Role Overview

The Programs & Advocacy Coordinator (PAC) is responsible for organizing, coordinating, and executing all ALAS programming– including educator trainings, youth leadership development, and community partner collaboration. The PAC ensures every program is delivered with high quality, fidelity and thoughtful differentiation to support youth and educators with nuance.

The ideal candidate creates scalable guides that allow us to reproduce these programs with excellence in new cities, adjusting to respect, value and celebrate differing values and contexts. The PAC brings a team mentality, collaborating closely with colleagues to ensure alignment, shared learning, and collective success. As schools demand more services, our number of youth requiring legal representation rises and we need someone to manage the quantity and quality of our attorney pipeline. This includes maintaining excellent relationships with the attorneys we have, building new partnerships, updating and streamlining our referral processes per semester, and proactively innovating and piloting long term strategies and legal aid processes with precision and expertise for ALAS to expand services to more sites nationally.

Compensation

The salary for this full-time, in-person role in New Orleans is $50,000 OR $55,000, non-negotiable with an annual cost-of-living raise. Compensation is based on experience:

• $50,000 for 2–5 years in education and youth programming
  
  
• $55,000 for 5+ years in education and youth programming

This is a 90-day contract-to-hire role. This full-time role is based in New Orleans, requiring in-person work only, with a commitment of 40-50 hours weekly depending on the season of the year and needs of each week.

• 6 weeks paid time off. Of those 17 days are designated, 2 of those weeks fall around the New Year (dates vary per year based on school partners), and 13 days are chosen by each teammate
• Health, dental, and vision insurance options
• Work computer 
• Ongoing professional development in following areas
• • Immigration System 
  • Criminal Legal System
  • Education System
  • State + Local Coalitions/ Social Justice Advocacy
  • National/international human rights + liberation movements

Programs Coordinator Goals

Build & maintain impeccable credibility and trust to sustain, uplift, and expand ALAS’ impact over time. How:

1. ALAS educator trainings increase in quality, quantity of recipients, youth leadership, and replicability.  

• Supporting Arrested Students: piloted with current school partners and gets 90% satisfaction on surveys.
• Supporting Immigrant Students: increased to double the number of schools.
• Supporting Undocumented Students: maintain current partner schools and expand to at least 1 new school or network annually.

2. 100% of eligible students at current and new partner schools have legal representation at the beginning of each school year.

3. Aspire  + Ascend Youth Fellowships are run concurrently with 95% satisfaction on surveys. 

Meaningful year-round youth opportunities engage Aspire cohort members and wider community.

4. As news and legislation changes, ALAS’ team and community has clarity on content, context, impact, locus of control and how to contribute to an empowerment narrative.

5. ALAS educators, youth, staff, and board participate in at least 1 community partner event per quarter. 

Who We’re Seeking

• You have strong respect, empathy for and belief in youth impacted by immigration and criminal courts.
• You are culturally conscious, impact-driven, and bring an empathetic lens to building the operational infrastructure for a start-up organization.
• You are excellent at synthesizing information in a verbal and written manner that others can understand, connect to and feel.
• You generate new and innovative approaches to solve problems with efficiency and proactivity.
• You are detail-oriented and can plan, organize and schedule tasks without missing a beat.
• You are able to build strong, trusting relationships and meaningfully engage with community partners, educators, colleagues, donors, school administrators, young people, and their families.
• Must be collaborative and solutions-oriented with a demonstrated commitment to the mission of ALAS.
• You are known for winning others over.
• You take a vision and execute on it.
• You are nimble, flexible, creative, patient, deferred gratification, losses one step closer to a win, growth mindset.
• You have skills in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Excel, Word and Powerpoint including data management skills and experience with handling and visualizing basic quantitative data (e.g. financial).
• You have previous experience in an administrative role, or a similar or related role including unpaid, grassroots or lived experience, or other relevant transferable skills and experience.
• You have project administration skills with experience coordinating competing priorities and deadlines using project management software, ideally Asana or similar.
• You exhibit strong administrative and organizational skills.
• You have experience in maintaining forecasts and budgets, or similar financial administration.
• You possess strong team-working and team coordination skills with a demonstrated ability in working with others to produce analysis and written outputs.
• You implement clear, direct verbal and written communication skills.

Work Requirements

• Spanish speaking fluency required.
• Must be available to work 100% in person in New Orleans, and remotely during evacuation or quarantine
• Excitement to travel for multiple night team trips or conferences 4-12 times per year
• Eagerness to attend community events and meetings that will occur some nights and weekends
• Must have a strong work ethic and flexibility in response to our school and community partners
• Must be fully vaccinated because we work in and with schools
• Tech requirements: Phone, computer, internet, Zoom, and WhatsApp 
• 2+ years of full-time experience in teaching or youth programming required
• Experience working in an organization with a values-driven culture that prioritizes directly affected people, racial equity, diversity, and inclusion

Application and Hiring Info

• The hiring process will include an application, hiring tasks, multiple interviews, and reference checks
• Additional conversations, meetings or event attendance may be part of the interview process
• To minimize bias, the written application will be a blind process, anonymizing names of applicants
• Interviewers always include youth, and at times educators, attorneys and other community partners

Applications will be accepted until a hire is made. Earlier applications will be prioritized. Once a hire has been made, this link will no longer be active. The volume of applications received will determine how quickly we are able to move between phases, as we are a very small team with a high volume of high-stakes work. All applicants will be notified of candidacy status at each stage. 

Application Directions: Fully read the job description and application. Complete and submit all requested materials.

Application Link: https://bit.ly/alaspacapp

Anticipated Start date: March 2, 2026