Rodeo Farm Coordinator, Windy Harvest; Chicago, IL

Title: Rodeo Farm Coordinator, Windy City Harvest

Exemption Status: Non-Exempt

Department: Windy City Harvest

Reports to: Senior Manager of Farm Operations

Year-Round Full-time

Supervises: Seasonal and year-round staff and Apprenticeship students.

Year-Round Full-time employees of the Chicago Botanic Garden are eligible for the following Benefits:

• 2026 A Guide to Your Benefits JP.pdf

Compensation Philosophy:

At the Chicago Botanic Garden, our compensation philosophy is rooted in our core values:
Growth, Understanding, Resilience, and Trust through Transparency. We are committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels respected, valued, and appreciated.

Our objective is to create compensation and growth opportunities for our employees that are highly competitive, internally equitable and transparent. The foundation of our efforts is a straightforward approach that can be easily communicated by managers with defined pay ranges for all positions. When posting job openings, we share the minimum salary up to the budgeted amount.

The starting salary for new staff members is determined by considering the salary range assigned to the position and by reviewing the candidate's qualifications for the job as compared with job responsibilities. Prior work experience should be considered in determining the salary offer, provided that it is relevant to the job. Additional factors such as secondary language proficiency or advanced degrees that enhance performance may also be considered.

A candidate's salary may exceed the minimum amount based on factors such as experience, additional skills (e.g., secondary language proficiency), or pertinent degrees that enhance the individual's contribution to the role but are not required. Opportunities for increased compensation are provided through referral bonuses, shift differentials, Thank You Pay, promotions, and periodic pay increases based on the Garden's overall performance and financial budgets.

Our total compensation and benefits package is people centric. We prioritize employee wellness across three pillars: physical, mental, and financial. Our goal is to offer innovative total rewards that support continuous professional growth, personal development, and provide the flexibility needed to balance personal and professional commitments.

Windy City Harvest is committed to a continuum of job training. This is a hands‑on farming position, providing farm production support to all Windy City Harvest farm sites and providing guidance to program participants about agriculture. This job is 70 percent production‑focused and 30 percent programming focused on workforce development training using farming to develop job skills, including submitting all paperwork in a timely manner.

Rodeo Farm is an intensive 1-acre production farm that also houses a 1,200-square‑foot hoophouse, 8 beehives, and a native plant propagation project on site. This position will also assist at Arturo Velasquez Institute, which has acre of production, including greenhouse propagation where Rodeo Farm's plants are started.

• Implement crop plan for sustainable vegetable production to meet a designated sales goal for 1-acre farm; utilize succession plantings, integrated pest management, and season extension in accordance with standard operating procedures.
• Manage hoophouse and season extension production.
• Create and implement farm, greenhouse, and landscaping area production schedules and be accountable for completing farm production tasks in a timely fashion. Forecast weekly labor management, tool, and supply needs; ask for support from supervisor as needed.
• Supervise Production Assistants throughout the year. Share supervision with Field Supervisors of Corps program participants. Working side‑by‑side with crews, set an example for modeling and implementing staff standards.
• Lead the Production Assistant team to open multiple Windy City Harvest farm and garden sites in the beginning of the season and shut them down at the end of the growing season.
• Assist farm production team in the oversight and training of on‑site staff and program participants with production techniques,…