Digital Director, Central Communications

About: New America’s mission is to generate big ideas and bold solutions for a new America. We envision an America that represents and serves the public, where institutions work for all Americans, where workers, families, and communities can thrive, and where people are secure from existential threats.

Primary Function:  New America is seeking a visionary, creative, and highly organized digital leader to serve as Digital Director within its Central Communications team. The Digital Director will shape and lead New America’s digital communications strategy, including its website and digital publishing platforms, visual brand, data visualization, analytics, and responsible adoption of emerging technologies.

The Digital Director will oversee four direct reports on the Central Communications digital team: The Front-End Developer, Digital Marketing Manager, Senior Data Visualization Developer, and Senior Visual Designer and Brand Lead. The Digital Director will establish priorities, support professional development, and foster an effective, collaborative team responsible for digital product development, marketing, visual storytelling, brand implementation, and performance measurement.

Building on the successful launch of New America’s redesigned website and refreshed brand in 2026, the Digital Director will lead the critical next phase of the organization’s digital evolution: turning these foundational investments into sustained audience growth, deeper engagement, and greater influence for New America’s ideas. The opportunity is to move from launch to measurable impact—continually improving how audiences discover, understand, and act on New America’s work; developing more ambitious digital products and storytelling formats; strengthening the organization’s brand and reputation across channels; and building the systems, insights, and practices needed to reach new and evolving audiences. The Digital Director will define what comes next and establish a clear roadmap for delivering it.

Reporting to the Vice President of Content and Communications, and working closely with other Central Communications colleagues, New America’s experts, emerging leaders, program teams, and operations colleagues, the Digital Director will translate organizational goals into a cohesive digital strategy and product roadmap. The ideal candidate combines strategic vision with technical fluency, sound management, creative problem-solving, and the ability to lead complex work involving multiple stakeholders and competing needs.

Responsibilities:

Digital strategy and product leadership

• Set the vision and strategy for New America’s website, digital publishing tools, audience-development channels, and data visualizations/interactive storytelling capabilities.
• Develop and oversee a digital product roadmap that aligns organizational goals, audience needs, and available resources, while ensuring digital products adhere to best practices for accessibility, user experience, privacy, performance, and search visibility.
• Lead product-development processes involving internal stakeholders and external vendors.
• Identify opportunities to expand New America’s interactive storytelling and data-visualization capabilities in ways that increase the reach and impact of its research and policy ideas.
• Evaluate New America’s digital systems on an ongoing basis and make informed budget, staffing, technology, and vendor recommendations to the VP of Content and Communications.

Website management and digital publishing

• Lead the next phase of New America’s website strategy, ensuring that the site continues to evolve as an effective digital publishing, storytelling, and audience-engagement platform.
• Develop and manage a website roadmap centered on audience growth, content discovery, usability, accessibility, and performance.
• Partner with editorial, research, policy, development, events, and communications colleagues to understand their evolving needs and translate them into scalable digital solutions.
• Manage relationships with web-development agencies and technical vendors, including project scope, budgets, timelines, deliverables, and performance.
• Champion user-centered product development, incorporating audience research, usability testing, analytics, and staff feedback loops to inform continuous improvement.
• Establish clear governance for website content workflows, feature requests, quality assurance, maintenance, and publishing responsibilities.

Audience development and analytics

• Guide New America’s digital analytics and measurement strategy, ensuring performance data connects clearly to communications and impact goals.
• Translate analytics into actionable recommendations for content strategy, audience development, and resource allocation across teams.
• Establish ethical, privacy-conscious standards for how the organization collects, targets, and experiments with audience data.
• Champion organization-wide fluency with digital insights, presenting findings in ways that resonate with both technical and non-technical colleagues.

Brand stewardship

• Serve as New America’s primary organizational brand steward.
• Lead the continued evolution of New America’s visual identity to ensure that it remains distinctive, credible, accessible, and aligned with the organization’s mission and reputation.
• Partner closely with the Senior Visual Designer and Brand Lead and other Central Communications colleagues to maintain a consistent and high-quality look, feel, and voice across New America’s website, publications, events, campaigns, social channels, and other public-facing products.
• Establish and maintain brand standards, templates, tools, training, and review processes that enable colleagues across the organization to apply the brand effectively.
• Advise senior leaders and program teams on high-visibility brand decisions and identify opportunities to strengthen New America’s reputation over time.
• Monitor how New America’s brand is expressed and perceived across channels, using audience feedback, research, and performance data to recommend thoughtful improvements.

Team leadership and organizational collaboration

• Lead, manage, and mentor a multidisciplinary team spanning web development, digital marketing, data visualization, visual design, and brand.
• Establish clear responsibilities, goals, workflows, and performance expectations while supporting staff growth and professional development.
• Foster an inclusive, creative, accountable, and collaborative team culture.
• Develop internal processes, guidelines, and service models that support effective collaboration on digital communications.
• Present digital strategies, product concepts, recommendations, and tradeoffs clearly and persuasively to senior stakeholders with varying levels of technical and design knowledge.
• Build productive relationships with external agencies, consultants, technology providers, and other partners.

