Executive Director – Position

Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) is a ground-breaking, multi-stakeholder skill-building and certification organization whose mission is to improve the lives of farm workers while transforming food supply chains through workforce engagement. EFI’s first key innovation was to demonstrate that motivated, trained, and incentivized farm workers can address retailer, civil society, government, and consumer concerns about working conditions, pesticide use, and food safety in the produce industry.

More recently, EFI has diversified into programs offering scalable supply chain risk management solutions through the LAB (learn/assess/benchmark) software platform, and strategies to document and credential the skills of frontline workers.

Reporting to the Chair of the Board of Directors, the Executive Director has overall strategic and operational responsibility for EFI’s staff, programs, expansion, and execution of its mission. The successful candidate cultivates deep knowledge of food supply chains, the certification landscape, and workforce development. They shape EFI’s core programs, raise funds, configure and manage staffing, oversee operations and budgets, develop business plans for future growth, and sustain board relationships to appropriately balance governance and management roles.

Most importantly, the Executive Director protects the integrity and optimizes the impact of EFI’s programs, while maintaining its multi-stakeholder approach to “disruptive design,” capacity-building and continuous improvement.

EFI believes in building a work culture around a diversity of backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. We strongly encourage candidates from groups whose voices and experiences are underrepresented in the agricultural industry to apply. We are self-starters and work in an environment that demands creativity, flexibility and collaboration. Our small-yet-mighty team encourages one another to innovate, act boldly and broaden perspectives while supporting each other in experimentation and innovation as we work to transform agriculture and improve the lives of farm workers.

Recruitment for this Executive position will begin in June 2025 with an expected start date of January 2026. Final candidates will be required to participate at an in person interview in the state of Washington. Travel costs for the finalist will be reimbursed in accordance with EFI’s travel policy.

This position is remote. All remote work agreements are subject to ongoing review and although extremely unlikely to change, EFI always reserves the right to modify or terminate remote work agreements at any time with at least 30 calendar days’ advance notice. A successful candidate must be able to legally work for a U.S. company. The position will require travel up to 30% of the time.

• Ensure ongoing program excellence, rigorous evaluation, and consistent quality of finance and administration, fundraising, communications, business development, training and certification systems; recommend timelines and resources needed to achieve strategic goals;
• Respond to market signals and needs by developing new program areas consistent with EFI’s mission;
• Lead and support a strong Board of Directors: serve as ex-officio member of committees, seek and build board involvement with strategic direction for operations and expansion; engage and motivate EFI’s board members, committees, staff, partner organizations, and funders through bold and inspirational visioning;
• Recruit, lead, coach, develop, and retain EFI’s senior management team; ensure that job descriptions are developed, that regular performance evaluations are held, and that sound human resource practices are in place; maintain a climate that attracts, retains and motivates a diverse staff of top quality people; encourage staff development and education, and assist program staff in relating their specialized work to the total program of the organization;
• Ensure effective systems to track progress and impact, and regularly evaluate program components to measure outcomes that can be effectively…