Reporting to the Vice President, Campaigns, the Senior Director, National Campaigns provides strategic leadership for HRC’s national campaign portfolio by turning organizational priorities and emerging opportunities into coordinated national action. The role leads the national campaign and engagement work of the Campaigns team,working across HRC by recognizing opportunities, setting direction, aligning leaders, and mobilizing people, partners, and resources to advance strategic priorities. The Senior Director tracks the political, advocacy, and movement landscape; exercises sound judgment about opportunity and risk; and ensures HRC is prepared to act quickly and effectively when national moments arise. The role also maintains posture readiness to deploy and to provide visible, on-the-ground leadership when HRC’s presence can strengthen campaign outcomes, partnerships, or organizational impact.
The Senior Director, National Campaigns is a hybrid position based in Washington, D.C.
Key Position Responsibilities:
Deliver National Campaigns
- Lead national campaigns that advance HRC’s strategic priorities and expand engagement with HRC.
- Translate organizational priorities into coordinated national campaign strategies, clear outcomes, and investment recommendations.
- Ensure national campaigns are appropriately prioritized, resourced, evaluated, and positioned for success.
- Provide strategic leadership during major campaign and rapid-response moments by setting direction, clarifying organizational objectives, and removing barriers to action.
- Maintain readiness to deploy, including on short notice, when senior campaign leadership on the ground will strengthen execution, partnerships, or HRC’s impact.
- Build and maintain relationships with national organizations, coalition partners, campaign leaders, and movement partners that strengthen campaign effectiveness and expand HRC’s reach.
- Evaluate campaign effectiveness and ensure lessons learned inform future strategy and organizational readiness.
Recognize Opportunities for National Campaign Action
- Track the political, legislative, cultural, advocacy, and movement landscape to identify emerging opportunities, threats, and trends that may warrant national campaign action.
- Build an organization-wide and external network of relationships that continuously surfaces opportunities for HRC leadership and coordinated action.
- Partner with leaders across HRC to identify and evaluate opportunities based on potential impact, strategic fit, organizational capacity, timing, resources, and risk.
- Convene cross-functional leaders to develop coordinated recommendations and determine how HRC can lead, support, join, or create campaign opportunities.
- Recommend campaign priorities, strategic partnerships, and organizational investments to the Vice President, Campaigns.
- Approach emerging opportunities with a solutions-oriented “yes, and” mindset—seeking practical paths to action while identifying, evaluating, and responsibly managing political, legal, reputational, operational, and organizational risk.
Align the Organization Around Campaign Strategy
- Serve as the senior Campaigns leader responsible for aligning national campaign strategy across the organization once priorities and opportunities are identified.
- Convene and align leaders across Communications, Government Affairs, Development, Membership, Legal, Digital, Data, and other departments around shared campaign objectives, roles, and decisions.
- Ensure the Campaigns team is prepared to coordinate planned initiatives and rapid-response moments with clarity, speed, and shared accountability.
- Build collaborative relationships across the Campaigns team and the organization that encourage initiative, creative problem-solving, and shared ownership of results.
- Ensure national campaign and engagement work remains connected to state opportunities, field realities, and the operational systems required for successful execution.
Build Leadership Capacity
- Develop a high-performing leadership team grounded in accountability, collaboration, initiative, adaptability, and continuous improvement.
- Establish clear priorities, decision-making expectations, and performance standards while empowering leaders to act within their areas of responsibility.
- Coach leaders to exercise sound judgment, identify opportunities and risks, solve problems, and lead through influence.
- Foster a “yes, and” culture that encourages innovation, responsible risk-taking, and practical solutions that move the organization forward.
- Model the Campaigns team’s shared expectation to deploy when needed, lead people, think strategically, collaborate across teams, build people power, and deliver results.
Manage Organizational Resources
- Develop and manage portfolio budgets, staffing plans, and resource recommendations aligned with campaign priorities.
- Balance ambition, impact, capacity, and risk when recommending how HRC invests people, money, and attention.
- Ensure national campaign work is supported by strong planning, systems, reporting, project management, logistics, and operational discipline.
- Promote operational excellence, innovation, data-informed decision-making, and compliance with organizational policies.
