Senior Associate; Climate Solutions

CEA’s Work

CEA supports environmental foundations, nonprofits, private‑sector businesses, government agencies, trade associations, and impact investors. We pride ourselves on being client‑oriented, insightful, and responsive. Our work encompasses a broad range of environmental topics ranging from conservation to climate solutions on land and in the water, with many of our projects having an international scope. The majority of our work serves the philanthropic and non‑profit sectors and relates to marine conservation and/or climate change.

We also work regularly on climate resilience and adaptation, climate‑smart agriculture, land use and conservation, freshwater management, equity and justice in climate and conservation, transportation, wildlife protection, pollution, and urban sustainability. We often work at the intersection of these issues. Our primary offerings include:

• Strategy
  , including grantmaking strategies, organizational‑ or initiative‑level program strategies, field‑ or sector‑level landscaping and analysis, and opportunity assessments.
• Facilitation
  , including meeting and workshop design, insight generation, and synthesis; funder collaborative and NGO group facilitation.
• Operational Support
  , including initiative incubation, grant sourcing and diligence, designing and launching funder collaboratives, and board development and management.
• Analysis and Thought‑Leadership
  , including sector‑level climate mitigation analysis, roadmaps or frameworks for collective action, grant database creation and analysis, and field‑level state‑of‑play assessments.
• Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
  , including design and implementation of multi‑year MEL programs, logic models and theory of change development, learning session facilitation, research to support learning agendas, third‑party evaluations.
• Recruiting and Organizational Design
  , including executive search and transition planning, staff recruitment and hiring support, strategic talent acquisition partnership, board member recruitment, and executive compensation analysis.

We are seeking a Senior Associate who will play a key role in supporting CEA’s existing climate‑related engagements that may include: supporting energy‑related strategy development and grantmaking, facilitating funder collaboratives focused on decarbonizing key sectors, and helping leading NGOs operationalize their programming, and helping to advance growth of CEA’s climate‑focused project portfolio.

This position interacts with leaders in the philanthropic field on work spanning a wide range of climate and environmental issues. Senior Associates manage day‑to‑day consulting engagements with environmental and climate‑focused foundations, family offices, NGOs, impact investors, and bilateral and multilateral agencies.

Our work environment is collaborative and intense. It requires intellectual rigor; excellent interpersonal and communication skills; strong research, analysis, and writing capacity; the ability to synthesize findings from a range of sources; superb project‑management skills; attention to detail; and a passion for climate solutions and environmental issues.

We are interested in candidates coming from a range of professional backgrounds, including consulting, nonprofits, academia, finance/impact investing, private sector or corporate ESG, government agencies, foundations, and think tanks. Given the requirements of the position, consulting experience and grantmaking experience is desired.

The Senior Associate cohort at CEA includes varied backgrounds and subject matter expertise. Senior Associates may range from professionals with five+ years of experience ready to lead projects, seasoned professionals with advanced credentials and 15+ years of experience who prefer not to assume further management responsibilities, or experienced professionals new to consulting who are preparing for Director‑level roles. Each of these profiles have succeeded as a Senior Associate at CEA.

You are a self‑starter who finds fulfillment in a job well done. You have proven ability to manage complex projects on time and on budget, with a track record of leading teams…