Kristen Jeffers on the stage at YIMBY Town September 2018

Jobs, Opportunities and Funding as of September 25, 2018

Welcome to the second The Black Urbanist Jobs, Opportunities, and Funding Weekly. Today is September 25, 2018.

In case you missed opening the last email and the one earlier that week that announced the coming of said email, this is the reboot and revamp of my weekly dispatch.

You’ll still get announcements and recommendations about and from me, but the focus of this email/ post is going to be me making sure you know of some great opportunities in the land use and planning world.  There’s always a version of this linked at www.theblackurbanist.com/job-board and I will do my best to make sure that this hits all the major social media sites as well. Please forward to your friends!


To add your job, opportunity, or scholarship to this list, please shoot me a direct message on Twitter or Instagram @blackurbanist, tag your job posting or send via DM on LinkedIn or email me at kristen@theblackurbanist.com with a clear link to your announcement, whether or not you can be a recommendation or resource about the opportunity and if the link doesn’t include it, the close date, salary and compensation information, materials required to apply and to whom any cover letters need to be addressed. If you want to make the weekly cutoff for next week’s list, it needs to be in by midnight on Thursday, as I will be waking up on Fridays to do this list, with the goal of releasing Friday, Saturday or Sunday of each week. Travel and exhaustion kept me from sticking to that this week, but hopefully soon, I’ll have some help of my own to keep this ship running (and catch any typos).

Before we add some new opportunities this week, let’s get started with some of the older ones.

The Rockingham County, NC Planning and Inspections Director position is still open. Marcus Slade is still your contact, his email (note the correction from last week) is marcus_slade@outlook.com.

Same with the SieX Director of Communications and Director of Finance positions. Again, these could be remote positions, but it’s preferred that you’re based in their Downtown DC (Farragut Square) office space. Also, this is a startup, so salary and stock options are dependent on fundraising. However, if you’re in a place where you could take on a position building a startup company, especially with time spent in DC and possibly traveling to other areas, feel free to apply.

And now a few new ones.  First, the latest job leads from Jessica Roberts. Thanks again to her for pulling together this transportation heavy list. Last week’s list is here.

The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) Transportation Department is hiring a Senior Transportation Planner (Bicycle and Pedestrian Planner). Arlington, TX, Source: APBP list serve. Salary listed.

The City of St. Petersburg is hiring a Planner I to focus on Active Transportation and Complete Streets. St. Petersburg, FL. Apply here. Source: APBP list serve. Can’t tell if salary is listed.

Portland Community College is hiring a part-time Transportation Ambassador. Portland region, OR. Source: emailed to me. Salary listed.

San Diego State University is hiring an Assistant Professor: City Planning/Innovation. San Diego, CA. Source: emailed to me. Salary not listed.

The City/County of San Francisco is hiring a Transportation Planner IV. SF, CA. Source: Twitter user @sbjinsfo. Salary listed.

Go Triangle is hiring a Travel Services Associate. Durham/Raleigh, NC. Apply here. Source: TRANSP-TDM list serve. Salary listed.

North Seattle College is hiring a Transportation Coordinator. Seattle, WA. Source: TRANSP-TDM list serve. Salary listed.

Justin Garrett Moore, of NYC Planning, BlackSpaceNYC, AICP, and a litany of other related things, has one of the best LinkedIn pages for looking for jobs and opportunities in this space. Definitely, bookmark him and Jessica for jobs and opportunities. I’m going to share this particular job from his page, as it’s really compelling.

Please share with the francophone urbanist network:

Surbana is looking for young urban planners for their new technical office in Kigali. Selected candidates will support our local coordinator in implementing projects in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Key requirements:

Graduated in Urban Planning, Geography, Urban Design, Environment Engineering or similar.

Minimum 1-2 years experience in Regional or Urban Planning, Urban Design, Strategic Planning.

Fluent written and oral French and English languages.

Availability to move to Kigali, Rwanda, for a long-term assignment.

Excellent knowledge of GIS, CAD, Photoshop and Illustrator, Office Package.

Interested candidates are requested to send CV with relevant experiences and Portfolio to the following email address: enrico.morriello@surbanajurong.com

If you’re in need of career guidance, Gilsa Bush, A.K.A. GiGi The Planner, is offering her virtual career coaching sessions for free until September 30. Several people from around the world already have taken this opportunity to work with her. I got a chance to have a phone chat of my own with her earlier last week and she’s got a lot of good ideas and I’m thrilled to have her as a fellow planner-entrepreneur, not just focused on service provision, but on enhancing the practitioners and people involved in everyday community life, especially our youth! Again, she’s helping high school, college and early career folks especially figure out their place in the land use and planning world, but, she’s willing to talk to anyone who just needs advice.

In the same spirit, feel free to email or message me not just with job announcements, but any questions or advice. If I can’t answer it, someone in this network can.

Also, my guide on choosing a career in placemaking has helped several people decide on graduate school, career changes and just getting your life right. Take a look at it and let me know either on here on in person how much it’s helped you. I really appreciate that!

Other Things

My online shop is finally open again! Kristpattern: A Black Urbanist Design is where you’ll be able to find merch that will help you tell the world who you are and who you support. Basically, anything I offer that’s not a service, but a handheld product will live here. Check out the new line of grocery totes.

I am a Black Urbanist tote, transportation patterned tote, humming bird and morning glory flower tote and I support Black Urbanist tote for sale in The Black Urbanist Shop via Print All Over Me for $36.00

Bookmark www.theblackurbanist.com/shop as well as www.theblackurbanist.com/job-board.

—The more journalistic and essay part of the site is set to completely relaunch next month, in honor of the site’s eighth anniversary. I am accepting submissions, with priority for folks who either want to cross-post content from your organization or site for further exposure or who are ok with me sending you a $50 grocery card for your efforts. I am aiming to pay writers more than their groceries, but if you’re an organization or person who wants to send a well-written op-ed, share some of your own blogs and op-eds or anything else that’s under “exposure”  or groceries and you’re ok with just that, share a Google Doc, Evernote Shared Note or something similar that we can co-edit in real time to theblackurbanist@gmail.com. We will discuss appropriate compensation and I will not run your piece until you are paid what you need!

—As you have seen if you follow my social media and at the top of this email, YIMBYTownand Boston were great! Thanks to the coalition of organizers, organizers committed not just to build new shiny things but committed to making sure everyone in Boston gets to live there, without threats and pressure. Video from my talk is forthcoming as we didn’t do a direct live stream and we need to do edits to sync my slides and my speaking.

Have a great week!

Never heard of me before this post? Come over here and let’s get to know each other better.  This platform doesn’t have a paywall,  but I still need to eat. Buy me a meal via PayPal or Cash App, or many meals via Patreon.