Chicago Beyond
Director of Investments & Strategy
Join to apply for the
Director of Investments & Strategy
role at
Chicago Beyond
Chicago Beyond is a national philanthropic organization that addresses systemic inequity by backing solutions led by those closest to the issues. Since our inception in 2016, Chicago Beyond has invested more than $65 million in catalytic funding in over 250 individuals and community organizations while leading national systems‑change initiatives. Because there is no single barrier to equity, Chicago Beyond engages in opportunities across philanthropy, justice, health, and beyond.
Multiyear Investment Partners:
Through multimillion‑dollar, flexible grants and partnership support, we work to increase the impact of solutions led by those closest to the issues.
Rapid Response Fund:
This fund quickly delivers unrestricted grants to organizations and individuals with solutions for their own communities across the country. Our investments strengthen partners’ wide‑ranging work.
Leader in Residence:
The Leader in Residence program offers funding and support to selected leaders, empowering them to develop innovative, transformative ideas that create meaningful impacts in targeted communities.
Chicago Beyond was founded by Liz Dozier, a nationally renowned former educator and high school principal. Chicago Beyond’s innovative and impactful work has been featured on both the local and national level from the Chicago Tribune to the Clinton Global Initiative to Aspen Ideas Festival and Stanford Social Innovation Review. For more information on Chicago Beyond, please visit
Chicago Beyond .
The Director of Investments & Strategy is a senior leader responsible for shaping and executing Chicago Beyond’s investment strategy, leading the full investment lifecycle, driving organizational strategy in partnership with senior leaders, and ensuring that learning from our partners meaningfully informs our work. The role integrates investment strategy, impact measurement, and ongoing learning to ensure that Chicago Beyond deploys resources in ways that elevate new possibilities, challenge conditions holding systemic inequities in place, and generate actionable insights for the field.
Reporting to the Chief Strategy Officer, the Director will lead the Investments team, steward the investments process from sourcing to contracting and partnership management, and ensure that our work is aligned with our mission, values, and long‑term goals. In addition to what is outlined below, you will be responsible for other duties as assigned to support the goals and objectives of the organization.
Key Responsibilities
Identifying & Translating Trends into Investment Strategy:
Evaluate ecosystem trends and partner learnings to identify emerging patterns, insights, and high‑leverage opportunities for impact. Lead Chicago Beyond’s investment strategy, ensuring alignment with mission, values, systemic opportunities, and organizational priorities. Develop and refine investment theses that articulate the problem, systemic levers for change, and the potential models that can drive change.
Learning & Insight Capture:
Ensure the consistent capture of learnings from diligence, partner conversations, and field experiences. Build structures (templates, trackers, debriefs, reflection routines) that surface insights early and reliably before they become obvious to the field. Lead the organization in identifying how these insights can shift practices in the field. Redesign approaches to partner learning conversations that unlock new ideas, strengthen outcomes, and generate insights that drive systems change, future external insights products, and our voice in the field. Develop approaches for internal learning conversations that translate insights into strategic shifts and organizational priorities.
Organizational Strategy & Strategic Initiatives:
Partner with the Chief Strategy Officer to lead organizational strategic planning, ensuring strategy remains adaptive and informed by partners, ecosystem shifts, and internal reflection. Lead major strategic initiatives from concept to execution, managing cross‑functional timelines, resources, and deliverables. Identify emerging opportunities, risks, and areas requiring strategic shifts and advise senior leadership on recommended next steps. Work with Communications and leadership to translate investment insights into compelling strategic narratives for the field.
Investment Process:
Lead the Investment team’s sourcing and due diligence process. Ensure diligence processes are rigorous, timely, equitable, and anchored in Chicago Beyond’s values. Oversee development of investment proposals and materials for decision‑making, ensuring they reflect clear logic & structure, systemic framing, and alignment with Chicago Beyond’s goals. Facilitate cross‑team collaboration to integrate insights, contextual analysis, and trends into investment recommendations. Oversee the contracting process and establish strong processes for contract management, timelines, deliverables, and disbursement. Continuously improve the investments process and approach.
Investment Partnership Management:
Oversee partnership management across the full portfolio, ensuring investment partners have a high‑quality, trust‑based experience. Identify, track, and surface patterns, risks, opportunities, and strategic adjustments. Define and steward partnership models, expectations, engagement rhythms, and learning structures. Manage relationships with Fellows and Leader in Residence partners.
Impact:
Lead Chicago Beyond’s qualitative and quantitative impact measurement approach across investments and key bodies of work. Define KPIs, impact frameworks, and approach for data collection & capture. Develop and optimize dashboards, tracking tools, and evaluation systems that synthesize qualitative, quantitative, and contextual data. Develop methods to identify signals of systemic change. Produce memos, insights briefs, and leadership updates that inform decisions and shape field influence.
Systems & Tools:
Own and improve systems that support investment processes, impact tracking, and strategic execution (e.g., CRM, trackers, dashboards). Ensure documentation, data, and learning are organized, accessible, and high quality. Lead continuous improvement of tools and processes that strengthen decision‑making, coordination, and organizational learning.
