Context

Blue Star Families seeks to ensure all military families experience a sense of belonging in the communities in which they live. As part of our core mission, Blue Star Families has launched an initiative to better understand the experiences of military families of color, tell their stories, and create representation to better serve our community.

In developing this initiative, we recognized that existing research and data indicate that military families of color are more likely to experience financial distress and are less likely to hear about support and resources. Importantly, the leadership teams of the organizations who serve them MSOs and VSOs are disproportionately white.

As one initial step in combating these inequities, Blue Star Families has launched the DEPLOY Fellowship program (Diversify and Expand the Pipeline Of Leaders for Your military community).

This program seeks to train a new cohort of racially diverse leaders for MSOs and VSOs. These leaders will serve (be deployed) for one year as full-time paid employees in chapter-based or national roles at Blue Star Families while they receive training in MSO/VSO leadership curated by several of our key partners. They will focus their fellowship work on improving the experiences and increasing the representation of military families of color in community settings across the country, and will graduate the program to continue that work in positions of leadership within the MSO/VSO space.

General Description

The Chicagoland DEPLOY Fellow will serve as an integral member of our Chicago Chapter. The Fellow will focus on supporting and implementing programs for local members across the Chicagoland region.

Key job functions

• Manage social media including overseeing and developing content
• Grow and support local partnerships to expand member diversity
• Recruit and improve engagement of military family members of color
• Expand and manage volunteer engagement
• Maintain and build connections with local and/or national team leadership
• Actively participate in leadership training
• Engage in mentoring opportunities
• Measure the efficacy and impact of each program or initiative utilizing Salesforce
• Perform other related duties as required

Required experience, skills, background

• Demonstrated project management skills
• Ability to exhibit creative thinking and planning skills
• A demonstrated passion for ethnic and racial diversity
• Understanding of the military family experience
• Ability to work both independently and collaboratively
• Ability to produce high quality work on deadline; comfortable managing multiple projects, priorities and deadlines in a fast-paced environment
• Strong attention to detail
• Strong writing and communication skills; demonstrated knowledge of professional correspondence
• Flexibility with work schedule to support staff and deadlines
• Proficiency with Google suite and Microsoft Office
• Salesforce experience or ability to learn new software
• Experience and/or comfort working in a virtual environment
• Commitment to the highest standards of professionalism
• May be required to work nights, weekends, and holidays as necessary to carry out key job functions
• Some travel required to attend meetings, trainings, events, etc. (based on current national health standards)
• Limited out-of-town and overnight travel may be required (based on current national health standards)