Research Assistant

Do your best work here.

Hopelab envisions a future where young people have equitable opportunities to live joyful and purposeful lives. As a researcher, investor, and convener, Hopelab is dedicated to fostering greater mental health and well-being outcomes for Brown, Black, and Queer young people.

Position Overview:

Research Assistant

The Research Assistant is an entry‑level role that supports Hopelab’s efforts in youth‑centered research and translational science, focusing on understanding and improving the well‑being of Black, Brown, and Queer young people. The ideal research assistant excels at research organization and is a compelling communicator of our work. Typical responsibilities include creating literature and landscape reviews, publicly sharing our research through written and verbal data presentations, facilitating recruitment of research participants, organizing and conducting focus groups and interviews, conducting descriptive qualitative and quantitative analyses, coordinating with external collaborators, supporting the development of IRB protocols, and supporting event planning for convenings with our partners.

At its core, a successful Research Assistant does the following:

Keeps us organized – creates and administers effective systems and procedures that support our diverse research activities

Represents our work publicly – effectively and compellingly shares our results and their impact to public audiences

Builds and maintains relationships – is a trusted point of contact for our research participants and external collaborators

Enthusiastically takes on new challenges – learns quickly and adapts to rapidly evolving work demands

The Research Assistant will report to one of Hopelab’s Principal Researchers. They will primarily support the Research team, but also have opportunities to support other strategic functional areas where their skills align with the team’s needs.

• Create and maintain overall research and project tracking documents, including timelines, meeting notes, deliverables, databases of key relationships, and other project resources
• Recruit, schedule, track, and engage research participants
• Coordinate the development and implementation of research activities, including project kick‑offs, focus groups, individual interviews, and surveys.
• Participate in data synthesis processes that distill insights that are relevant and useful to the project goals and objectives
• Conduct, write up, and present landscape reviews, and academic literature reviews on key programs, technologies, organizations, individuals, and academic and popular literature relevant to Hopelab initiatives
• Present findings and perspectives related to our research through written and verbal professional communication outlets.
• Coordinate and assist with the development and scheduling of regular communications and presentations on research activities and findings for both internal project teams and external collaborators.
• Organize the assembly and storage of Institutional Review Board (IRB) documents and communicate with IRB officers on protocol submission requirements and documentation
• Support meetings, including set‑up, note‑taking, record‑keeping, and follow‑up items
• Support event planning for partnership convenings
• Manage internal evaluation activities related to our research and research partnerships

• A combination of education, relevant work experience, and/or training resulting in demonstrated ability to successfully complete the job tasks
• Typically, a Bachelor’s degree with academic studies in a relevant field (psychology, education, anthropology, sociology, public health, or health services research) is a plus
• Interest in learning about and applying health equity practices across research projects and protocols
• Experience with academic literature searches in the social and behavioral sciences, and with reference management tools, is a plus
• A confident user of common research project applications such as survey tools (e.g., Qualtrics), collaboration tools (e.g., Notion, Mural), and project management tools (e.g., Team Gantt)
• Strong project administration…