Associate Vice President, Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning

The Opportunity

Earthjustice, the nation’s largest and most influential public-interest environmental law organization, seeks a founding Associate Vice President, Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning (AVP) to design and build the organization’s first evidence, evaluation, and improvement function. This is a new position and a rare opportunity for a strategic, entrepreneurial leader to build something from the ground up: a team, a framework, and a culture that will shape how a 670-person organization with more than 230 environmental lawyers understands its own impact.

For more than 50 years, Earthjustice has built an unparalleled legacy of environmental victories in courtrooms, before regulatory agencies, and at the steps of the Supreme Court. As the organization has grown in scale and ambition, and as it looks forward, its mission leadership has recognized that Earthjustice needs a more rigorous and consistent way to track progress, understand its contribution to systemic change, and communicate that impact to funders, partners, and the public. And, most importantly, to inform its cycle of continuous improvement.

Earthjustice has regional offices with attorneys divided into teams that pursue legal advocacy that can be regional, national, or international in scope. The incoming AVP will need to bring both the technical fluency to design a rigorous framework and systems, and the emotional intelligence, communication, and change management skills to drive a talented and driven group of program staff to embrace them.

This is a new position for a strategic leader eager to build a new team. The AVP will partner closely with senior leadership, program teams, and external collaborators to coordinate how Earthjustice tracks progress, understands its contribution to systemic change, and continuously strengthens its impact. The AVP will build the systems, practices, and culture needed to support learning, inform strategy, and demonstrate results and will lead the development and implementation of structures that define and measure organizational impact.

The AVP will report to the Senior Vice President of Programs, who supervises the organization’s entire legal, policy, and legislative staff. The AVP will also be part of the organization’s Program Leadership Team, which includes the most senior executives in the organization. The AVP will recruit, build, and lead their own new team and will work in close collaboration with all departments to integrate evidence and learning practices into program strategy, fundraising, and external communications.

 

The Organization

Earthjustice is the nation’s largest and most influential public-interest environmental law organization. Driven by core values of justice, inclusion, partnership, and excellence, the organization has spent more than five decades proving that the law, wielded with skill and determination, can protect people’s health, preserve magnificent places and wildlife, advance clean energy, and confront climate change. Earthjustice is here because the Earth needs a good lawyer.

Earthjustice partners with thousands of communities, tribes, individuals, and advocacy groups to confront the environmental crises of our time, going to court against powerful interests with deep pockets, and winning. The organization has grown to a team of approximately 670, including more than 230 litigators operating across the country. External surveys consistently rank employee satisfaction at Earthjustice to be at or near the top of all major environmental organizations.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Earthjustice maintains offices in Anchorage, Bozeman, Chicago, Denver, Honolulu, Houston, Juneau, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Tallahassee, and Washington, D.C., and its impact extends further through partner organizations such as Earthjustice Action and a network of global partners.

 

The Mandate

The Associate Vice President of Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning will lead organization-wide efforts to define, design, institutionalize, and continuously strengthen Earthjustice’s evidence and learning framework. The AVP will build and lead a new team that works in close collaboration with program staff to strengthen strategy and learning, including supporting systems mapping, refining theories of change, and helping teams interpret data and insights. The AVP will convene and equip teams to generate insights from experience, align on priorities, and apply learning in real time while leading Earthjustice’s internal learning agenda to ensure insights are shared, tested, and applied to improve outcomes.

The AVP will also oversee the data and technology infrastructure that supports this work and will be responsible for driving consistent adoption across the organization, all in close partnership with the Technology team.

The AVP will hire and supervise up to three staff who will help the Program, Communications, Development, and Operations teams to integrate evidence and learning practices into program strategy, fundraising, and external communications, in alignment with compliance and accountability structures.

Responsibilities

Strategy & Framework

• Design and lead implementation of an organization-wide evidence and learning framework aligned with program strategies, priorities, and theories of change, ensuring it is practical, easy to use across teams, and built into planning and decision-making processes.
• Establish clear and consistent ways to define success and track progress across legal, policy, advocacy, and partnership work, including guidance that helps teams measure results and understand how external factors affect outcomes.
• Ensure the framework captures both results and real-world context, combining data with narrative to show what changed, how Earthjustice’s work contributed, and how outside conditions influenced progress, so teams can learn and adjust approaches over time.

Adoption & Integration

• Drive organization-wide adoption by embedding evidence and learning practices into core workflows, decision-making, and culture; partner with senior and program leadership to drive accountability and model consistent implementation.
• Establish and facilitate learning processes such as strategy reviews, reflections, and learning agendas that strengthen alignment, support continuous improvement, and ensure insights are actively applied.
• Oversee evaluations across priority initiatives and synthesize findings across programs to inform strategy, improve outcomes, and integrate evidence into program, fundraising, and communications efforts.

Data, Technology & Governance

Partner with the Technology team to:

• Oversee the design and implementation of core data infrastructure, including systems for data collection, storage, and integration (databases, CRM alignment, and interconnection across program and organizational platforms) to ensure consistent, reliable data flows.
• Manage the development and rollout of user-friendly tools and dashboards that provide timely, accessible insights for different audiences, enabling staff to easily track progress, interpret results, and inform decision-making.
• Direct and oversee data governance, quality, and support systems, including standards, protocols, training, and ongoing technical assistance to ensure data compliance, integrity, usability, and sustained adoption across teams.

