Summary
Description
HOW TO APPLY
Please submit your résumé, contact details for two references, and written responses to the following
questions via our Submittable form.
• What is most compelling to you about Brink’s approach? (300 words)
• Tell us three skills of yours that will help you succeed in this role. (500 words)
• Tell us three past experiences in which you have performed responsibilities (in full/part) of this
role. (500 words)
• What is your superpower? You may be good at many things, but what are you truly great at?
(300 words)
• What kind of workplace do you thrive in? What kind of workplace do you struggle in? (500
words)
A note on using AI to help write your responses: We ask that you do not use AI to help write responses to these questions. Hey, we get it. We dig ChatGPT for research and smooth copyedits, but in this application, we want to get to know you and how you think and write without the aid of our potential sci-fi overlords. Please note that when we feed our website, application questions, and a resume into an AI, it’s pretty good at dividing out the AI-assisted applications from the lovely human-written ones.
ABOUT BRINK
Our Mission
Brink Literacy Project believes the stories people tell about themselves shape the lives they live. We work with people living on the brink—of incarceration, of dropping out, of giving up, of being written off—and help them reclaim authorship of their own narratives. Through storytelling, our studentsconfront internal barriers (such as shame, trauma, hopelessness) and external ones (such as systemic inequity, stigma, lack of access) that hold them back.
We don’t just teach writing. We teach people to see themselves differently. And when that shifts, everything shifts.
Our Model: Behavioral Health × Education × Pathways
Brink operates at the intersection of three disciplines:
Behavioral Health–Informed Practice
We support students in examining the internal narratives shaped by trauma, stigma, and systemic inequity. Through structured reflection, mindfulness, and guided dialogue, students build emotional regulation, coping skills, accountability, and self-awareness. This work is non-clinical but deeply intentional. It strengthens the foundation required for recovery and stability.
Rigorous Literacy & Critical Thinking
We are first and foremost an education organization. Students read closely. They analyze structure and theme. They write, revise, and articulate complex ideas. They practice communication skills essential for relationships, advocacy, and employment. Our classrooms demand clarity, reflection, and intellectual engagement. We do not lower standards—we scaffold access to them.
Pathway Creation & Goal Setting
Education without direction can stall. Reflection without forward motion can fade. Brink supports students in identifying passion, purpose, and next steps. Through goal-setting exercises, planning frameworks, and mentorship, students move from insight to action—whether that means pursuing further education, strengthening employment readiness, repairing family relationships, or engaging more actively in their communities.
We believe transformation happens when all three approach weave together: when someone learns to support their mental health, articulate their story, and imagine a future worth building.
Our Largest Programs
Frames Comic Program
Using comics to court low-literacy and reluctant readers, we help students distill a single turning point in their lives into a short graphic memoir. This process works to tackle personal trauma, increase self-sufficiency, and help students gain the tools they need to get out of prison and live thriving lives. We deliver this program in two formats: for adults both in facility and through partnering with re-entry organizations, and for youth, both at-risk or justice-impacted in order to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline.
F(r)iction in the Classroom
In partnership with high school teachers and university professors, we work to engage students with diverse, contemporary stories using F(r)iction as a mentor text. By placing students in the driver’s seat of their own education, these courses allow students to read and write about a wide range of topics—from heart-crushing memoirs to wild sci-fi comics—each aiming to engage reluctant readers, increase critical thinking and empathy, and spark a lifelong love of reading. Through this course, students come to understand their passion, purpose, and power, and how these key concepts can combine with their strengths to create a future of their own choosing.
F(r)iction
At the heart of all our programming, we publish F(r)iction, an art and literature anthology that seeks to inspire readers to think differently. Printing bestselling authors alongside student work and brand-new talent, we use this platform to elevate marginalized voices, increase critical thinking, and spark a love of literature. Enjoyed by thousands of readers across the globe, this collection is also the primary teaching tool in all our education programs!
POSITION GOALS
This section outlines the programmatic goals that you’ll be responsible for achieving in this position.
Outcome 1: Set the compass – craft the education strategy that transforms organizational mission and goals into operational excellence.
• Strategic Alignment: Translate organizational mission and goals into an education strategy that's ambitious yet grounded in partner and funder context, community needs, and on-the-ground realities.
• Map the Journey: Build the detailed annual operational plan, budget, and resource model that turns your strategic vision into a daily reality.
• Integration Champion: Ensure the education team operates as a connected part of the broader organization—building bridges across departments and functions.
Outcome 2: Deliver jaw dropping program outcomes that prove the transformational power of storytelling.
