Location: ideally located in or near Washington, DC; or in any locations where Kearns & West has an office (Austin, TX; Charleston, SC; Davis, CA; Denver, CO; Los Angeles, CA; Portland, OR; Riverside, CA; Sacramento, CA; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; San Juan Capistrano, CA; Seattle, WA; Washington, DC)
THE ORGANIZATION
Kearns & West is a leader in the collaborative communications field, providing services in public involvement, stakeholder facilitation, community outreach, and mediation, for the public and private sector. Founded in 1984, the small, woman-owned business has offices in Portland, Riverside, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC.
Focusing on positive, mutually beneficial results has allowed Kearns & West to maintain long-term relationships with the people and organizations they assist. The firm’s high-stakes projects include work at local, state, and national levels and cover a variety of sectors including land use and community planning, transportation, major public facilities and infrastructure, natural resources, energy, water, and marine resources. At the core of all our projects is finding solutions to advance essential policies and programs.
Kearns & West is the ideal match for professionals seeking meaningful work, opportunities for growth, and colleagues that are smart, capable, and supportive. Once on board, our employees stay for the long term. The entrepreneurial culture at Kearns & West values employee initiatives in practice innovation and business development. Compensation and benefits at Kearns & West are also highly competitive with firms in our field.
The Position
Kearns & West seeks a project coordinator / associate role for the Washington, DC Office. Specifically, this is entry-level position provides project management support to an Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with the Department of Interior. The position involves coordinating and maintaining project management systems in support of multiple projects and project teams conducting work across collaborative problem solving, strategic planning, dispute resolution, public outreach and engagement, tribal engagement and communications processes with federal government clients. This role will interact extensively across Kearns & West and externally with clients and expert practitioners in the execution of tasks related to the set up and oversight of these related projects. Having an interest in projects involving environment, water, community planning, as well as diversity, equity and inclusion in the natural resources or public engagement spaces is important.
Key responsibilities for this position include the following:
- Maintaining project tracking systems with updated information garnered from project sources
- Leading or supporting coordination of meeting logistics
- Attending meetings with stakeholders and providing logistics and note taking support
- Leading new project coordination from practitioner selection to award and close
- Ensuring accuracy of contract information across several databases and trackers
- Coordinating and communicating project information across several teams and entities
- Processing contract changes and project invoices
- Maintaining regular client and practitioner relationships
- Scheduling and facilitating client and project calls
- Undertaking new business development proposal processes
- Supporting project teams to track scope, budget and schedule of several projects
- Synthesizing project performance data for reporting and improvement purposes
- Contributing to monitoring and evaluating of projects
- Supporting public involvement planning and execution
- Proofreading reports and other documents
- Programming and conducting virtual meetings with interactive functions (e.g., Zoom)
Qualifications
We are looking for someone who is:
- Highly organized and analytical
- Adaptable and flexible
- Ethical, collegial, and committed to seeking positive outcomes for clients and stakeholders
- Self-motivated and comfortable working independently, yet successful at balancing working as part of a team
- Comfortable taking direction and being empowered to take the initiative
- Able to reliably set priorities, manage multiple tasks, and meet task deadlines for multiple
- Self-motivated and comfortable working independently with limited supervision
- An effective and reliable communicator
- Able to reliably set priorities, manage multiple tasks, and meet project deadlines
- Comfortable learning on the job
- Able to balance work across multiple projects for multiple clients
- Proficient and comfortable working in Excel and closely tracking data
- Fluent with or quick to learn virtual meeting technologies such as zoom, WebEx, Miro, Poll Everywhere, etc.
This position:
- is ideally located in or near Washington, DC; or in any locations where Kearns & West has an office (Austin, TX; Charleston, SC; Davis, CA; Denver, CO; Los Angeles, CA; Portland, OR; Riverside, CA; Sacramento, CA; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; San Juan Capistrano, CA; Seattle, WA; Washington, DC)
- is a non-partisan, “neutral” position in relation to subject matter, not an advocacy position
Education, Certifications and Experience
MINIMUM EDUCATION: Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts degree or equivalent. Advanced degree or education is valued.
REQUIRED SKILLS/EXPERIENCE: Proficiency in MS Office (Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel), particularly in Excel, is required. Demonstrated project management experience and/or skills are required.
PREFERRED SKILLS/EXPERIENCE: Strong candidates will have a minimum of two years of employment experience. Proficiency with basic contract management tools including budget tracking is preferred and a recognized project management certification is valued. Demonstrated understanding of federal government contracting is desired. An interest across any or all of the Kearns & West services or expertise areas (as found on our web site), and particularly the following is desired: project management contract administration, facilitation and stakeholder engagement. A candidate with prior connection to and professional relationships with the Department of Interior, tribal government or tribal organizational experience will hold a significant advantage. Interest and understanding of federal/national initiatives related to equity, racial justice and/or issues affecting Tribal Nations will hold a significant advantage.