Co-Executive Director

A Message from Sian Williams, Chair of the Board of Non-Executive Directors

I am delighted that you are interested in becoming Positive Money’s new Co-Executive Director alongside Paul Delaney. This pack includes key information about Positive Money – who we are and what we aim to achieve, how we work, and how this role will contribute to our vision of redesigning our economic system for a better world and a healthy planet.

Positive Money is a leading progressive research and campaigns organisation seeking to reform the money and banking system. We’ve led work on greening the finance system and helped bring about a new green mandate for the Bank of England. We’ve worked to democratise money and banking, as a leading civil society voice on the future of our payments system, and by exposing and challenging the influence of the finance sector lobby. We’ve helped bring debates about money creation and our macroeconomic framework out of the fringes of debate and into the mainstream. Anti-oppression is foundational to our mission, and we are working to embed it in everything we do, including our strategy, our analysis, our campaigns and projects, and our internal operations.

It has been a great pleasure and privilege to work with Fran Boait, Co-Executive Director, for the past 6 years. Fran has led the organisation for 11 years, first as the sole Director and then at her instigation, as Co-Director alongside Paul Delaney. They have helped to build a dynamic, values-led organisation with a strong internal culture based on integrity, creativity, inclusivity and equity, and a track record of achieving significant impact. Fran will be stepping down from her role at the end of 2024 and we are seeking a new Co-Executive Director to join Paul.

In an era of intersecting economic, social and ecological crises, Positive Money’s work is at the heart of efforts to bring about a fairer, more sustainable and more equitable economic system. If you are excited about the opportunity to support Positive Money’s vision and the work we do, I encourage you to apply. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,

Sian Williams
Chair of the Board of Directors, Positive Money

About Positive Money

Positive Money is a leading new economy think tank and campaigning organisation re-imagining money, banking, and the economy for the wellbeing of people, communities and the planet. We are part of a growing and collective force for economic systems change. Our work focuses on achieving two core missions:

1. Redesigning our economic system to tackle inequality and protect the planet. Give our central banks, governments and international finance institutions a mandate, and the tools, to lead the transition to a just and sustainable future.
2. Shifting power from big corporations and banks to people. Create an economic system that redirects power and money away from rich elites and towards people and communities.

Positive Money began in the UK in 2010 in the aftermath of the global financial crash, and we currently have a staff team of 13, plus several contractors working with us on key projects. Since our founding we’ve grown as an organisation and become an international NGO. Our EU office began in 2018 and has a staff of 10 led by an Executive Director. Our US office began in 2021 and is in an earlier stage of development. We have also developed several international projects that focus beyond these regions.

How we work:

We are a systems change organisation. We conduct research and develop policy; advocate for our proposals with policymakers and in the media; produce educational materials; and mobilise people, communities, and organisations behind key campaigns. We collaborate closely with other organisations within the new economy movement, and work to integrate anti-oppression thinking across our programmes and workstreams, to centre the voices and perspectives of groups targeted by systems of oppression. All our work is guided by strategies of generating change: change in the public narrative, change in what is possible at a technical and policy level, and change at a systems level.

Research – providing robust, evidence-based research and clear policy proposals. We critique mainstream economic policies and systemic failures that have enabled an unjust, undemocratic, and unsustainable financial system.

Influencing – We engage directly with decision makers to advocate for policy changes to reform our economic system. We seize opportunities to engage with  parliaments, central banks, civil society, academia, and the mainstream media to advocate for change.

People power – growing a diverse movement that empowers people to work together to create systemic change. This is achieved through (i) educating the public about the impacts of our broken system and opportunities to reform it such as implementing citizens’ assemblies; (ii) building our supporter base, networks, partnerships, resources and reach; (iii) being an active ally to anti-oppression movements and enabling greater diversity within our own; and (iv) mobilising our community of supporters, including fundraising. This includes partnering with other civil society organisations and our stakeholders to build a collective movement.

Our main areas of work:

• Macroeconomics – The way we manage our economy is broken. We need to redesign it.
• Finance and Democracy – Britain’s oversized financial sector wields huge influence over not only our economy, but our democracy too. We need to change it.
• The Future of Money – We all need access to money to buy food, pay our rent and make payments. Money is a fundamental public good that we all rely on, and which needs to work better for everyone. Our payment systems should be inclusive, accessible, and less dependent on private banks.
• Green Finance – We need to rethink our financial systems, so they support a greener and fairer future.
• Racial Economic Justice – We explore and uncover the racialised roots of our modern financial and monetary system.
• Housing – We all want a place to call home. Houses should be homes, not financial assets.

We also house international projects within our UK office, including our G20 Green Central Banking Scorecard, which ranks the relative progress of central banks and financial regulators in greening their policies and operations, and a project exploring injustice inherent to the International Monetary and Financial System.

More information on our work between 2020 – 2023 can be found in our most recent review document, available on our website.

Our Culture:

We work with high degrees of integrity, trust, and accountability

We honour each other as individuals, and treat each other with kindness and respect, assuming everyone is doing their best work. We proactively communicate with self-awareness, set clear expectations, and hold ourselves and each other accountable through open discussion and actionable feedback. We can count on each other’s support.