Team Leadership & Management:
Lead and develop the Investments team, providing clear direction, coaching, development, and accountability. Foster a culture of curiosity, collaboration, equity, trust, and excellence. Ensure team members are supported, aligned, and empowered to execute effectively.
Stakeholder Engagement & Field Leadership:
Cultivate relationships with proximate leaders, funders, community partners, and experts to strengthen strategy and ecosystem context. Support Chicago Beyond’s field influence by ensuring patterns and learnings are surfaced for future insights and communications work.
Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree and 8+ years of experience in philanthropy, impact investing, strategy, management consulting, public policy, or related fields.
Exceptional judgment and pattern recognition in complex ecosystems with the ability to see connections, identify underlying dynamics and leverage points, and synthesize information to guide strategic choices.
Demonstrated experience leading investment strategy, due diligence, partnerships, or complex strategic initiatives.
Strong analytical and systems‑thinking skills, with the ability to synthesize qualitative, quantitative, contextual, and narrative evidence.
Strong strategic planning and project management skills, with the ability to set clear goals, develop actionable plans, and drive results.
Demonstrated ability to develop KPIs, dashboards, measurement frameworks, and reporting mechanisms that drive insight and decision making.
Exceptional communication and storytelling skills with the ability to translate complex ideas into compelling, structured narratives.
Strong collaborator with the ability to translate strategy into actionable plans and deliver measurable results.
Excellent leadership, management, and interpersonal skills, with experience building strong internal culture and high‑performing teams.
Strong strategic thinker who can connect the dots across issue areas, organizations, and ecosystem conditions.
Highly organized and detail‑oriented with the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast‑paced environment.
Working at Chicago Beyond We are an agile, ambitious team with diverse experience across various sectors. We thrive on challenging each other and continuously learning, united by our passion for equity and lasting impact. If you are an entrepreneurial individual looking to join a dynamic community with significant opportunities to grow and shape what you do, then this will be a perfect role for you. Please note that this role currently requires 2 days in our Chicago office.
Always Equitable
Incessantly Urgent
Endlessly Creative
Stubbornly Audacious
Uncompromising Integrity
Salary Range:
$125,000 – $150,000. Chicago Beyond provides a comprehensive benefits package, including competitive medical, dental, and vision plans, a matching 401(k) program, and generous paid time off.
Chicago Beyond is an equal opportunity employer and strongly encourages applications from people of color, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ+, and other underrepresented applicants.
Seniority Level:
Director
Employment Type:
Full‑time
Job Function:
Finance and Sales
Industries:
Civic and Social Organizations
#J-18808-Ljbffr
Director of Investments & Strategy
role at
Chicago Beyond
Chicago Beyond is a national philanthropic organization that addresses systemic inequity by backing solutions led by those closest to the issues. Since our inception in 2016, Chicago Beyond has invested more than $65 million in catalytic funding in over 250 individuals and community organizations while leading national systems‑change initiatives. Because there is no single barrier to equity, Chicago Beyond engages in opportunities across philanthropy, justice, health, and beyond.
Multiyear Investment Partners:
Through multimillion‑dollar, flexible grants and partnership support, we work to increase the impact of solutions led by those closest to the issues.
Rapid Response Fund:
This fund quickly delivers unrestricted grants to organizations and individuals with solutions for their own communities across the country. Our investments strengthen partners’ wide‑ranging work.
Leader in Residence:
The Leader in Residence program offers funding and support to selected leaders, empowering them to develop innovative, transformative ideas that create meaningful impacts in targeted communities.
Chicago Beyond was founded by Liz Dozier, a nationally renowned former educator and high school principal. Chicago Beyond’s innovative and impactful work has been featured on both the local and national level from the Chicago Tribune to the Clinton Global Initiative to Aspen Ideas Festival and Stanford Social Innovation Review. For more information on Chicago Beyond, please visit
Chicago Beyond .
The Director of Investments & Strategy is a senior leader responsible for shaping and executing Chicago Beyond’s investment strategy, leading the full investment lifecycle, driving organizational strategy in partnership with senior leaders, and ensuring that learning from our partners meaningfully informs our work. The role integrates investment strategy, impact measurement, and ongoing learning to ensure that Chicago Beyond deploys resources in ways that elevate new possibilities, challenge conditions holding systemic inequities in place, and generate actionable insights for the field.
Reporting to the Chief Strategy Officer, the Director will lead the Investments team, steward the investments process from sourcing to contracting and partnership management, and ensure that our work is aligned with our mission, values, and long‑term goals. In addition to what is outlined below, you will be responsible for other duties as assigned to support the goals and objectives of the organization.
Key Responsibilities
Identifying & Translating Trends into Investment Strategy:
Evaluate ecosystem trends and partner learnings to identify emerging patterns, insights, and high‑leverage opportunities for impact. Lead Chicago Beyond’s investment strategy, ensuring alignment with mission, values, systemic opportunities, and organizational priorities. Develop and refine investment theses that articulate the problem, systemic levers for change, and the potential models that can drive change.
