Program Officer – Fellowship Alumni; WKKF

Posted on July 08, 2020

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), a leading philanthropic force helping communities create the conditions children need to thrive, is seeking nominations and applications for Program Officer, working with alumni of their fellowship programs. WKKF’s work focuses on improving conditions for vulnerable children, concentrating on three key factors of success and their intersections: education and learning; food, health and well-being; and family economic security.

Across these three areas, WKKF has committed to approaches that undergird racial equity and healing, community and civic engagement, and leadership capacity building. Key to the leadership capacity building approach, fellowships have been one of the foundation’s most effective tools for realizing the belief that community-grounded leadership is a critical tool for both individual development and broad societal change. In 2014, the foundation launched a new Community Leadership Fellowship program, targeting individuals who can be transformative change agents in their communities so that vulnerable children and their families can achieve optimal health and well-being, academic achievement, and financial security.

As a member of the foundation’s Racial Equity, Community Engagement, and Leadership Programs team, and serving as a peer to the program officers on the grantmaking teams, the new program officer will co-design and support programming for alumni of WKKF fellowship programs that realizes a vision where fellowship alumni are engaged with the work of the foundation and connected to each other in meaningful ways.

The program officer will assume responsibility for fellowship alumni engagement and programming; cultivating a rich network of former fellows in the foundation’s priority places of Michigan, Mississippi, New Orleans, and New Mexico, and worldwide. Together with this distinguished group, the program officer will engage in thought partnership with foundation leaders to envision, articulate, and operationalize a community leadership and talent network that nurtures ongoing individual growth opportunities for fellows, builds continued connections to human capital in communities, and helps to inform leadership development programming throughout the foundation.

The ideal candidate will be a seasoned connector and network builder. S/he/they must be firmly committed to the foundation’s mission and will have an understanding of the broad social and economic forces affecting communities and families, demonstrated knowledge of best practices in leadership development and network building strategy, and success facilitating authentic, productive dialogue within diverse communities and settings. The successful candidate will have experience directing meaningful engagement with alumni groups or fellowship networks, ideally in a community-based context, and will have strong understanding of trends and networks within the leadership development field, both domestically and internationally.

S/he/they will bring a significant set of skills in strategic communication, translating concept into action, and building meaningful relationships with persons from diverse cultural, social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds. S/he/they will be an outstanding writer and communicator and will possess a strong team orientation, a high tolerance for ambiguity, the ability to adapt quickly to change, and the maturity and humility to learn from a variety of stakeholders and partners.

In 1930, breakfast cereal pioneer Will Keith Kellogg donated $66 million in Kellogg Company stock and other investments “to help people help themselves,” launching the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The foundation began its work in Michigan, but by the 1940s had expanded its work internationally and was breaking ground in areas such as rural children’s health, “mainstreaming” children with disabilities, and the development of the healthcare profession.

By its 50 th anniversary, the foundation was among the world’s largest private philanthropic organizations. Its mission reflects the…