Director, Climate and Energy, Data Centers

About Ceres

Ceres is a sustainability nonprofit organization leading the most influential investors and companies to build leadership and drive solutions throughout the economy. Through our powerful networks and advocacy, we tackle the world’s biggest sustainability challenges, including climate change, water scarcity and pollution, and human rights abuses.

For more information about Ceres, please visit our website (Use the "Apply for this Job" box below)..

Here at Ceres, we value integrity, equity, belonging, compassion, and respect. We demonstrate those values through how we communicate and collaborate with our colleagues and external partners; and embody them in our decision making and advocacy efforts to create a more just and sustainable future.

The Climate and Energy (C&E) team works to decarbonize the highest emitting sectors of the U.S. economy, including electric power, oil and gas, steel, and transportation. This sectoral approach involves direct engagement with investors and companies to advance sustainable solutions, transition current business practices to mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis and create a more just and equitable world.

You are passionate about sustainability. You are highly motivated and detail oriented, with an ability to plan and deliver projects both collaboratively and independently. You are a skilled communicator with an aptitude for considering diverse perspectives and creating shared understanding among stakeholders.

The Director will support businesses, investors, and policymakers in identifying the economic and community risks and opportunities related to rapid growth in energy and water demand driven in part by data centers. The Director collaborates with teams across the organization working on company and investor engagement and public policy.

This is a full-time exempt position reporting to the Senior Director, Electric Power and supports work related to data centers across Ceres’ programs and networks, in particular, the Ceres Policy and Water teams. The Electric Power team is part of the Climate and Energy Program  role is remote (within the contiguous 48 states) or may be based in our Boston, MA or San Francisco, CA office.

The candidate must be flexible to work with employees in all US time zones.

Specific duties include but are not limited to the following:

• Providing deep subject matter expertise on sustainability issues related to data centers and their value chain to inform research and company and investor engagements.
• Building an integrated approach to Ceres’ efforts around sustainable data center growth across Ceres’ Programs (Climate & Energy, Water, Food & Forest, Accelerator) and Networks (Investor Network, Company Network, and Policy Network) with the collaboration of Program Directors.
• Organizing and facilitating cross-team internal meetings around sustainable data center growth.
• Building relationships with current and potential funders, including by partnering with the Development Team on grant proposals or engagements with donors to raise funds to support data center work. Developing approaches to better articulate the business case for efficiency, clean energy, water/wastewater management, and strong community benefits in data centers and supporting the Program teams as they execute this work.
• Contributing to the development of new areas of impact for Ceres’ Electric Power work including load growth from other sectors including heavy industry, heating, and transportation.
• Tracking, analyzing, and verifying results in close coordination with the Organizational Strategy, Planning, and Results (OSPR) team.
• As organizational needs arise, and upon successful internal readiness evaluation by the communications and marketing team and relevant program leaders, this person may be called upon to serve as a public spokesperson for external speaking and media engagements and/or as a lead or contributing author for thought leadership. Duties could include managing editorial projects from start to finish, leading and/or supporting message and content development for reports, briefs, and op-eds and media materials, as…