Your mission
The project you would be working on at The DO School Fellowships is beVisioneers - a multi-year, global environmental Fellowship that equips thousands of innovators aged 16 to 28 with the training, expert support and resources to bring their planet-positive projects to life.
As the Director of Sustainable Ventures, you will lead a team to enable fellows from diverse backgrounds and starting points to achieve their entrepreneurial ambitions for the planet. The Director is responsible for leading and managing all aspects of our venture building program, focusing on offering fit-for-purpose entrepreneurial support to drive the development and growth of diverse early-stage environmental innovators across coaching, strategic resources and networks.
Overseeing the venture-building strategy across our three-year fellowship program, the Director works with the team to iterate coaching and resourcing support across each year of venture training to enable fellows to address concrete environmental challenges in their local communities and globally. The result of this role is to accelerate the tangible environmental impact of young people from various educational backgrounds and countries.
About the role
You will own...
Leadership of Sustainable Innovation and Project Development:
- Oversee, iterate and strengthen a comprehensive venture-building strategy and support system across three years of innovation programming that unlocks diverse fellows’ entrepreneurial journeys
- Lead the team and coordinate with other departments to tailor venture-building inputs to tackle key startup needs across idea and incubation stages of fellows' entrepreneurial journeys
- Oversee the selection and evaluation process for project scholarship recipients, the subsection of fellow cohorts that receive individual funds to apply their learning in more advanced ways, with emphasis on environmental innovation and sustainable business models
- Oversee the strategic involvement and outcomes of venture coaches with expertise in building successful start-ups in various global regions
- Oversee program budget with consideration for sustainable procurement and resource efficiency
- Verify and maintain program timeline and impact measurement systems
Ecosystem Development:
- Lead, with the team and across departments, a global-local strategy for our fellowship’s environmental innovation eco-systems, to support fellows’ entrepreneurial development at early to later stages
- Build and maintain relationships with impact investors, philanthropists, sustainability experts, corporate partners and others who can enrich the fellows' venture-building journey
- Strengthen the team’s ability to facilitate connections between fellows’ startups and key resources
- Organize impact-focused demo days and investor presentations
- Stay current with climate tech trends and innovations in sustainable business
Strategic Partnership Development and Management:
- Collaborate with the Learning & Community Director and the team to identify and cultivate strategic partnerships.
- Oversee, manage, and adjust activities to achieve program KPIs across the spectrum of entrepreneurial journeys, including environmental impact metrics, social value creation, and venture sustainability
- Represent the stories and outcomes to our sustainable ventures support to donors, funders, investors, etc.
- Represent the fellowship at sustainability and impact investing events
- Create opportunities for sustainability knowledge sharing and best practice exchange
… and support
- Cross-Team Collaboration: Collaborate with the Community & Learning Director, Operations Director, and Communications Director to ensure program consistency across the Fellow journey (Years 1-3).
- Venture-building Program Coordination: Advise and support the Impact Program Manager and Regional Program Managers in curating partners and designing region-specific programming.
- Stakeholder Reporting and Engagement: Contribute to impact reports for stakeholders, including donors, advisors, and Mercedes-Benz, and promote the fellowship's vision to stakeholders and potential partners.
- Administrative Ecosystem Support: Provide general administrative support to strengthen ecosystem-building initiatives.
In this role, you will closely collaborate with the Learning & Community, Operations, Communications and Governance teams, as well as the Executive Director. You will mainly work with approximately four direct reports, the Director leads a team of 13-15 FTEs as well as the majority of venture coaches.
This is what you can expect…
In the first month, you will complete your onboarding, learn the nuts & bolts of beVisioneers, establish working relationships with our program and governance teams, and contribute to the iteration and launch of Year 2 and 3 programming.
After three months, you will have designed the 3-year venture building strategy, leveraging learnings to date on advancing idea stage fellows to prototype and then revenue.
After six months, you will be in full swing, overseeing and iterating venture building components of the program, including project scholarship selection and venture coaching involvement. You will be the 'go-to' team member for anyone working on long-term communities of action, and will optimize our ways of working to be most efficient and impactful.
After one year, you will be at the forefront of scaling beVisioneers Fellows' impact to fulfill our vision of a global community of planet-positive action.
Your profile
To thrive and grow in this role, you will be:
- A venture leader with a proven track record in accelerator/ incubator set-up
- An effective communicator, capable of intercultural communication and contributing to cross-departmental collaboration
- A decisive systems thinker who embraces co-creation, enjoys working in diverse teams, and can maintain consistency in values-based decision-making
- Adept at stakeholder management, including high-profile stakeholders and accelerator partners
- Experienced in community building with a focus on impact and scalable processes
… And will have:
- Excellence in people management, partnership development, and donor/ investor relations
- Connections to a network of potential contributors to the fellowships’ success
- Knowledge of learning programs for early stage and impact entrepreneurs, and familiarity with building skills in conflict-impacted regions.
- A passion for youth leadership and/or environmental action
- Collaborative, empathetic, and efficient habits
Ideally, you might also have ...
- Working or lived experience in countries outside of Germany
- Language skills in addition to English
- Experience working with corporate donors or stakeholders
Why us?
- We are a purposeful organization with a global reach working to make an impact, where purpose, passion, and your ideas matter.
- You will work with an entrepreneurial, creative, and international team as well as a global community of purposeful DOers from over 100 countries.
- We offer a competitive salary, benefits, team-building activities, professional development opportunities, and flexible and remote work modalities.
Benefits include:
- 30 days of paid leave annually (based on a five-day working week)
- Personal development budget + 2 extra days of paid leave for personal development per year
- Team development budget
- Company pension scheme ("Betriebliche Altersvorsorge")
- Possibility for mobile work (on 50% of the working time)
- Possibility for remote work, also outside of Germany once a year for up to three weeks
- One two-day team offsite per year
- Monthly team affairs evening
- Yearly summer party
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About us
About The DO School Fellowships
The DO School Fellowships gGmbH is a non-profit organization based in Berlin, Germany. Our core mission is to offer training and fellowship programs to empower young people globally to launch projects addressing global and local challenges around environment and society. With our work, we are training the next generation of impact entrepreneurs in innovative educational and fellowship programs.
The DO School Fellowships is an inclusive organization and explicitly welcomes applicants from diverse backgrounds, whether that’s ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, disability or alternative professional paths.
