Network Coordinator (Community Sensemaking and Coordination)
Transformations Community & Inland Ocean Coalition
Full-time (40 hrs/week) · Remote (US-timezones strongly preferred)
Independent contractor position
About the Organizations
The Transformations Community (TC) is an international network of researchers and practitioners working on sustainability transformations under conditions of ecological, institutional, and social disruption. Here is a link to a video of our most recent gathering, TC25 in Johannesburg.
TC is launching a new initiative called the Agora, a light-touch sensing and reflection infrastructure that helps the community stay oriented in a time of rupture. The Agora’s purpose is not to drive activity, but to support shared noticing and reflection across diverse contexts of transformations practice.
The Inland Ocean Coalition (IOC) is a US-based network working to connect inland communities to ocean health through education, advocacy, and relationship-building. A core IOC initiative is the Ocean Ambassadors Program, which cultivates a distributed network of leaders who translate ocean issues into inland contexts and mobilize civic engagement and collaboration across regions.
Together, TC and IOC are seeking one full-time Network Coordinator who will split their time evenly between these two complementary roles.
Role Structure (Important)
This is a single full-time position intentionally designed as two parallel 0.5 FTE roles:
- ~20 hours/week as Network Coordinator for the Transformations Community Agora
- ~20 hours/week as Network Organizer for the Inland Ocean Coalition’s Ocean Ambassadors Network
The two roles are distinct in audience and emphasis, but aligned in spirit: both focus on relationships, distributed sensing, and network coherence without heavy bureaucracy. While the position is structured as an even split over time, the exact distribution of effort may flex modestly across the year in response to rhythms in each network.
Part I: Network Coordinator — Transformations Community (Agora and Community Intelligence)
(~20 hours/week)
Purpose of This Half of the Role
This role supports the Transformations Community as a living network, with the Agora serving as a central sensing and reflection function within a broader ecosystem of member engagement.
The Agora is designed as a collective antenna, not a hub of activity. In this role, you help ensure that useful signals from across the community are surfaced, filtered, and interpreted, while also maintaining visibility into who is engaged and how participation is evolving across TC more broadly.
You will work closely with the Executive Director and Communications Lead to steward both the relational flow of the community and the informational backbone that allows TC to mobilize participation, identify opportunities, and adapt its initiatives without heavy bureaucracy.
What You Will Do (TC / Agora)
- Support distributed sensing across the community by helping lower friction for contribution and ensuring signals can move from individual noticing to shared reflection
- Maintain relational flow among practitioners who interpret and refine emerging signals from the field
- Maintain shared engagement and participation records (using ClickUp or similar platforms) to support Agora sensemaking and provide visibility into how participation across TC is evolving
- Support the Executive Director and core collaborators by providing visibility into member engagement, participation patterns, and potential pathways for involvement across TC initiatives
- Coordinate with Communications on public-facing reflections
- Reflect regularly with the Executive Director on what is emerging and how the sensing infrastructure should adapt
Success looks like:
- Useful signals surface without pressure or overproduction
- Patterns of practice across diverse contexts become easier to name
- The Agora feels present, coherent, and supportive without becoming heavy or directive
- TC leadership has a clear, shared picture of who is engaged in the community, how participation is evolving, and where relational capacity exists to support new or emerging efforts
This is not a project management, program delivery, or engagement-growth role.
Part II: Network Coordinator — Inland Ocean Coalition
(~20 hours/week)
Purpose of This Half of the Role
As the Inland Ocean Coalition Network Organizer, you will support and strengthen the Ocean Ambassadors Program, a distributed network of leaders connecting inland communities to ocean health.
Your role is to organize, connect, and sustain this network by cultivating relationships, supporting ambassadors, and helping the coalition learn from and amplify what is emerging across regions.
This role is more outward-facing and action-oriented than the TC role, but remains grounded in relationships rather than top-down coordination.
What You Will Do (IOC)
- Serve as a primary point of connection for Ocean Ambassadors
- Support onboarding, ongoing connection, and light-touch convenings
- Help ambassadors share stories, challenges, and learning across regions
- Coordinate with IOC leadership and communications to strengthen coherence and visibility
- Surface patterns, needs, and opportunities emerging from the network
Success looks like:
- Ambassadors feel connected, supported, and valued
- Relationships across regions strengthen over time
- Insights from inland contexts inform IOC strategy and storytelling
- The network grows without becoming administratively heavy
Requirements
Experience & Qualifications
- 3+ years in roles involving network coordination, community organizing, or support of distributed teams or communities
- Experience supporting ongoing participation and visibility across a network (e.g. tracking who’s engaged, what’s active, and where attention is flowing)
- Hands-on experience working with shared digital coordination tools (e.g. ClickUp, Asana, Notion, Airtable, or similar) to help keep work visible and intelligible
- Strong written communication skills, with the ability to summarize patterns or themes clearly for different audiences
- Ability to work independently and remotely, managing your own workflow across time zones
- Comfort working in loosely structured, evolving environments without needing detailed instructions
Preferred (Nice to Have, Not Required)
- Experience in sustainability, environmental advocacy, systems change, or transdisciplinary research communities
- Experience working across both academic/research and practice- or advocacy-oriented settings
- Familiarity with ocean conservation, coastal issues, or transformation research fields
- Experience in nonprofit, fiscally sponsored, or other mission-driven organizations
- Experience working in networked or distributed organizational models
Benefits
- Full-time (40 hrs/week), split between TC and IOC
- Independent contractor role. No employee benefits (e.g., pension, holiday pay, health insurance). Limited professional development support may be available.
- Compensation is expected in the range of $65,000–$75,000 USD annually in total across both roles, depending on experience and fit.
- Fully remote
- Start Date: Immediate (flexible for the right candidate). Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, with interviews held shortly.
Why This Is a Unique Opportunity
This role sits at the intersection of practice-based transformation work and place-based environmental organizing. You will help build relational infrastructure that allows practitioners, from senior transformation scholars to inland ocean advocates, to stay oriented, connected, and effective in a time of social and ecological disruption.
