Senior Bilingual Communications Specialist
Senior Bilingual Communications Specialist
Remote
All candidates must live in California.
Posted: 4/27/22
The California College Guidance Initiative (CCGI) is looking for a skilled communicator to develop content, collateral, and outreach strategies that will help ensure all California students have free access to data-informed college, career, and financial aid tools through CaliforniaColleges.edu.
The ideal person for this role is a gifted writer and storyteller who is able to engage a wide range of audiences. They are passionate about educational equity, able to communicate complex ideas simply and connect individual stories to broad societal and policy issues. The ideal candidate must be fluent in Spanish (verbal and written) and has experience in communications outreach to Spanish-speaking audiences. They are detail-oriented, comfortable handling multiple projects, and able to adjust to changing priorities.
The Senior Bilingual Communications Specialist’s primary responsibilities are to support the creation and quality control of marketing and promotional materials (particularly to general audiences, parents, students, and Spanish-speaking communities), translation of all external organizational collateral into Spanish, responding to staff requests for communications support, and maintaining communications projects and tasks on Salesforce. Specific tasks may include, but are not limited to: creating content for general audiences, students, and parents; translating content into Spanish; responding to staff requests to update existing materials; providing material creation and/or update support for communications campaigns; collaborating with and providing Spanish-language support for Community Engagement events and initiatives; and ensuring the Communications Team’s project and task progress is accurately reflected on Salesforce.
The Senior Bilingual Communications Specialist is critical to ensuring that CCGI communications properly communicate the vision, purpose, and benefits of CaliforniaColleges.edu to students, parents, and California at large, especially to Spanish-speaking communities. They will set the standard for CCGI’s Spanish-language communications and build the infrastructure for Spanish translation of materials. They are also critical in ensuring that staff communications needs are met and supported at a high level by the Communications Team. The Senior Bilingual Communications Specialist must also continually ensure all communications are aligned to internal design and messaging standards, as well as meet regulatory compliance (i.e., ADA compliance) standards.
They are a key member of the Communications team, working collaboratively on projects and campaigns to advance communications and organization-wide strategies and respond to emerging opportunities. We work to solve large scale, system-level problems. You must be comfortable working with unknowns and ambiguous solutions, as well as passionate about promoting public education and advancing educational equity.
What Will You Be Doing?
- Developing Spanish-language materials and messaging.
- Translating existing materials and messaging into Spanish.
- Assisting with updating and creating marketing and promotional materials for general audiences, students, and parents (e.g., messaging, social media posts, brochures, fliers, fact sheets, graphics, slide decks, videos, etc.).
- Assisting with staff requests for updating existing collateral and creating new collateral, as instructed by the Deputy Director of Communications.
- Contributing to communications strategies for Spanish-language, as well as parent- and student-facing, materials.
- Conducting quality control on all materials produced to ensure that messaging, grammar, style, and formatting are aligned with brand guidelines and voice.
- Working with the Director of Communications & Community Engagement and the Deputy Director of Communications to develop, evaluate, and implement best practices for Spanish-language content and messaging.
- Working with the Director of Communications & Community Engagement and the Deputy Director of Communications to develop, evaluate, and implement best practices and outreach strategies.
- Ensuring that the weekly team agenda is routinely up-to-date and action items reflected on Salesforce, where needed.
- Reviewing and editing content written by staff across the organization.
- Identifying opportunities for cross-functional collaboration on communications needs.
- Modeling CCGI’s values both in action and in how decisions are made.
- Other duties as assigned.
What Intangibles Do You Need?
- Exceptional writing skills, with attention to accuracy, audience, and concision.
- Strong storyteller, able to communicate the stories of diverse subjects and connect them to broad societal and policy issues.
- Able to communicate with a wide range of audiences, with specific experience communicating with educators.
- Exceptional proofreading and document formatting skills.
- Experience in creating social media content and strategy.
- Strong project management skills, including the ability to manage internal communications, multiple deadlines, budgeting, timelines, diverse stakeholders and audiences.
- Demonstrated ability to organize, prioritize, and manage multiple projects and tasks simultaneously.
- >Self-directed and proactive problem-solver.
- Excellent professional judgment.
- Meticulous attention to detail.
- Open and committed to using the nonviolent communication feedback model.
- A desire to work in a team culture with the following characteristics: Collaboration and learning, Data-driven practices, Direct feedback, Documentation, Due diligence and preparation, Professionalism and kindness, Self-reflection, Strategic thinking, and Vulnerability.
- A passion for promoting public education and advancing educational equity.
- Proficient with Google Workplace Apps, Microsoft Office, and Adobe InDesign. Salesforce preferred.
- Written and spoken Spanish fluency is a must.
What are the Education Requirements of the Position?
- Bachelor’s degree or higher in Communications, English, Journalism, Design or a related field of study and a minimum of three (3) years of experience in related roles.
- Minimum of five (5) years of relevant experience may be considered as a substitute for a degree.
- Experience in K-12 and/or higher education communications is a plus.
More about the Communications Team
The Communications Team employs strategic communications tools and approaches to drive the engagement with and adoption of CaliforniaColleges.edu, draw attention to issues affecting educational equity, advocate for policies that create better college transitions for California students, and share the stories of the students, families, educators, and systems we serve. This is a new role for the team. They will report to the Deputy Director of Communications.
More about CCGI
The California College Guidance Initiative (CCGI) works to ensure that all 6th-12th grade students in California have access to a systematic baseline of guidance and support as they plan, prepare, and pay for postsecondary education and training
This baseline is provided by CaliforniaColleges.edu, which provides California students and educators with a wide range of college and career planning information and tools. The site also houses, audits, and transmits student data to help ensure more accurate and efficient decisions regarding admissions, financial aid, and course placement. CCGI provides technical assistance, support, and training to K-12 school districts in order to support students, counselors, and parents with the systematic use of CaliforniaColleges.edu, including its transcript-informed tools.
CCGI forms the core of the college planning and application tools in California’s newly-launched Cradle-to-Career System. Over the next few years, the Cradle-to-Career System will scale CCGI so that all California 6th-12th grade students can have free access to our transcript-informed tools.
CCGI is a positive, diverse, and supportive culture. At our core, we prioritize the needs of students above all else.
Everyone at CCGI works remotely. We are all located in various parts of California. We rarely meet in person. Instead, we make use of tools, such as Zoom, Slack, and Salesforce, to communicate and document our work.
CCGI is housed at the Foundation for California Community Colleges but is an autonomous initiative with its own mission, goals, and leadership team.
The Foundation for California Community Colleges (Foundation) is committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities (EEO) are available to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, genetic characteristics, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital/parental status, political affiliation, religion, age, disability, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or veteran status. In addition to federal law requirements, the Foundation for California Community Colleges complies with applicable state and local laws governing non-discrimination in employment.
The Foundation for California Community Colleges is committed to workplace policies and hiring practices that comply with federal, state, and local law. During the hiring process, the Foundation is interested in hiring qualified candidates who are eligible and authorized to work in the United States. However, at this time, the Foundation is not able to sponsor visas. As a result, the Foundation cannot hire applicants that currently, or in the future, require immigration sponsorship for work authorization (i.e., H1B or F1 Student Visa).