Emerging technologies and responsible AI

• Develop a forward-looking vision for how emerging technologies—including AI—can responsibly strengthen New America’s research communications, digital publishing, audience engagement, internal capabilities, and reputation as a public policy think tank.
• Evaluate and pilot tools that could improve content discovery, accessibility, workflow efficiency, audience understanding, data visualization, or digital storytelling.
• Serve as a vital member of the AI governance committee to develop responsible practices for selecting and using AI-enabled tools and ensure experimentation reflects New America’s standards for accuracy, transparency, editorial and research integrity, accessibility, and human oversight.
• Monitor digital trends and best practices and recommend investments that advance New America’s mission without compromising trust or quality.

Digital governance, security, and operational resilience

• Partner with New America’s IT and operations teams to assess cybersecurity, privacy, data-governance, and technology needs related to the organization’s public-facing digital platforms.
• Maintain appropriate governance and documentation for critical digital systems, domains, integrations, administrative access, vendors, and account ownership.
• Support incident-response planning for website outages, account compromises, publishing errors, misinformation, and other digital or reputational risks.

Qualifications:

Candidates should have:

• At least eight years of relevant professional experience, including at least three years managing staff.
• Demonstrated experience developing and implementing an organization-wide digital strategy.
• Significant experience leading digital product development, website management, web design, or a related function.
• Experience managing and mentoring multidisciplinary staff and building effective, collaborative teams.
• Demonstrated ability to develop product roadmaps, prioritize competing needs, and lead complex projects from planning through implementation and evaluation.
• Working knowledge of HTML and CSS.
• Familiarity with modern web-development technologies and frameworks, including JavaScript and React, and content management systems such as WordPress or Drupal.
• Experience with Google Analytics or comparable analytics platforms and the ability to translate performance data into strategic recommendations.
• Experience with project-management tools such as Asana, Trello, Jira, Monday.com, or similar platforms.
• Knowledge of current user experience, user interface, web accessibility, privacy, and digital publishing practices.
• Experience incorporating user or audience research throughout the product design and development lifecycle.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, interpersonal, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
• Demonstrated success collaborating with senior leaders and colleagues across diverse disciplines, roles, and levels of technical expertise.
• Experience managing external agencies, consultants, or technology partners.
• Sound judgment and the ability to navigate sensitive, high-visibility, or reputationally significant decisions.
• A flexible, collaborative, and solutions-oriented approach to challenges.
• Familiarity with the opportunities and risks associated with generative AI and other emerging technologies, including responsible-use considerations.
• Experience stewarding or implementing an organizational brand across multiple digital and visual channels.
• A commitment to inclusive, accessible, and audience-centered communications.
• Experience in public policy, research, journalism, higher education, advocacy, or another mission-driven environment is a plus.

Compensation and Benefits: This position is a full-time role with benefits. The annual salary will be between $135,000.00 – $150,000.00, depending on experience.

New America offers a highly competitive benefits package that includes health care, dental, and vision coverage; a generous retirement plan; paid time off; observes all federal holidays; and an office-wide closure between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Location: Washington, DC-based candidates are preferred, but fully remote arrangements may be considered for the right candidate.

Application Process:

Please submit a cover letter, résumé, and links to relevant work samples or a portfolio. Applications that do not include the requested materials will not be considered. The application deadline is September 30. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and early submissions are encouraged.

No phone calls or emails will be answered

Physical Requirement:

• This position is hybrid, working from home and in an office environment and sits at a desk for extended periods of time and requires dexterity to operate general office equipment;
• The person in this position will frequently communicate with peers, management, company partners/vendors, and the general public and must be able to exchange accurate and timely information verbally and in writing and
• This position may require walking, bending, kneeling, and standing and will require sitting for extended periods of time.

Work Environment:

• The work environment is in an indoor office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, and filing cabinets

Originality and Transparency: At New America, we value authentic voices and intellectual property rights. All application materials, including, cover letters, writing samples, and any other submissions, must be solely your own original work. The use of AI text generation tools like ChatGPT, language models, or other artificial intelligence writing assistants is strictly prohibited for any part of your job application. Submissions found to contain AI-generated content will be immediately disqualified from consideration. Applicants have a responsibility to be fully transparent about authorship and any tools or resources utilized. We celebrate human ingenuity and want to hear your genuine thoughts and experiences

New America is an equal-opportunity employer committed to hiring a diverse workforce at all levels of the organization, thereby creating a culture that allows us to better serve our clientele, our employees, and our communities. We value and encourage the contributions of our employees and strive to create an environment where everyone can reach their full potential and drive outstanding results. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, age, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status, gender identity or expression, or any other basis protected by local, state, or federal law. This policy applies with regard to all aspects of one’s employment, including hiring, transfer, promotion, compensation, eligibility for benefits, and termination.