Strategist

Reporting to the Director of Strategy & Practice, the Strategist helps translate complex research into actionable strategies, tools, and recommendations that help partners turn insight into impact. This role supports multi-stakeholder initiatives, shapes project strategy, develops partner-facing deliverables, and contributes to building the scalable systems that underpin Harmony Labs’ narrative strategy work. Working across research, creative, and communications functions this role combines strategic thinking, storytelling, and executional precision to help partners bring insights to life in culture.

Please submit a resume and cover letter, clearly describing your interest and experience to jobs@harmonylabs.org. Due to the number of emails we receive, we regret that we are unable to respond to each one.

Position Detail

What You Will Do

• Project Strategy & Partner Support
  • Serves as Strategy Lead on select projects, partnering closely with Research Leads and Account Directors to define partner goals, audiences, success criteria, and strategic directions.
  • Owns or co-owns core S&P stages of the client lifecycle ensuring continuity of strategic framing from project start through delivery.
  • Supports project setup through development of project charters, strategy documents, and key project questions, and ensures our work serves partner goals in collaboration with Research Leads.
  • Acts as the “voice of the partner,” ensuring research outputs are tailored to audience needs, tone, framing, and level of detail across different stakeholders.
  • Translates research into clear insights, narratives, and actionable recommendations that help partners implement findings effectively.
  • Contributes to the development and facilitation of partner presentations, workshops, and training sessions, including storytelling-driven decks, memos, and interactive formats.
  • Supports the Director and project teams in stakeholder alignment, expectation management, and ongoing partner communication.
• Development of Tools, Frameworks & Processes
  • Helps design and refine scalable tools, templates, and frameworks for recurring project needs.
  • Creates and maintains “gold standard” examples of S&P artifacts and adapts them across projects, including from an intersectional lens.
  • Captures learnings from projects to improve internal processes and contribute to an evolving S&P playbook for how we support partners.
  • Supports the development of training and capacity-building materials that enhance uptake and integration of Harmony’s tools across partner organizations.
• Internal Collaboration & Learning
  • Partners with Research, Creative, and Communications teams to deliver cohesive, insight-driven work that aligns with Harmony Labs’ principles and approach.
  • Contributes to internal documentation and knowledge-sharing practices, helping codify what effective strategy and practice look like at Harmony.
  • Participates in retrospectives and feedback sessions to strengthen alignment across projects and teams.
  • Supports measurement and evaluation efforts to understand the impact of Harmony’s strategic work, including contributions to evaluation, learning capture, and case studies.
• Field Building & Innovation
  • Stays current on shifts in media, narrative change, and cultural strategy to inform project strategy and partner advising.
  • Helps pilot and test innovative approaches to integrating insights into partner practices or cultural products, including new formats, partnerships, or implementation models.
  • Contributes ideas for new partnership models or offerings informed by field trends, Narrative Observatory learnings, and partner feedback.
• Supporting Strategy & Practice Function Development
  • Supports the Director of Strategy & Practice in refining S&P’s operating model, offerings, and collaboration patterns across Harmony.
  • Surfaces especially complex strategic questions, partnership dynamics, or implementation challenges to the Director, and collaborate on approaches and frameworks to address them.
• Undertake other duties and responsibilities as needed to support organizational growth and impact.

Who You Are

• You thrive at the intersection of research, strategy, and storytelling. You’re comfortable moving between details and big-picture thinking, excited by complex problems, and skilled at making insights actionable for diverse audiences.
• Naturally curious, analytical, and creative — equally comfortable mapping systems and crafting narratives.
• Experienced in working cross-functionally across research, strategy, and creative teams.
• Skilled at translating complex findings into clear, engaging outputs (presentations, memos, briefs, toolkits).
• Collaborative, thoughtful, and able to flex between leading, supporting, and co-creating.
• Excited by processes and patterns — you like building tools that make good work easier to repeat.
• Confident managing client relationships and facilitating meetings or discussions.
• Organized and proactive in balancing multiple projects and deadlines in a remote environment.

Desired Experience

• 5+ years’ experience in strategy, consulting, research translation, or similar roles within media, nonprofit, creative, or social impact settings.
• Experience managing client or partner relationships, from project framing through delivery.
• Demonstrated ability to distill complex research into actionable insights.
• Proven experience developing or implementing strategic frameworks, tools, or playbooks.
• Familiarity with narrative change, cultural strategy, or social impact communications is a plus.
• Strong writing, presentation, and facilitation skills.
• Comfort navigating ambiguity and contributing to structure in evolving systems.

Details & Compensation

• This is a full-time, exempt position reporting to the Director of Strategy & Practice
• Salary ranges from $130,000–$145,000, commensurate with demonstrated experience.
• There is a generous benefits package, including:
  • Health, dental and vision insurance, employer paid across all categories, including for partners, children, and families
  • Unlimited paid time off, with minimum thresholds for use
  • 401(k) with 100% match of up to 6% of salary per pay period, with immediate vesting
  • Pre-tax spending plans for commute, parking, dependent care, healthcare
  • Professional development stipends, paid parental leave, sabbaticals
  • Harmony Labs is a 100% remote workplace, with home office set up and annual reimbursements, periodic in-person retreats, and access to conference space at WeWork
  • Harmony Labs provides a laptop

Broad perspectives and diverse experiences are key to serving society, and innovating in a way that responds to our complex, interdependent global context. While Harmony Labs employs only United States citizens and those non-U.S. citizens authorized to work in the United States, in compliance with national regulations, we strongly encourage people from backgrounds currently underrepresented in tech, research, media, and data science to apply. Harmony Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We value and welcome diversity in the workplace and strongly encourage all qualified persons to apply. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

About Harmony Labs

About Harmony Labs

We are a media research lab, using science, data, and creativity to research and reshape our relationship with media. For more than a decade, Harmony Labs has helped storytellers and strategists, decision makers and dreamers, harness the immense power of media to shape a positive, pluralistic future. With the Narrative Observatory, for the first time ever, we're harnessing powerful industry relationships to deliver one-of-a-kind data infrastructure that empowers partners to find, reach, and resonate with the right audience in today's media minefield. The Narrative Observatory delivers audience-based insights, narrative and network analysis, and empirical validation of cultural strategy and content---all derived from the actual behavior of real people and true audiences, not survey results, demographic groups, or inauthentic online activity.

We work with a wide range of partners on issues of existential importance, like climate, gun violence, political corruption, artificial intelligence, and more, using an approach to research that is rigorous, participatory, and public. One of the first papers we co-authored looked at fracking narratives in documentary film. The outputs we've created with our partners include websites, presentations, peer-reviewed publications, toolkits, curriculum, interactives, white papers, and media. And our work has been covered in the press, like in this recent New York Times article.

Founded by John S. Johnson in 2008, Harmony Labs is a 501(c)3 incorporated in New York State. Funders include Atlantic Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Google, and more.