Position Overview
Reporting to the President & CEO, the Vice President of Strategic Communications & Marketing serves as a core member of the Foundation’s leadership team and as its chief narrator and senior communications strategist. The VP leads an integrated communications, marketing, and public affairs strategy that advances the Foundation’s mission, strengthens its national voice, and builds trust among educators, policymakers, funders, partners, and the public at a moment when public education sits squarely at the center of national debate.
This leader is responsible for shaping how the Foundation is understood and valued in the public sphere. The VP sets and safeguards the Foundation’s narrative architecture, ensuring its mission, values, and impact are communicated with clarity, credibility, urgency, and moral coherence across all platforms and audiences. The VP is a skilled storyteller and a driver of the Foundation’s engagement ecosystem. By integrating high-level strategic communications with sophisticated digital marketing and audience-development strategies, the VP expands the Foundation’s influence, visibility, and reach while protecting its reputation and public standing.
In close partnership with the CEO, the VP also supports the Foundation’s executive communications, thought leadership, and external presence, while building the internal systems, team capacity, and digital infrastructure required to scale engagement and impact. The VP supervises communications and marketing staff and relationships with external partners, manages the communications budget, and collaborates closely with program, development, and policy leadership to ensure communications strategies advance fundraising, field-building, and strategic priorities.
The VP represents the Foundation externally as appropriate, cultivating strong media relationships and strategic partnerships, and plays a central role in navigating reputational risk in a complex and evolving public environment. This role demands intellectual rigor, political and cultural fluency, creative instinct, and operational discipline. The ideal candidate can move seamlessly from executive ghostwriting and board-level messaging to data-informed growth strategies—while maintaining an unwavering commitment to the Foundation’s mission and activity.
Location: Washington, DC (Hybrid)
Salary & Benefits
The NEA Foundation offers a rich tapestry of benefits that include medical, dental, life, and vision insurance, retirement savings, and paid time off. The salary range for this position is $165,000-$175,000. Should a candidate with a combination of education and experience over and above what is required emerge, The Foundation may consider hiring at the Senior Vice President level with a higher level of compensation.
How to Apply
Please submit resume, cover letter, references and salary requirements to [email protected].
Equal Opportunity Hiring Statement
The NEA Foundation is committed to equity and diversity in all it does, and to that end, not only abides by all requisite Washington, DC laws, but champions the recruitment, hiring, and retainment of diverse candidates in every way.
About The NEA Foundation
The NEA Foundation is a national nonprofit and philanthropic organization that achieves its mission by investing in educators’ leadership, shared learning and collaboration; supporting partnerships that advance the best in teaching and learning; and sharing improvements in education policy and practice resulting from educators’ and organizational partners’ thought leadership. The Foundation’s aims are furthered through grants programs, strategic initiatives, fellowship and awards programs, and numerous collaborative efforts.
The Foundation believes that the most innovative and effective policies and strategies emanate from educators engaged in authentic partnership with policymakers, students, parents, and others committed to educational justice, equity, excellence, and opportunity. They envision schools as places that foster both educators’ and students’ love of learning, enabling both to excel. They also envision education as every child’s civil right.
The NEA Foundation recognizes that the realization of this vision will require rigorous teaching and learning at every educational level; equitable and just educational resources and practices; an appreciation of students’ and educators’ full identity, physical, social, and emotional well-being; the eradication of racism, prejudice, and negative biases or mindsets; and both the public and policymakers’ openness to innovation and change.