United Families - Executive Director

United Working Families Executive Director – Job Description

United Working Families is an independent political organization by and for the many. Funded by working‑class people and their organizations—labor unions, community groups, and individuals—UWF represents over 100,000 working people across Illinois. UWF combines the experience, resources, and mass base of organized labor with the energy and innovation of the grassroots to recruit, train, and run candidates, and to build a durable, year‑round, volunteer political organization.

UWF member organizations include:
Action Center on Race and the Economy, Action Now, Chicago Teachers Union, Cook County College Teachers Union, Grassroots Illinois Action, Illinois Nurses Association, National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 11, Northside Action for Justice, SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana, SEIU Local 73, United Electrical Workers Western Region, United Neighbors of the 35th Ward, Warehouse Worker Action, Workers United Chicago Midwest Regional Joint Board, 22nd Ward Independent Political Organization, and 33rd Ward Working Families.

United Working Families seeks an Executive Director to lead our dynamic organization and its collective work of winning, building, and wielding political power for the many, not the few. The ideal candidate will be an experienced, collaborative, strategic, and creative leader who is deeply committed to UWF’s mission and vision and to the continued expansion of our impact. They will demonstrate UWF’s core competencies including a commitment to dismantling anti‑blackness and white supremacy, continuous growth and reflection, building the base and relationship building, accountability and resilience, and polarity management.

This is the top‑level position in a multifaceted, fast‑paced, and innovative environment; the work will require travel, weeknight, and weekend hours. This position is based in Chicago and it is hybrid with significant responsibilities in the field.

Accountability:
The position is supervised by the Chair and Vice‑Chair of UWF.

• Collectively craft and drive a set political and organizing strategy aimed at taking the power needed to use the levers of the state to self‑evidently improve people’s lives such that other dimensions of struggle can accelerate.
• Drive goal‑setting across multiple stakeholder axes (leadership, staff, membership, ecosystem) and put the necessary systems in place (coordination structure, staff support, fundraising, etc.) to meet them.
• Seek out learning opportunities, practices, tools, and resources to sharpen our collective thinking, praxis, and arguments.
• Cultivate relationships with key organizations, partners, funders, and allies to encourage greater solidarity, clarity, and alignment in the movement ecosystem.

• Create and execute fundraising workplans that prioritize keeping UWF’s revenue stream majority dues‑based in order to allow for programmatic dynamism and keep us accountable to our working‑class membership.
• Drive an organizational culture of learning, experimentation, and principled struggle that is continuously bringing working‑class, BIPOC people into a political home in which they are members, organizers, and leaders.
• Provide staff supervision, coaching, support, and accountability.
• Work to ensure that UWF has the structural stability (finance, legal, HR, operations) needed to nourish an environment of innovation, collaboration, and possibility.
• Supervise the Communications team to tell the story of UWF’s learnings, contributions, and victories to our leaders, members, funders, and partners.

• Build a team of officers who are owning and taking responsibility for the work of the party, including preparation for all Executive and Party Committee meetings.
• Build deep relationships with Party Committee delegates from both affiliated organizations and individual membership in order to foster a bold, clear, and strategic decision‑making environment based on solidarity.
• Create on‑ramps for individual members and incoming organizations to take on leadership of…