Senior Manager, Environmental Activism (f/m/d)

Patagonia is an outdoor apparel company founded in 1973. At a time when all life on earth is under threat of extinction, we aim to use the resources we have—our business, our investments, our voice and our imagination—to influence changes needed to protect our planet. A registered B Corporation and founding member of 1% for the Planet, Patagonia is recognised internationally for its commitment to product quality and environmental activism, contributing over $145 million in grants and in-kind donations to thousands of grassroots environmental groups around the world.

Your role:

We’re in business to save our home planet. This role serves as the architect of our environmental activism agenda, transforming our purpose into environmental action and amplifying the efforts of grassroots organisation. Acting as both tactical leader and connector, this role strives to achieve long-term positive impact through cultivating expertise on key environmental issues, building trust-based relationships with grassroot organisations and activists communities, ensuring our resources and funds are invested in environmental issues that we are uniquely positioned to drive action on, and partnering with Marketing teams to amplify grassroot organisations and key issues’ awareness and drive communities to take action.

Main tasks:

• Team management: lead, manage, and develop the enviro team, using goal setting, coaching, and feedback practices to drive clear objectives and priorities, foster cross-functional collaboration, enable professional development, energize around environmental issues, and drive positive impact.

• Environmental agenda and issue expertise: define the environmental issues we focus on, that inform our granting and campaigning work. Ensure dotted line teams in countries and in retail develop local issue expertise. Facilitate mutual learning and knowledge dissemination between local and Amsterdam-based teams. Act as the reference person for policy advocacy needs for key environmental issues.

• Community relationships and capability building: develop and nurture trust-based relationships with grassroot organizations and activist communities and facilitate coalition-building opportunities. Ensure we curate initiatives and programs, leveraging our internal and external relationships, knowledge, and Patagonia Action Works, to enhance the skills, effectiveness, resilience, and interconnection of our grantees.

• Protection of wild places: facilitate between grassroot organizations, government officials, and any other third parties to continue to drive the development of e.g. wild river national parks like the Vjosa National Park, managing strategic alignment and planning, stakeholder relationships, and keeping oversight of opportunities for program expansion in the Blue Heart of Europe

• Marketing collaboration and amplification: brief the Marketing teams on the environmental issues we are uniquely positioned to drive action on. Collaborate with the Marketing teams to identify the possible levels of amplification of the issues and grantees, up to and including marketing campaigns, ensuring authentic storytelling and representation of the issue, to drive positive action and community impact. Act as the liaison between the Marketing teams and grantees throughout the amplification and campaign process.

• Grant distribution: lead the strategic direction on 1% for the planet in EMEA, to ensure how we manage the granting program is aligned with our environmental focus areas and drives optimal impact, such as fund allocation, grantee selection, performance measurements etc.

• Employee activism: ensure we continue to offer, and evolve as needed, employee volunteering programs that connect our employee community to activism while supporting our grantees, to create authentic internal advocacy and action while having positive external impact

What we’re looking for:

• An inclusive mindset

• Strong connection to Patagonia’s purpose and values

• Minimum 7 years’ experience in environmental advocacy or grassroot organizations relations, with demonstrated ability to build authentic relations between business and activist communities

• Demonstrated experience in cross-functional collaboration with marketing and communication teams on environmental campaigning, with ability to translate activism issues and insights into call to action

• Demonstrated experience and ability in environmental program management

• Advanced knowledge of European environmental issues and wild places protection landscape, including policy frameworks, activist networks, and conservation challenges

• Advanced ability to build and maintain relationships and coalitions with grassroot organizations, activist communities, senior executives, and government officials alike

• Effective listening and communication skills, both verbal and written, including ability to distill complex environmental issues into a simple, clear, and actionable message

• Strong ability to influence decision-making in a matrix environment

• Strong ability to use the power of storytelling to advance awareness and positive engagement with environmental issues

• Strong collaboration and co-creation mindset and skills

• Strong ability to navigate disagreements and facilitate convergence

• Strong team management skills, driving results by empowerment, feedback, coaching

What Success Looks Like:

• Clear focus areas are established, and the environmental agenda evolves with strong issue expertise embedded across team and people, grants, and programs strategically aligned and governed to drive measurable, lasting impact

• Collaboration and navigation of tension points with Marketing teams are productive, Marketings teams are well equipped to accurately represent grantees voices and issues, to increase awareness, engagement, and inspire action

• Wild place protection in EMEA progresses, with wild river national parks providing a model that can be replicated fostering partnership between grassroots organizations, governments, and private sector

• Grassroots environmental organizations trust us as long-term, reliable ally that supports their work, strengthens their capacity, and contributes meaningfully to positive environmental outcomes

Other important details:

• This is a Full-time position based in Amsterdam

• We have a hybrid work model, working from home for maximum 3 days per week

• We strive to make unbiased decisions and to offer a great experience to every person who applies for a role at Patagonia. Our interviews include standardised questions that focus on the aspects that are important for success in the role.

• To find out more about what we offer our employees click here: https://eu.patagonia.com/nl/en/what-we-offer/

At Patagonia, we commit to becoming an anti-racist company that leads by example. This means doing the work to be inclusive and equitable, across all aspects of our business.

Every person who applies to join Patagonia receives equal employment opportunities, and we value a welcoming environment where each member of our EMEA team feels included, respected and empowered, regardless of their race, colour, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, civil status, national origin, disability or age.

At Patagonia, we strive to have inclusive representation within our organisation and embrace a diverse mix of talent to contribute to our culture. We actively seek applications from Black and People of Colour (BPOC) and other underrepresented groups.

As we are in business to save our home planet, we can only do this together.

Please make sure that your CV and cover letter are in English.

Disclaimer for recruitment agencies:

Thanks for your interest in supporting us for this role, but we don’t accept unsolicited CVs from recruitment agencies