• Curriculum and Training Excellence: Lead and adapt world-class curriculum and training that equips instructors to deliver transformational learning experiences.
• Adaptive Execution: Adapt programs to meet different student and partner needs and real-world implementation challenges ensuring on-time, on-budget, and world-class delivery.
• Prove the Impact: Implement robust M&E systems that track and prove meaningful outcomes and communicate our "jaw-dropping" impact to funders and partners.
• Nurture the Alliance: Recruit the right partners and manage relationships to ensure smooth collaboration, operational success, and all reporting and engagement requirements for funders.
Outcome 3: Build a team where education superstars come to do the most impactful work of their lives.
• Recruit the Best: Actively scout, hire, and onboard exceptional education professionals who are passionate about storytelling's transformational power.
• Performance Catalyst: Provide crystal-clear role definition, continuous feedback, and rigorous performance management that helps every team member grow and excel.
• Nurture the Culture: Build, embody, and sustain a team culture defined by excellence, collaboration, innovation, and deep commitment to mission.
POSITION CANDIDATE
The Ideal Candidate will:
● Have Strategic & Operational Leadership: You have 6–8+ years of progressive experience, including successfully designing and executing multi-year strategies. You are a master of turning a mission into a detailed operational plan, budget, and resource model. You live at the intersection of vision and execution
● Have a track record of Team Leadership and Talent Development: You have 3–5+ years of direct people management experience, with a proven track record of hiring, coaching, and retaining high-performing teams of 5–15 people. You believe your primary job is to make your team successful and you are a "performance catalyst" who builds exceptional culture.
● Have End-to-End Program Delivery Experience: You have deep experience leading the full program lifecycle—from world-class curriculum design and training to on-the-ground implementation—in complex, resource-constrained, or multi-stakeholder environments.
● Have excellent Stakeholder and Partner Management Skills: You are a natural "alliance nurturer" with experience managing complex relationships with external partners, funders, and community stakeholders to drive collaboration and success.
● Have a strong Education Background: You have meaningful experience in curriculum design, instructional leadership, or innovative education models (e.g., storytelling-based education, arts integration, social-emotional learning, humanities education, or project-based learning).
● Be a Driver of Excellence: You have a strong commitment to quality and a relentless drive to get things done.
Do not apply if: you identify as being “more of a big picture person” who has trouble getting into the weeds and managing projects and logistics. Or vice versa, if you love working at ground level but struggle connecting the dots with big picture thinking. You will not be successful in this position unless you are very good at both.
POSITION INFORMATION
Your Starting Point
Your time will initially consist of diving into our staff culture (get to know the Brinkeroos!) and learning the systems, processes, and tools we use to deliver and support our programming. You will train directly with our CEO to learn more about the vision for our Education Department and our Chief of Staff to dig into the operations, finances, and delivery. Through this all, we will provide a significant amount of onboarding and training; however, you will be expected to drive your own learning process. Our culture hinges on curious, mission-driven folks exploring and driving innovation.
Our Education Department is unlike traditional education teams or curriculum incubators. Co-created with our students and driven by leaders with lived experience and out-of the-box mental modes, we approach everything from curriculum creation, data collection, and facilitation with a drive toward not only student transformation but also authentically creating programming that meets students where they are at, through engaging and culturally relevant courses.
We’re currently in an exciting period of scale-up. Since 2022, we’ve more than quadrupled our student count, but we don’t want to lose our impact as we scale. We are deeply committed to getting better as we get bigger. The first step of that for our education department is this new role. Currently, nearly all our potential partnerships with community organizations are on waiting lists as we need to build and improve our leadership, systems, and strategy in order to hire even more instructors and expand to even more students (with deeper and more meaningful engagement at each new stage).
Thriving!
Once you have a strong foundation and organizational context, we believe you’ll thrive here if:
● You are energized by complexity, dynamic environments, and reinvention, not paralyzed.
● You believe in setting high standards while providing high support for your team.
● You have strong opinions, loosely held—you are strategic but deeply adaptable to on-the-ground realities.
● You are a systems thinker who can naturally zoom out to the 3-year vision and zoom in to the details of a single training session.
● You measure your success not just by programs delivered, but by the lives transformed and the team flourishing under your leadership.
What’s In It For You
● Contribute to the growth of an exceptional team working directly to transform lives through storytelling.
● Join the nonprofit at a pivotal point in its scale and contribute to both explosive growth and transformational impact.
● Be part of a fast, flexible, evolving workplace aiming to completely rethink education, societal perceptions around incarceration, low opportunity, and the life-changing power of storytelling.
