Advocacy and External Engagement Strategist

Summary

This position contributes to NCEES’ outreach, partnership, and transparency with governmental constituencies in each state jurisdiction.

The Advocacy and External Engagement Strategist is an important contributor to NCEES, helping to guide and facilitate internal (licensing boards) and external (legislators and the public) communication efforts that promote the public sector understanding of the importance of professional licensure for engineers and surveyors.

Who you are

We are looking for a motivated and conscientious Advocacy and External Engagement Strategist who is ready to jump in and assist in multiple occupational licensure initiatives. In this role, you will use your knowledge of state legislative and regulatory processes and your research and organizational skills to manage communication that enables our organization to position licensure for engineers and surveyors and its benefits to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public. In doing so, you will help build relationships that allow NCEES to advance its mission of public protection.

To succeed in this role, you must have strong communication skills, analytical skills, and excellent attention to detail. You will need planning and organizing skills and strong problem-solving skills.

Principal accountabilities

• Play a lead role in supporting government relations activities in each state jurisdiction, including the coordination of meetings with similar organizations.
• Plan and support public outreach efforts with licensure thought leaders to increase transparency and public understanding.
• Strengthen relationships that serve the public interest.
• Develop and manage a variety of external stakeholder relationships to strengthen and maintain information-sharing with each NCEES member board.
• Identify and create linkages between NCEES expertise and interested public officials and staff. Closely coordinate with key subject-matter experts, senior staff, and NCEES leadership to keep stakeholders informed about key priorities, initiatives, and research related to engineering and surveying licensure.
• Partner closely with communications colleagues on news releases and events, speech dissemination, and executive communications support to ensure accuracy and maximum reach.
• Track and regularly report on relevant legislation, regulations, and policies; manage database of appropriate legislative staffer contacts.
• Participate in NCEES efforts to be responsive and informative to appropriate governing bodies on behalf of NCEES leadership.

Essential duties and responsibilities

• Research and monitoring
• Monitor state engineering and surveying licensing board activities affecting licensure.
• Monitor legislative and regulatory activities and determine the potential impact on engineering and surveying licensure.
• Oversee the implementation of policies that support the organizations goals.
• Contact state licensing board staff directly to obtain information about proposed regulatory changes and topics discussed that affect engineering and surveying licensure.
• Develop responses to state requests for information.
• Research and analyze state legislative and regulatory information as requested by state licensing boards.
• Research and compile changes to state laws and regulations pertaining to engineers and surveyors including but not limited to development of state-by-state tables and charts, as requested.
• Conduct research for internal projects and external presentations.

• Publications
• Assist with content and production of advocacy resources to include the Alliance for Responsible Professional Licensing (ARPL).
• Provide state engagement tools that help advocate the importance of licensure in protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public.
• Develop and assist in distributing drafts of state changes to each state licensing board for review and approval; receive and track approvals/edits.
• Manage and maintain NCEES Advocacy Resources communications.
• Update documents with changes provided by state licensing boards.
• Collaborate with ARPL to distribute publications to state licensing board staff and leaders in the professional engineering and surveying communities.
• Draft updates to state-specific information for member licensing board websites.

• Administrative and communications
• Attend weekly meetings/conference calls with ARPL, taking notes and developing summary as assigned.
• Develop drafts of responses to related incoming correspondence and information requests.
• Liaise with licensing organizations and related supporting associations, including ACEC, CLARB, NCARB, NSPE, ACEC, and others.
• Participate in training as needed.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

• Experience with the following systems is a plus:
• Project-tracking software
• Legislative-tracking software
• Adobe InDesign