Founding Associate Vice President, Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning

The Opportunity

Earthjustice, the nation’s largest and most influential public-interest environmental law organization, seeks a founding Associate Vice President, Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning (AVP) to design and build the organization’s first evidence, evaluation, and improvement function. This is a new position and a rare opportunity for a strategic, entrepreneurial leader to build something from the ground up: a team, a framework, and a culture that will shape how a 670-person organization with more than 230 environmental lawyers understands its own impact.

For more than 50 years, Earthjustice has built an unparalleled legacy of environmental victories in courtrooms, before regulatory agencies, and at the steps of the Supreme Court. As the organization has grown in scale and ambition, and as it looks forward, its mission leadership has recognized that Earthjustice needs a more rigorous and consistent way to track progress, understand its contribution to systemic change, and communicate that impact to funders, partners, and the public. And, most importantly, to inform its cycle of continuous improvement.

Earthjustice has regional offices with attorneys divided into teams that pursue legal advocacy that can be regional, national, or international in scope. The incoming AVP will need to bring both the technical fluency to design a rigorous framework and systems, and the emotional intelligence, communication, and change management skills to drive a talented and driven group of program staff to embrace them.

This is a new position for a strategic leader eager to build a new team. The AVP will partner closely with senior leadership, program teams, and external collaborators to coordinate how Earthjustice tracks progress, understands its contribution to systemic change, and continuously strengthens its impact. The AVP will build the systems, practices, and culture needed to support learning, inform strategy, and demonstrate results and will lead the development and implementation of structures that define and measure organizational impact.

The AVP will report to the Senior Vice President of Programs, who supervises the organization’s entire legal, policy, and legislative staff. The AVP will also be part of the organization’s Program Leadership Team, which includes the most senior executives in the organization. The AVP will recruit, build, and lead their own new team and will work in close collaboration with all departments to integrate evidence and learning practices into program strategy, fundraising, and external communications.

The Organization

Earthjustice is the nation’s largest and most influential public-interest environmental law organization. Driven by core values of justice, inclusion, partnership, and excellence, the organization has spent more than five decades proving that the law, wielded with skill and determination, can protect people’s health, preserve magnificent places and wildlife, advance clean energy, and confront climate change. Earthjustice is here because the Earth needs a good lawyer.

Earthjustice partners with thousands of communities, tribes, individuals, and advocacy groups to confront the environmental crises of our time, going to court against powerful interests with deep pockets, and winning. The organization has grown to a team of approximately 670, including more than 230 litigators operating across the country. External surveys consistently rank employee satisfaction at Earthjustice to be at or near the top of all major environmental organizations.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Earthjustice maintains offices in Anchorage, Bozeman, Chicago, Denver, Honolulu, Houston, Juneau, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Tallahassee, and Washington, D.C., and its impact extends further through partner organizations such as Earthjustice Action and a network of global partners.

The Mandate

The Associate Vice President of Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning will lead organization-wide efforts to define, design, institutionalize, and continuously strengthen Earthjustice’s evidence and learning framework. The AVP will build and lead a new team that works in close collaboration with program staff to strengthen strategy and learning, including supporting systems mapping, refining theories of change, and helping teams interpret data and insights. The AVP will convene and equip teams to generate insights from experience, align on priorities, and apply learning in real time while leading Earthjustice’s internal learning agenda to ensure insights are shared, tested, and applied to improve outcomes.

The AVP will also oversee the data and technology infrastructure that supports this work and will be responsible for driving consistent adoption across the organization, all in close partnership with the Technology team.

The AVP will hire and supervise up to three staff who will help the Program, Communications, Development, and Operations teams to integrate evidence and learning practices into program strategy, fundraising, and external communications, in alignment with compliance and accountability structures.

Responsibilities

• Strategy & Framework

• Design and lead implementation of an organization-wide evidence and learning framework aligned with program strategies, priorities, and theories of change, ensuring it is practical, easy to use across teams, and built into planning and decision-making processes.

• Establish clear and consistent ways to define success and track progress across legal, policy, advocacy, and partnership work, including guidance that helps teams measure results and understand how external factors affect outcomes.

• Ensure the framework captures both results and real-world context, combining data with narrative to show what changed, how Earthjustice’s work contributed, and how outside conditions influenced progress, so teams can learn and adjust approaches over time.

• Adoption & Integration

• Drive organization-wide adoption by embedding evidence and learning practices into core workflows, decision-making, and culture; partner with senior and program leadership to drive accountability and model consistent implementation.

• Establish and facilitate learning processes such as strategy reviews, reflections, and learning agendas that strengthen alignment, support continuous improvement, and ensure insights are actively applied.

• Oversee evaluations across priority initiatives and synthesize findings across programs to inform strategy, improve outcomes, and integrate evidence into program, fundraising, and communications efforts.

• Data, Technology & Governance

Partner with the Technology team to:

• Oversee the design and implementation of core data infrastructure, including systems for data collection, storage, and integration (databases, CRM alignment, and interconnection across program and organizational platforms) to ensure consistent, reliable data flows.

• Manage the development and rollout of user-friendly tools and dashboards that provide timely, accessible insights for different audiences, enabling staff to easily track progress, interpret results, and inform decision-making.

• Direct and oversee data governance, quality, and support systems, including standards, protocols, training, and ongoing technical assistance to ensure data compliance, integrity, usability, and sustained adoption across teams.

• External Engagement & Leadership

• Build and maintain relationships with peers, funders, researchers, and field leaders to stay current on emerging practices in systems thinking, evaluation, and organizational learning, and bring leading approaches into Earthjustice’s work.

• Represent Earthjustice in external forums, funder conversations, and field convenings, contributing to shared learning, shaping best practices, and elevating the organization’s approach to evidence and impact.

• Partner with funders and peer organizations to align on measurement approaches, advance shared learning agendas, and strengthen collective impact across the broader environmental and advocacy ecosystem.

• Management

• Recruit, hire, and manage up to three staff to support the design and implementation of the evidence and learning framework, setting goals, providing coaching and professional development, and building the camaraderie and trust that will help them drive organization-wide adoption.

• Uphold Earthjustice’s mission and values by fostering a respectful, inclusive, and collaborative work environment, providing clear direction and feedback, and promoting a culture of learning for all team members.

• Oversee relevant administrative, budgeting, and personnel management of direct reports, ensuring that all organizational policies and standards are met.

• Ongoing Learning

• Actively pursue professional development and contribute to a culture of learning by building skills and sharing knowledge.

• The Candidate

• The ideal candidate is a strategic, entrepreneurial leader who is