Help shape the future direction of our work at Forward Institute with a role in responsible leadership.
Overview
£80000 - £100000
Hybrid; London
Expires 03-9-26 - Applications reviewed after this date
Organisation summary (max 150 words)
Shaping a better future through responsible leadership.
Role Summary
- Play a pivotal role in helping shape the future direction of our work with partners.
- Engage with senior leaders on complex, unresolved challenges requiring creativity, openness, and courage.
- Lead and deliver complex, high-value projects, including innovative leadership experiences.
- Develop partnerships and strategic collaboration.
- Emphasize team leadership and cross-project learning.
Role Requirements
- 8+ years of experience in strategy consulting, leadership consulting, or learning and development.
- Strong commercial instinct, intellectual rigour, and a curiosity for AI's impact on leadership.
- Experience with designing leadership experiences and providing senior-level facilitation.
- Proven track record of winning work and growing propositions.
- Ability to foster relationships with senior leaders from diverse backgrounds.
We are in an exciting period of growth, and we're looking for somebody to play a pivotal role in helping shape the future direction of our work with partners and take on increasing leadership responsibilities in the organisation. There is a strong sense of possibility in what we are building. We work with senior leaders on complex, often unresolved challenges. This requires curiosity, creativity, openness and a willingness to engage with difficult questions.
We are looking for someone with strong commercial instinct, intellectual rigour, and a genuine obsession with how some of the biggest leadership challenges of our time, and specifically AI will reshape organisations, leadership and society.
You most likely have consulting or leadership development experience, experience building and growing something new, and the confidence to bring bold creative thinking into how senior leaders develop. You are as comfortable designing an experience as you are delivering it.
This is a role for someone ready to operate at the level of the leaders we serve, not just support them.
This is a role designed to shape and grow our responsible leadership advisory practice. We are looking for someone with strong relational instincts and a deep belief in responsible leadership. You will play an active role in the growth of the organisation and the direction of our work with partners, helping identify where we should invest, build capability and deepen our impact. You will hold key accounts and lead impactful projects end to end with our partners, overseeing effective teams and contributing to our shared learning. This isn't a fixed job spec: we'll shape it with you, helping to develop your own craft and impact as you go.
Core responsibilities include:
Responsibility for the leadership and delivery of complex, high value projects:
This includes being responsible for:
- Exceptional partner management and the delivery of project outcomes that generate high partner value and are reputation-enhancing;
- Team leadership, development and coaching through the delivery of the project work, including team members and Associates;
- Project budgets and P&L, and any strategic partnerships (e.g. digital providers) that are material to the delivery of the work;
- The delivery of the work such that it creates opportunities for cross-project learning and proposition iteration.
Responsibility for the design of creative leadership experiences that supports senior leaders:
This includes being responsible for:
- Being a central player in a core design capability to support all of our work, providing opportunities to design across programmatic interventions and bespoke advisory work;
- Pioneering design experiences that are trying to do something different with leaders across all sectors, outside of established approaches to leadership development;
- The evaluation and impact of the leadership interventions that support partner objectives and enhance the integrity of the FI’s mission
ABOUT YOU
Mindset
•Entrepreneurial and can exercise judgement under ambiguity
•Commercially sharp, with a clear instinct for where value lies
•Deeply curious and about how AI will reshape organisations and leadership
•Own and engage with ideas of responsible leadership and apply them across everything you do
•Deeply relational, building trust quickly with senior leaders and teams
•Creative, drawn to designing something new rather than following convention
Capabilities
•Ability to lead the full life cycle of complex, high-value projects
•Strong commercial capability, holding multiple partner accounts, leading business development conversations, proposals and pitches, and converting work
•Strong design instinct, creating impactful leadership experiences
•People leadership and management skills, playing a key leadership role, acting as a mentor for more junior members of the team and effectively managing diverse project teams
•Excellent facilitation skills with senior teams
•Ability to translate a strong intellectual framework into clear, compelling partner propositions
•Ability to evaluate the impact of leadership interventions and demonstrate real outcomes
Experience
•~8+ years’ experience in strategy consulting, leadership consulting, programme design and implementation, or learning and development
•Experience taking a proposition to market and growing it
•Proven track record of winning work through senior relationships
•1 - 2 years’ experience engaging leaders with or working in AI, technology or innovation
OUR OFFER TO YOU
Every person who joins us shapes our culture and our impact. In return, we accelerate your development - fast. This is a rare opportunity: to work alongside, and get direct exposure to, senior leaders, with a mission that matters.
What we're doing here is genuinely pioneering. We're not following someone else's playbook, we're writing our own, and you'll help write it.
Here you will feel opportunity: small enough that your work matters and is visible, fast-growing enough that the opportunities keep expanding. We will support you develop your mastery, autonomy and purpose at an organisation that believes work should enrich your life.
We are pragmatic idealists
We pair moral ambition with the discipline to follow through, and measure ourselves by outcomes, not intentions.
We care
For the work, the people we work with, and the leaders we support. Care without courage is just comfort, so we take the work seriously, in a way that is deeply human.
We build from multiple perspectives
We work with leaders from across business, government, and civil society, and from a range of backgrounds, because difference drives better thinking.
We challenge assumptions
We ask the questions other's don't. Clarity starts with curiosity, and courage means acting on it; we would rather ask the hard questions.
TO APPLY
please send your CV and a covering video (maximum 90 seconds) answering the following question:
What do you think responsible leadership looks like, and why does it matter?
We are an equal opportunities employer and are committed to fair and inclusive recruitment practices. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, identities, and lived experiences.
We want to make this process as inclusive and accessible as possible. If you have any access needs or specific requirements, please get in touch.
Role closes on Friday 4th September and we will be interviewing on a rolling basis.
You must have the right to work in the UK.