Our consulting services combine the technical and pragmatic approaches of engineering and business with the holistic and innovative approaches of efficiency and sustainability. We excel at helping clients look at their sustainability and social initiatives through various lenses including public relations, financial, political, and environmental impact.

The work we do makes a difference, and we want a broad audience to engage with it.

• We recognize that great relationships form the foundation for great projects. We take the time to get to know our clients – their context, motivation, and goals. We invest in our relationships with our employees and contractors because we recognize that they are integral to our success.
• We do great work, and we turn it around quickly so that our clients can deliver on their commitments.
• We use a wide range of communication skills to deliver the results of our analysis so that non-technical audiences can use them to make decisions.

Our projects address sustainability, climate action, and resiliency planning; greenhouse gas
accounting; environmental justice and social equity issues; energy efficiency program development and management; and market/regulatory analyses. 

Team Environment

Lotus believes that collaboration and cooperation result in better outcomes for our clients and our team members. We respect the unique talents and perspectives that each person brings to our team and encourage them to leverage those skills to bring value to our clients. Our success as a team is intertwined with the success of each individual.

We rely on our team members to deliver high-quality work on time and on budget in a fast-paced, demanding environment. We are able to be responsive to our clients because we are responsive within our team. We are a flat organization that relies on effective and proactive communication, typically during regular business hours, to achieve our goals. 

We succeed because we consider issues from many points of view. We assess how someone else’s context affects their position on an issue; we do this for each stakeholder in a discussion, whether it is inside a client organization or in a broader group. We take the time to synthesize these perspectives and identify solutions that create lasting benefits. Each team member contributes their unique experiences and perspectives to consider issues from many points of view. 

A Week in the Life of a Lotus Employee in this Position

We are looking for someone who is willing to get their hands dirty – to pitch in on all tasks that come up in the course of business. We need you to be flexible and nimble, willing to adapt to the needs of a business in a rapidly evolving market.

Our business model relies on your ability to work independently, ask good questions at the right time, and figure things out on your own. We need you to be resourceful, quickly leveraging the contacts and resources at your disposal in a strategic manner to work through day-to-day challenges.

During the course of a given week, we’ll ask you to employ a broad range of skills. We’ll ask you to use both sides of your brain. The majority of your work will support our projects with clients, while a small amount on a weekly basis will support our business development efforts. This role will mostly focus on managing projects and working within our communications and engagement practice area. Yet, here’s a snapshot of some of the work that we currently anticipate:

More than anything else, we’ll ask you to support us in delivering the highest-quality services to our clients.

• Lead project management for engagement and facilitation and sustainability planning projects on behalf of Lotus and our clients.
• Keep projects on time and on budget, collaborating across the Lotus team to delegate and coordinate project work.
• Identify, organize, and help respond to upcoming project opportunities.
• Scope and budget projects.
• Ensure that our client’s needs and wants are met.

We’ll rely on you to lead and support client engagement work.

• Facilitate stakeholder, task force, and community meetings.
• Develop engaging and participatory meeting materials and activities, weaving in research, data, and findings from other components of Lotus’ work into the process as needed.
• Develop robust communications plans related to both engagement efforts and the implementation of our clients’ work.
• Engage various audiences by planning, implementing, coordinating, and evaluating a variety of creative and effective engagement opportunities.
• Use various virtual and in-person tools to facilitate consensus building with stakeholder groups.

We’ll ask you to support Lotus’ and our clients’ commitment to equity and environmental justice.

• Develop meaningful engagement that includes all voices and values, is culturally relevant and inclusive, and incorporates relationship building.
• Integrate components that address equity and issues of environmental justice, environmental racism, and historic disenfranchisement throughout all of our outreach and engagement work.
• Lead and continuously improve our public engagement efforts and create a safe environment for engagement.
• Build positive professional relationships with engagement participants.

We’ll ask you to help us craft a story that explains our work.

• Analyze the results of engagement efforts and weave these findings into climate action plans, sustainability reports, and other client deliverables.
• Craft outreach materials, build websites for community plans, develop surveys, and identify and implement other innovative approaches to gathering community and stakeholder input.
• Develop meeting materials and graphic-heavy presentations to present our work to non-technical audiences or to conference crowds.

This position requires a candidate with the following qualifications:

• Communication and Engagement Skills
  • Expert understanding in planning, implementing, and evaluating public participation and engagement and facilitation processes.
  • Experience leading stakeholder processes, with a preference for experience in community building and gathering consensus across diverse networks of stakeholders.
  • Demonstrated ability to deliver enthusiastic, accurate, educational, creative, and entertaining presentations to a variety of audiences.
  • Experience creating communication plans or developing effective communication strategies.
  • Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, and an ability to share complex information in an easily understood format.
  • Excellent listening skills and the ability to hear, process, and aggregate input from multiple sources.
  • Ability to coordinate and ensure internal team alignment on project status, needs, successes, and potential barriers.
• Project Management Skills
  • Interdisciplinary work experience that focuses on managing projects of progressively increasing levels of complexity, collaborating across domains, and facilitating diverse networks of stakeholders to reach a common goal.
  • Ability to manage multiple projects, people, timelines, and tasks simultaneously with a high level of independence and competence within a fast-paced, complex, innovative environment. 
  • Ability to delegate work across teams and keep projects on time and on budget.
• Attitude
  • Collaborative team player and engager.
  • A history of successful, creative problem-solving.
  • A history of self-education on issues outside the immediate scope of prior work.
  • Strong history of self-management and being self-sufficient.
  • A passion and enthusiasm for the work we do with public and private sector clients.
• Education
  • Bachelor’s degree and 5-7+ years of relevant experience or Masters’ degree with 4+ years of relevant experience. 
  • Proficiency in Microsoft Excel, Word, and the Google Suite (e.g., Docs, Sheets, Forms, et c.).
• Valid driver’s license and comfort with driving.

Other desirable attributes include:

• Spoken and written fluency in Spanish.
• An interest in and understanding of the quickly evolving world of sustainability and climate action, including green building, greenhouse gas accounting, environmental justice, transportation issues, and other sustainability topics.
• Demonstrated ability to establish and build professional relationships, connections, and partnerships with clients.
• Experience as a consultant or leading billable or client-based projects.
• Experience using project management softwares such as Monday.com, Asana, Microsoft Teams, etc.
• Experiences with Miro, Survey Monkey, Zoom, Mentimeter, and other virtual facilitation tools.
• Experience in Canva, Adobe InDesign, and ArcGIS (Desktop and Online).
• Experience in Website design using platforms such as SquareSpace, WordPress, etc.