Senior Associate

CEA Consulting is seeking a Senior Associate for its Philanthropic Services Practice Area in Kentucky. The role involves managing complex consulting projects for environmental foundations and NGOs, requiring strong communication, research, and project management skills. The work environment is collaborative, and while it may involve travel, the position is based in Kentucky. CEA emphasizes diversity, equity, and inclusion in its operations.
Location: Northern

CEA Consulting is an environmental consultancy based in San Francisco, CA. For more than 35 years, CEA has worked at the intersection of markets, business practices, public policies, and philanthropic, nonprofit, corporate, and impact investment strategies to achieve positive environmental outcomes. Our work is guided by a deep knowledge of the scientific, financial/economic, cultural, and sociopolitical underpinnings of our most pressing environmental problems.

CEA has three practice areas:
Philanthropic Services, Environmental Policy and Advocacy, and Recruiting and Organizational Design.

With roughly 30 employees across the firm, CEA strives to create a work environment that is collaborative and inclusive and where all consultants are supported in doing the work they are most passionate about, developing their skills, and bringing their whole selves to work. We believe that a wide array of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences promote innovation and make our team more creative, flexible, and productive.

CEA is explicitly working to create more diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout our organization and has several active “DEI” working groups.

CEA’s Philanthropic Practice Area

Our Philanthropic Services Practice Area supports environmental foundations, nonprofits, sustainability-oriented businesses, and impact investors. We pride ourselves on being client-oriented, insightful, and responsive. Our work covers a wide range of environmental topics, and many of our projects are international in scope. While the preponderance of our work relates to marine conservation, climate change, climate resilience and justice, sustainable agriculture, land use and conservation, and freshwater management, we also work on transportation, wildlife protection, pollution, environmental justice, and urban sustainability.

Our primary offerings include:
• Program Design and Strategy Development
• Programmatic Research, Analysis, and Modeling
• Evaluation and Learning
• Facilitation, Collaboration, and Grantee Convening
• Grant Support:
Sourcing, Conducting Due Diligence, Making Grant Recommendations, Grantee Management
• Project Incubation, Nonprofit Business Planning, Organizational Development, and Staffing Support

About the Role

CEA is seeking a Senior Associate to support our Philanthropic Services Practice Area. The successful candidate will lead the day-to-day management of complex consulting engagements for clients, including large environmentally-focused foundations, family offices, NGOs, impact investors, and bilateral and multilateral agencies.

Our work environment is collaborative, intensive, and likely to require travel (when deemed safe). The position requires intellectual rigor; excellent interpersonal and communication skills; strong research, analysis, and writing capacity; an ability to synthesize findings from a range of different kinds of information; independence; project management; attention to detail; and a passion for environmental issues. This position will interact with leaders in the environmental field and the work will intersect a wide range of environmental issues.

About You

You are a self-starter and find joy and fulfillment from a job well done. You are capable of managing teams, and running complex projects on time and on budget. You support your teammates and help to create a collegial, inclusive, and healthy work environment. You are intellectually curious and an adept problem solver. You can work effectively in teams as well as independently.

You seek and incorporate feedback as you grow your knowledge base and skills. You are able to successfully meet unexpected challenges. You are passionate about having an impact in the environmental field and can bring an equity lens to this work. We are open to candidates with a range of past professional experiences, including consulting, nonprofits, academia, finance/impact investing, engineering, government agencies, foundations, and think tanks.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities
• Serve as an engagement manager for projects, including serving as primary client contact, leading project design and execution, and ensuring quality deliverables.
• Build and…