External Engagement & Leadership

• Build and maintain relationships with peers, funders, researchers, and field leaders to stay current on emerging practices in systems thinking, evaluation, and organizational learning, and bring leading approaches into Earthjustice’s work.
• Represent Earthjustice in external forums, funder conversations, and field convenings, contributing to shared learning, shaping best practices, and elevating the organization’s approach to evidence and impact.
• Partner with funders and peer organizations to align on measurement approaches, advance shared learning agendas, and strengthen collective impact across the broader environmental and advocacy ecosystem.

Management

• Recruit, hire, and manage up to three staff to support the design and implementation of the evidence and learning framework, setting goals, providing coaching and professional development, and building the camaraderie and trust that will help them drive organization-wide adoption.
• Uphold Earthjustice’s mission and values by fostering a respectful, inclusive, and collaborative work environment, providing clear direction and feedback, and promoting a culture of learning for all team members.
• Oversee relevant administrative, budgeting, and personnel management of direct reports, ensuring that all organizational policies and standards are met.

Ongoing Learning

• Actively pursue professional development and contribute to a culture of learning by building skills and sharing knowledge.

The Candidate

The ideal candidate is a strategic, entrepreneurial leader who is excited to build a new function from the ground up. Earthjustice’s leadership believes that this role calls first and foremost for a leader, someone with the demonstrated ability not only to design and institutionalize an evidence and learning framework but to lead the process of embedding it across a large and sophisticated organization full of professional analysts, advocates, and critics. Comfort with ambiguity is essential as this person will need to build the plan as they go, bring others along a multi-year journey from initial resistance to genuine buy-in, and remain undeterred when the path is not yet fully mapped.

Qualifications

Experience & Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in strategy, organizational learning, or systems change, ideally including senior leadership in an evidence, learning, monitoring and evaluation, or impact function.
• Experience in climate, sustainability, environmental, human health, or justice work is valued; a minimum of 3 years in climate-related work is a plus.
• Proven experience designing frameworks and programs from the ground up, translating strategy and evidence into clear structures for action in complex or evolving contexts.
• Experience designing and leading learning processes (e.g., reflection, evaluation, learning agendas) that inform decision-making and enable teams to adapt strategies over time.
• Strong fluency in qualitative and quantitative methods, with the ability to interpret data, assess progress, and guide teams in using evidence for making decisions; experience in advocacy, litigation, or other mission-driven environments where outcomes resist simple quantification is highly valued.
• Experience applying systems thinking to design approaches that respond to external conditions (e.g., policy, legal landscape, markets) and evolve over time.
• Experience leading change across teams, including embedding new frameworks, tools, and ways of working into core processes, decision-making, and organizational culture.
• Familiarity with data systems and tools that support evidence and learning (dashboards, data collection, and reporting platforms), with the ability to align technology to program and organizational needs, partnering with Earthjustice’s IT function.
• Experience with funder and donor reporting; NGO or foundation experience is welcomed.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, and leadership skills, including the ability to manage teams, work with senior leaders, and translate complex ideas into clear, actionable guidance.
• A graduate degree is preferred but not required for the right candidate.

 

Personal Attributes

• A self-starter who sees uncertainty as opportunity and who relishes the work of building something new.
• High emotional intelligence and charisma, which will be needed to earn the trust of sophisticated and appropriately demanding attorneys and program staff who recognize the potential value of this work but are skeptical that it can be done well.
• A demonstrated commitment to Earthjustice’s values of Justice, Excellence, Inclusion, and Partnership.
• Skill in building and leading diverse teams with emotional intelligence and cultural competence; fosters growth through mentorship, effective communication, and constructive feedback while hiring and developing team talents to align with organizational needs.
• An understanding of, or genuine curiosity about, the culture and nuance of an advocacy and litigation organization where success and impact are not always easily reduced to numbers.

The Relationships

Leadership Connections	Key Relationships
Reports to:	Senior Vice President of Programs
Member of:	Program Leadership Team
Manages:	Build and manage an Evidence and Learning team of up to three staff
Partners closely with:	Program teams across Earthjustice’s 12 core environmental programs and 11 regional offices Communications Development Operations and Information Technology

The Location

Earthjustice is headquartered in San Francisco and prefers that the AVP, Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning be based in one of Earthjustice’s three largest offices: San Francisco, CA; Washington, D.C.; or New York, NY. Though Earthjustice will not rule out exceptional candidates based elsewhere, these three offices will give the AVP the best opportunity to build relationships and learn Earthjustice’s mission and culture. The role will require regular travel for events, planning meetings, and retreats, including occasional evening and weekend work.

The organization employs a “team-centered” approach to hybrid work, where teams collaboratively decide when and how team members gather or work in person at our offices.

Salary & Benefits

Compensation

Earthjustice offers competitive and comprehensive salaries and benefits, reflecting its commitment to attracting and retaining top talent. The culture is a major draw with an exceptionally collegial environment, a casual dress code, and a shared sense of purpose that is rare in any sector.

Learn more about Earthjustice’s benefits here. Salary is based on experience and location. Salary range for San Francisco or New York is $262,800 – $292,000 and Washington, DC is $249,700 – $277,400. Other locations where Earthjustice has a presence may be considered.