Managing Director

Awana Digital, a US-registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, is looking for an experienced person to play the role of Managing Director, which is a new position for our organization. This experienced manager will work closely with the Executive Director, Programs team and Leadership team to support Awana's people and processes to help the organization achieve a deeper level of impact in its work to support Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities protecting critical ecosystems.

Who We Are

Awana Digital's mission is to work in solidarity with frontline communities to use technology to defend their rights and environmental justice. Named for the Kichwa word "To Weave", Awana Digital builds the power of Indigenous land defenders by supporting them to weave technology in a holistic way into their land defense work. We partner with environmental defenders to co-design and co-develop tools they can use to defend critical ecosystems and Indigenous cultures. Our flagship product, CoMapeo, is used by communities across the world to map, monitor and protect their territories, and has played an instrumental role in helping communities win legal victories to protect their land rights. We have an all-remote team who are spread across seven countries and three continents.

Requirements

As Managing Director, you'll help create the conditions for Awana Digital's people and programs to thrive. Working closely with the Executive Director and leadership team, you'll help strengthen the organization's effectiveness by ensuring that our people, resources, systems, and priorities are aligned in support of our mission. Key areas of responsibility include:

• Supporting and developing staff while fostering a culture of trust, accountability, learning, and collaboration
• Creating clarity around priorities, goals, roles, and expectations across the organization
• Strengthening communication, coordination, and relationships across teams
• Designing and improving systems, workflows, and processes that help the organization operate effectively
• Supporting organizational planning, decision-making, and implementation of strategic priorities
• Aligning budgets, staffing, projects, and funder commitments with organizational goals
• Building structures that help teams navigate growth, change, and new opportunities
• Identifying challenges, solving problems, and helping move important work forward
• Supporting the long-term sustainability and effectiveness of the organization
  
  

Most importantly, you'll help Awana Digital become a stronger, more resilient organization—one that reflects our values not only in what we do, but in how we work together.

Who You Are

You are a thoughtful, grounded leader who gets energy from supporting people, projects, and organizations to thrive. You know how to balance big-picture thinking with day-to-day execution, and you're equally comfortable supporting staff, improving systems, and moving important work forward.

You build trust quickly and lead with both empathy and accountability. People experience you as clear, approachable, and reliable. You can navigate difficult conversations, make decisions when needed, and create environments where people feel supported, challenged, and able to grow.

You are naturally organized and enjoy bringing structure to complexity. Whether it's improving a workflow, aligning a budget with organizational priorities, or helping a team clarify its goals, you see connections, identify what's needed, and help turn ideas into action.

You are collaborative by nature and understand that strong organizations are built through relationships. You value different perspectives, communicate transparently, and know how to bring people together around shared goals.

You care deeply about social justice and believe that how we work matters as much as what we accomplish. You bring humility, curiosity, and a willingness to learn, and you are excited to contribute to an organization working in solidarity with Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities protecting critical ecosystems.

Additional nice-to-have qualities:

• Experience with Notion (or comparable) project management tool
• Experience working across countries and cultures, with an understanding of work cultures outside the United States
• Proficiency in Spanish, Portuguese, French or Bahasa Indonesia
• Ability to align budgets, staffing, and organizational priorities with grant requirements, deliverables, and reporting obligations
  
  

Benefits

Awana Digital uses a transparent payscale to determine compensation. The salary range is expected to be between $106-115,000 USD, depending on experience. Benefits depend on country of residence.

Awana Digital is dedicated to social justice and work-life balance, operates on a 4-day work week, and the team is doing internal work focused on democratizing decision-making within the organization.

• Flexible schedule, location and hours. As an organization we embrace working in a way that finds a balance between individual needs and team collaboration. However, for this role it will be important to have time available for day-time meetings with team members in the Americas and western Europe.
• Opportunity to play a key role at a ground-breaking organization. You have the opportunity to make a big impact in a small team
• 4-day work week. We consider "full time" to be 32 hours per week. Some people work four 8-hour days, and others distribute their hours organically across the week.
• Opportunities for travel. While this will be primarily a remote position, occasional travel will be expected for internal team gatherings and retreats, to attend conferences and/or visit partner organizations
  
  

Our small but growing team is based in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Peru, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. For this role we are looking for candidates based in the Americas. The Indigenous communities we work with have lived through colonization and deal with its effects everyday, along with marginalization and discrimination against their language and culture. It is therefore particularly important that we build a diverse team with individuals who understand and empathize with their situation. Indigenous people, people of color, women, LGBTQ folk and others who identify as coming from a marginalized identity are strongly urged to apply. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Note: We have recently been disrupted by the ways in which so-called artificial intelligence has made the hiring process more difficult, and have experienced multiple cases of applications where false answers to our questions were fabricated by AI tools. We are a team who prefers authenticity to machine-generated polish. We do not use any LLMs to sort through applications, or to make decisions on candidates. Our very human team reviews applications, and takes the time to let people know whether they will proceed to the next stage. We ask the same of you - if you want your application to stand out, please take the time to tell us in your own words why you are interested in this role.