We operate with creativity, open-mindedness, and adaptability

We are curious and embrace complexity. We treat each piece of work as an experiment that generates new insights. We know our work is complex and we don’t pretend to have all the answers. We have a positive approach to people who challenge and disagree with us. We seize opportunities and stay flexible, adapting our work plans and ways of working according to the situation and circumstances. We constantly develop our expertise and strive to create an environment where we grow personally and as a team.

We are committed to dismantling oppression and fostering equity

We recognise that systemic oppression exists in various forms within our society and institutions, and we are dedicated to challenging and dismantling these structures within our organisation and beyond. We actively seek to create an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to contribute fully. We continuously educate ourselves about issues of privilege, power dynamics, and discrimination, and strive to integrate anti-oppressive practices into all aspects of our work. We engage in difficult conversations with empathy and humility, understanding that confronting oppression requires ongoing reflection, action, and allyship.

The Co-Executive Directors of our UK office co-lead a team of 13 staff to take our strategy forward, and work with our motivated and committed Board of Non-Executive Directors to develop the organisation. Together, they work as part of an international senior management team alongside Positive Money leaders from outside of the UK, to develop our wider international work.

The Co-Executive Directors are the spokespeople for the organisation and thought leaders on issues related to the new economy movement. They lead fundraising activities, develop the organisation’s goals and plans and shape Positive Money’s culture and values.

Strategy Development

• Work with the Board to define and hold the organisation’s long-term strategy, vision, and mission.
• Create and maintain the organisational architecture that allows the strategy to be achieved.
• Inspire and lead the staff team to deliver the strategy.

Delivery of Programmes, Fundraising and Operations

• Co-lead on fundraising strategy and delivery, including developing and maintaining relationships with funders and delegating fundraising work to other senior leaders.
• Work with the International Senior Management Team (ISMT) to co-lead international organisational development and manage areas with the highest cross-organisational levels of complexity and uncertainty.
• Work with the ISMT to create organisation-wide strategies and systems that work to dismantle oppression in all areas of work.
• Oversee together all programmes, functions, and workstreams to ensure they jointly add up to delivering the strategy and take personal responsibility for the organisation’s work.
• Enable the organisation to plan and manage the use of time and resources, and to effectively prioritise.
• Co-lead organisation-wide change, developing solutions to complex problems, and delegating organisational development projects to other senior leaders.
• Co-manage organisational financial health and budget.
• Take joint responsibility for anticipating and managing organisational risk.
• Work with the Chair of the Board of Non-Executive Directors to ensure board effectiveness and good governance.

External Representation

• Co-create, develop, and manage high value strategic relationships with leaders in the new economy movement, partner organisations and funders.
• Act as spokesperson for Positive Money, with funders, the media, and with other key stakeholders.

People and Culture

• Be jointly accountable for the development of the whole staff team, for motivating and empowering all staff and fostering a collaborative and inclusive approach to working across the entire organisation.
• Directly line manage senior staff and occasional contractors (5-6 senior staff divided between the Co-EDs).
• Promote an environment of open communication and accountability across the organisation, including communicating across differences.
• Role model self-awareness and self-reflection and promote high levels of these capabilities.
• Maintain and develop a high level of understanding of anti-oppression concepts and foster this across the team, and in all areas of the organisation’s work.
• Proactively support senior leaders to excel in their roles.
• Jointly work with the ISMT to shape, define and model the organisational culture both internally and externally.

We invite anyone who is interested to apply, regardless of background, experience, or credentials. We are open to candidates who may be considering this as their first role at CEO or Executive Director level, as well as candidates who may already have experience.

We aim to select candidates based on performance in our selection process and actively try to minimise the influence of our biases. There is no perfect candidate, so if you can picture yourself thriving in this role, we would love hear from you.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• You understand the new economy movement and have a strong interest in learning more about the financial, money and banking system.
• You are an established or emerging thought leader in a related space. You will come to us with the capacity to be a credible spokesperson for Positive Money, representing us in the media, at events, with funders, or in other settings, with passion.
• You have the skills to oversee successful and creative philanthropic fundraising, including an ability to align fundraising strategy with organisational strategy and develop long-lasting relationships with funders and stakeholders.
• You bring understanding of advocacy, research, and/or policy development work.
• You have knowledge of what it means to run a non-profit effectively (i.e., operations, finance).
• You have experience of managing and developing people, with a coaching approach, which includes giving clear feedback, modelling accountability, and valuing divergent perspectives.
• You are a strategic thinker with the ability to translate an organisational strategy into a pragmatic plan.
• You are familiar with anti-oppression concepts, and are motivated to integrate them into all aspects of our work.
• You have the skills to facilitate spaces, including managing conflict, sharing ideas, and seeking alignment.

Values & Behaviours

• You have a passion for our mission of reforming money and banking to build a fair, democratic and sustainable economy.
• You have a genuine commitment to working as part of a Co-leadership team and will be committed to continued learning about anti-oppression concepts.
• You bring self-awareness and an appetite to reflect on your own behaviour and practices, inviting accountability on your leadership.
• You like complex challenges and are willing to dive into uncertain new areas of work. You have self-care strategies that you are happy to share.
• You are open and responsive to ideas and able to use tact and discretion to help resolve disagreement.

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