, builds partnerships for evidence-informed policymaking, and helps partners scale up effective programs. As a regional office of the global Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, J-PAL North America leverages research by affiliated professors from universities across the world to generate and disseminate rigorous evidence about which anti-poverty social policies work and why. 

Embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion is essential to address the complex causes and consequences of poverty. To advance our mission, J-PAL North America must draw on diverse experiences from our staff and affiliated researchers in order to ask better questions and identify better solutions. We are working to increase the limited representation of individuals from underrepresented backgrounds in the economics profession. Our organization is implementing strategies to attract, develop, and advance a diverse staff and building a pipeline to increase diversity among economic researchers. We are committed to engaging in self-reflection, learning, and dialogue to nurture understanding across differences. Together, we will build an equitable, inclusive culture where everyone is respected, empowered, and heard. To learn more about our work and team culture, see our Join Our Team brochure or visit www.povertyactionlab.org/na.  

As a member of the J-PAL North America team, you’ll be part of a Nobel-prize winning scientific movement that can transform US policy making. The Senior Policy and Training Associate works closely with both the Policy and Training teams. The Policy team translates insights from rigorous research to inform policy change, connects researchers with implementers to spur research on key questions related to poverty, synthesizes findings from research, conducts targeted policy outreach to share insights, and collaborates with partners to scale evidence-based approaches. The Training team creates resources and teaching materials, and delivers courses and trainings to promote the production and use of rigorous evidence. The Training team also leads the Economics Transformation Project, a pipeline project that aims to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in economics. As a Senior Policy and Training Associate, your primary tasks will involve stakeholder engagement, evaluation support, project and process management, policy writing and outreach, and capacity building.  

For this position, we are looking for candidates with an understanding of impact evaluation, familiarity with economics and statistics, knowledge of social policy, public administration, and program implementation, excellent oral and written communication skills, attention to detail, strong project management skills, and who can take ownership of their work independently and collaborate effectively with other members of the team. We seek applicants from diverse backgrounds and especially encourage candidates with lived or direct experience with the social policy issues that J-PAL North America aims to address through its work. 

We are seeking to expand the capacity of our team to work with Spanish-speaking populations, including the ability to deliver training programs in Spanish. For this position, Spanish language fluency is a plus. 

This full-time, exempt position is classified by MIT as a Technical Associate II position and currently offers a fixed market-based salary range that is based on experience.

J-PAL North America staff are MIT employees, which means they are eligible for a wide array of institutional benefits. Some of these MIT benefits include comprehensive health insurance, a 401(k) match up to 5% of salary plus a pension-based retirement plan, tuition assistance up to $5,250 per calendar year, commuter benefits, access to MyLifeServices, a generous vacation policy (3 weeks of paid vacation in your first year, and 4 weeks every year after that, plus an additional 12+ paid Institute-wide holidays per year), paid leave for sick time, maternity and parental leave, back-up child care benefits and much more.

J-PAL North America supports a culture of learning, with opportunities to attend weekly seminars, engage in small-group discussions with other J-PAL staff, participate in workshops, and take classes for credit at MIT or elsewhere with our generous tuition assistance program. Senior Policy and Training Associates have the opportunity to work with J-PAL affiliates and directors, as well as interact with policymakers and practitioners.  

Commitment to Mission & Values: Cares personally and deeply about policy that has the potential to reduce poverty and the rigorous research that informs it. Demonstrates interest in poverty alleviation in the North American (primarily the United States) context in particular. Demonstrates a commitment to J-PAL North America’s values. 

Education: A bachelor’s degree in economics, public policy or administration, statistics, or a closely related field is required, as is training in statistics and quantitative methods and training in effective non-technical writing. A master’s degree in a closely related field is strongly preferred.  

Experience: This position requires 4 years of relevant experience, which can include experience gained through part-time work, college level coursework, related internships, volunteer experiences, research assistant or teaching assistant experience and/or policy work. Project management experience is highly valued. Prior experience with mentorship programs, pipeline programs, teaching/tutoring high school or college aged students is a plus. Prior lived or direct experience working with communities of color and/or those experiencing poverty in North America is a plus.

Technical Skills: Demonstrates the ability to accurately understand, communicate about, and teach basic concepts related to research design for randomized evaluations and other impact evaluation methodologies, study results and their implications, and research generalizability with minimal support. Demonstrates the ability to communicate complex technical/statistical topics to non-technical audiences. Demonstrates ability to learn and draw general lessons on research design, study implementation, and/or results across studies. Demonstrate proficiency in using office computer applications, software and systems to perform key responsibilities; demonstrate ability and willingness to learn new computer skills as needed to complete assignments.

Ownership of Work: Demonstrates the ability to take responsibility/be accountable for managing their own work with high attention to detail and limited supervision. Demonstrates the ability to manage projects across multiple stakeholders within and across organizations. Takes initiative and offers ideas for new ways to approach work; shares knowledge and/or talents with others as needed to complete assigned tasks or projects. 

Written Communication: Accurately, succinctly, and persuasively communicates in writing to staff, researchers, and project stakeholders with minimal supervision. Communicates or drafts communications for high-level external audiences with some supervision from senior-level staff. Able to edit the work of other staff and coach more junior staff in written communications. Spanish language fluency is a plus.

Oral Communication: Demonstrates strong active listening skills and accurately, succinctly, and persuasively communicates information orally to staff, researchers, and external partners with minimal supervision. Communicates with high-level external partners with direct supervision from senior-level staff. Spanish language fluency is a plus.

External Stakeholder Relations: Demonstrates the ability to effectively support partnership development between researchers and potential implementing partners and/or maintain relationships with existing stakeholders with minimal supervision. Able to effectively support partnership development through events and projects. 

Task & Project Management: Demonstrates the ability to initiate and manage a process-oriented task, plan and organize work, delegate appropriately, coordinate with others, establish appropriate priorities and timelines, exercises follow through, finish it well, and add overall value to the team. 

Problem Solving/Decision Making: Demonstrates adeptness at analyzing facts, judgment, and strong decision-making ability. Responds to problems, issues, and opportunities that are identified by supervisors. Collaborates to identify a solution or response.  

People Management: May supervise interns. May serve on hiring committees and provide support to the hiring process. Effective in providing candid feedback to and about colleagues including managers. Actively seeks feedback and areas for improvement. Willingly receives and acts on feedback.

Travel: Willingness and ability to travel as needed locally and in the US (usually minimal) to attend events or participate in meetings. Please note that in the short term, travel may be extremely limited due to Covid concerns.