Climate Adaptation & Regional Innovation Designer & Producer

Job Title: Climate Adaptation & Regional Innovation Designer & Producer
Team: Resilient and Climate Neutral Regions

Level: Advanced
Please refer to our Capability Framework
Salary: Competitive for Not-for-profit organisation

Contract: 12 months fixed term with possibility of extension.

Location: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland
Start Date: ASAP

ABOUT US

EIT Climate-KIC (Knowledge and Innovation Community) is Europe’s foremost climate innovation initiative. We understand that keeping global temperature rise below 1.5˚C demands unprecedented change. It requires new social dynamics, ways of doing business, capital flows, policymaking, economic models, and new ways of living. That is why our mission is to leverage the power of systems innovation to transform whole places, industries, and value chains by 2030, working across sectors to develop and scale ambitious, mission-led programmes.

Established in 2010 and headquartered in Amsterdam, we orchestrate a community of more than 400 organisations including large corporations and SMEs, municipal and regional governments, universities, and research institutes, as well as non-governmental organisations and uncommon actors. Historically, we have been funded by our founder and core funder, the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT), but we are currently transitioning to a multi-funder model.

EIT Climate-KIC colleagues are based in one of our local offices across Europe or work remotely from home based in one of the countries where we have a branch. We meet at our local offices to exchange and connect and use online collaboration tools work with each other and with our Community. On occasion, we meet in-person as teams, and once per year as an organisation.

As a mission-driven organisation dedicated to climate transformation, we consider the climate impact of our own actions, for example travel, catering, or IT equipment.

ABOUT THE ROLE

The role is about delivering and expanding our work on climate adaptation and resilience. Anchored within the Resilient and Climate Neutral Regions Cluster, the work will focus primarily on further delivering and expanding the EIT Climate-KIC’s programme providing systems innovation as a service to European regions that strive to become climate resilient.

The role involves working with regional governments to design and deliver multiple, connected innovations simultaneously to test and learn how a region can rapidly advance its level of climate adaptation and resilience. This has been trialled with four European regions through EIT Climate-KIC’s Forging Regional Resilience Deep Demonstration and will now be scaled to dozens more regions in the context of the EU Mission on Climate Change Adaptation and in collaboration with the JRC on the Partnerships for Regional Innovation.

Key Responsibilities

• Contribute towards thought leadership with technical expertise and knowledge on climate resilient regional and territorial development.
• Apply design thinking and innovation theory to design actions in the spaces of ecosystems and nature-based solutions, critical infrastructure, health and wellbeing, water management, land use and food systems, and local regional economic systems.
• Supporting local authorities in becoming systems thinking practitioners, to design and implement more transformative measures across a range of intervention areas (for example, innovations across governance, capacity building, funding and financing, or climate services).
• Stakeholder management, influence and curation, including coalition building within a consortium and broader relationships with other key strategic organisations aligned to the mission.
• Workshop design, preparation and facilitation on a range of themes related to climate resilient regions for diverse audience types.
• Curate processes and dialogues to connect to other areas of Climate-KIC’s portfolio of innovation projects and Community.
• Participate in additional attempts to fundraise for programmes to maximise impact and scale given the criticality of the climate resilience challenge.

Key Working Relationships

• Climate Adaptation and Resilience Orchestrator
• Colleagues from the Resilient and Climate Neutral Regions Cluster team
• Colleagues from other clusters working on climate adaptation and resilience
• Capability Building & Learning Orchestrator
• Capability Building & Learning Designer & Producer

Job requirements

ABOUT YOU

To be successful in this role you will be a mission-driven self-starter. Someone that can translate systems thinking theory and practice from one thematic into another (for example, navigating the space between regional development and forestry, or climate smart farming and nature-based solutions for disaster risk reduction). You are energised when working on a diverse set of projects engaging daily with diverse stakeholders, and skilled at sensemaking across different activities.

Tasks you’d be involved in include:

• Adapt and deploy innovation-led design thinking processes, tools and techniques in service of regional resilience building and innovation design.
• Technical delivery and support to local authorities and partners on topics connected to transformative adaptation, systems innovation, and resilience building.
• Design and facilitate shared learning experiences in collaboration with EIT Climate-KIC’s Learning Services team, to advance shared learning, foster effective use of sensemaking and peer-learning processes.
• Research, information gathering and report/deliverable production.
• Proposal development and project design, translating innovation theory into practical delivery lines.

Education/Qualifications

• Relevant academic degree or qualification, ideally connected with climate adaptation or innovation-led development. A relevant post graduate degree is highly desirable.
• Proven experience, expertise, and track record as a practitioner in climate action and sustainability with a focus on climate resilience/adaptation.
• Proven experience, expertise, and track record on project delivery, particularly in complex projects, with multiple, diverse partnerships.

Experience

• Knowledge and experience of supporting decision-making, facilitating, and enabling change, nurturing and shaping dialogue in uncharted waters and stimulating thinking about new possibilities.
• Experience in executing and delivering project results in a multistakeholder environment
• Experience and expertise in building coalitions of organisations and individuals, working to expand the space of action, engagement and risk taking, and to open up credible possibilities for exploration, discovery and stretch learning.
• Planning, organisation, coordination, multitasking, problem solving and prioritisation under pressure with minimal supervision.
• Experience in leading or contributing content expertise to bid/proposal writing and development targeting a range of funders in the public and private sectors.

Skills

• Comfort and confidence working at systems levels, working in areas of complexity and uncertainty with multiple partners and relationships.
• Strong ability to build positive and fruitful relationships with a wide range of stakeholders.
• Emphasizing listening to learn, empathy, human-centered design, agility, empowerment, and collaboration.
• Fluency in English, excellent written and verbal communication skills, and ideally in at least one other European language

Qualities, Personal Style, and Approach

Articulate and dynamic, with highly developed interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate effectively, inspire and motivate people.
Growth mindset; highly adaptable, flexible and resilient: able to work effectively in ambiguity and complexity and to respond dynamically to change.
Customer service ethos and commitment to continuous improvement.
Solutions focused, with a “can do” attitude; willing to undertake a range of tasks to meet needs.
Deeply curious, perceptive, respectful and resilient; oriented toward networking with people and teams and sharing expertise.
Proactive, commercial approach, entrepreneurial.

Location

Candidates must have the right to work (i.e. not require visa sponsorship) in the locations mentioned prior to applying for the position. Ideally, the successful candidate will be based close to a EIT Climate-KIC office, but we support full remote or hybrid forms of working and offer a high degree of flexibility.

At EIT Climate-KIC we are wholeheartedly committed to building a diverse and representative team and an inclusive workplace that values different life experiences and perspectives, and encourages personal development, learning and growth.

When recruiting we look to achieve diversity in the candidate pool. We actively encourage applications from underrepresented groups and are happy to consider reasonable adjustments to that will foster success in potential employees from diverse backgrounds and life situations. And because our team has differing needs and personal circumstances, we offer a high degree of flexibility to accommodate all working patterns.