Associate Director, Oceans Program

What We Can Achieve Together:

The Oceans Program in the California Chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC California) spearheads innovative and collaborative initiatives to enhance resiliency in marine and coastal ecosystems. If you’re looking for a career where you can work with an ambitious and motivated team to develop solutions to the world’s most pressing ocean conservation challenges, look no further. The Program catalyzes change by working with resource users, public agencies, corporations, and others to develop cutting-edge science and tools to drive better decisions and stewardship.

Current strategies focus on sustainable fisheries, accelerating the restoration of ocean and island ecosystems, and reducing plastic consumption and pollution.

The Associate Director (Ocean Recovery Strategy Lead) oversees all aspects of work related to restoration and recovery of kelp forest and estuarine systems. The Strategy Lead manages a cross-functional team of policy, science, program, and communications experts driving rapid, high-impact marine habitat restoration across California and globally. This role provides strategic oversight and technical expertise, secures philanthropic, state, and federal funding, and builds strong partnerships with external organizations, foundations, and academia.

The Strategy Lead serves as the primary liaison to partners, leads donor cultivation and stewardship, and sets the vision, pace, and culture for a high-performing team delivering transformative outcomes for people and nature.

Join us as we develop, advance, and scale science-driven, ambitious, and creative solutions to dramatically increase the pace and scale of marine habitat restoration in California. As the Ocean Program’s largest strategy, the Ocean Recovery Team is focused on driving change by elevating ambition around what is possible for marine restoration, creating enabling conditions for scaled restoration, and developing next generation, cost-effective tools and a climate-ready workforce.

Our work builds on the best science and restoration practice from around the world to inform policy and solution development and implementation. In this role, you will set the vision and strategy, lead a cross functional team (science, policy, program, communications), steward budgets and grants, secure philanthropic, state, and federal funding, and cultivate partnerships across agencies, academia, Tribes, NGOs, and industry—capturing and sharing lessons learned to advance conservation objectives in California and beyond.

The Strategy Lead:

• Leads a dynamic and matrixed team to advance high impact conservation initiatives across three primary habitats: kelp, native Olympia oysters, and seagrass.
• Develops and executes long-term strategies to achieve strategic goals; drives consistently towards impact.
• Sources, cultivates and manages relationships with key donors and raises funds from public, private, and non-profit entities for program work.
• Oversees the development of communication and knowledge products to share lessons learned, strategies, tools, and case studies.
• Elevates TNC California’s profile by engaging nationally and globally; build networks and coalitions to scale impact.
• Manage a multidisciplinary team, including performance, training, and career development.
• Develops and manages internal and external partnerships to achieve conservation outcomes in line with programmatic priorities.
• Ensures alignment of the strategy with broader organizational objectives.
• Fosters collaboration with diverse stakeholders to maximize conservation impact.
• Applies creative, entrepreneurial approaches to problem-solving and strategic management.
• Partners with communications colleagues to leverage media and engage broad audiences.

If you’re looking for a career where you can find purpose, come join TNC as the Ocean Recovery Strategy Lead. We’re looking for a passionate, strategic, and dedicated leader for this team who will advance this important work across California and around the world. Strong interpersonal and project management skills, creativity, and effective oral and written communication are key in this…