Learning & Insight Capture:
Ensure the consistent capture of learnings from diligence, partner conversations, and field experiences. Build structures (templates, trackers, debriefs, reflection routines) that surface insights early and reliably before they become obvious to the field. Lead the organization in identifying how these insights can shift practices in the field. Redesign approaches to partner learning conversations that unlock new ideas, strengthen outcomes, and generate insights that drive systems change, future external insights products, and our voice in the field. Develop approaches for internal learning conversations that translate insights into strategic shifts and organizational priorities.
Organizational Strategy & Strategic Initiatives:
Partner with the Chief Strategy Officer to lead organizational strategic planning, ensuring strategy remains adaptive and informed by partners, ecosystem shifts, and internal reflection. Lead major strategic initiatives from concept to execution, managing cross‑functional timelines, resources, and deliverables. Identify emerging opportunities, risks, and areas requiring strategic shifts and advise senior leadership on recommended next steps. Work with Communications and leadership to translate investment insights into compelling strategic narratives for the field.
Investment Process:
Lead the Investment team’s sourcing and due diligence process. Ensure diligence processes are rigorous, timely, equitable, and anchored in Chicago Beyond’s values. Oversee development of investment proposals and materials for decision‑making, ensuring they reflect clear logic & structure, systemic framing, and alignment with Chicago Beyond’s goals. Facilitate cross‑team collaboration to integrate insights, contextual analysis, and trends into investment recommendations. Oversee the contracting process and establish strong processes for contract management, timelines, deliverables, and disbursement. Continuously improve the investments process and approach.
Investment Partnership Management:
Oversee partnership management across the full portfolio, ensuring investment partners have a high‑quality, trust‑based experience. Identify, track, and surface patterns, risks, opportunities, and strategic adjustments. Define and steward partnership models, expectations, engagement rhythms, and learning structures. Manage relationships with Fellows and Leader in Residence partners.
Impact:
Lead Chicago Beyond’s qualitative and quantitative impact measurement approach across investments and key bodies of work. Define KPIs, impact frameworks, and approach for data collection & capture. Develop and optimize dashboards, tracking tools, and evaluation systems that synthesize qualitative, quantitative, and contextual data. Develop methods to identify signals of systemic change. Produce memos, insights briefs, and leadership updates that inform decisions and shape field influence.
Systems & Tools:
Own and improve systems that support investment processes, impact tracking, and strategic execution (e.g., CRM, trackers, dashboards). Ensure documentation, data, and learning are organized, accessible, and high quality. Lead continuous improvement of tools and processes that strengthen decision‑making, coordination, and organizational learning.
Team Leadership & Management:
Lead and develop the Investments team, providing clear direction, coaching, development, and accountability. Foster a culture of curiosity, collaboration, equity, trust, and excellence. Ensure team members are supported, aligned, and empowered to execute effectively.
Stakeholder Engagement & Field Leadership:
Cultivate relationships with proximate leaders, funders, community partners, and experts to strengthen strategy and ecosystem context. Support Chicago Beyond’s field influence by ensuring patterns and learnings are surfaced for future insights and communications work.
Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree and 8+ years of experience in philanthropy, impact investing, strategy, management consulting, public policy, or related fields.
Exceptional judgment and pattern recognition in complex ecosystems with the ability to see connections, identify underlying dynamics and leverage points, and synthesize information to guide strategic choices.
Demonstrated experience leading investment strategy, due diligence, partnerships, or complex strategic initiatives.
Strong analytical and systems‑thinking skills, with the ability to synthesize qualitative, quantitative, contextual, and narrative evidence.
Strong strategic planning and project management skills, with the ability to set clear goals, develop actionable plans, and drive results.
Demonstrated ability to develop KPIs, dashboards, measurement frameworks, and reporting mechanisms that drive insight and decision making.
Exceptional communication and storytelling skills with the ability to translate complex ideas into compelling, structured narratives.
Strong collaborator with the ability to translate strategy into actionable plans and deliver measurable results.
Excellent leadership, management, and interpersonal skills, with experience building strong internal culture and high‑performing teams.
Strong strategic thinker who can connect the dots across issue areas, organizations, and ecosystem conditions.
Highly organized and detail‑oriented with the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast‑paced environment.
Working at Chicago Beyond We are an agile, ambitious team with diverse experience across various sectors. We thrive on challenging each other and continuously learning, united by our passion for equity and lasting impact. If you are an entrepreneurial individual looking to join a dynamic community with significant opportunities to grow and shape what you do, then this will be a perfect role for you. Please note that this role currently requires 2 days in our Chicago office.
Always Equitable
Incessantly Urgent
Endlessly Creative
Stubbornly Audacious
Uncompromising Integrity
Salary Range:
$125,000 – $150,000. Chicago Beyond provides a comprehensive benefits package, including competitive medical, dental, and vision plans, a matching 401(k) program, and generous paid time off.
Chicago Beyond is an equal opportunity employer and strongly encourages applications from people of color, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ+, and other underrepresented applicants.
Seniority Level:
Director
Employment Type:
Full‑time
Job Function:
Finance and Sales
Industries:
Civic and Social Organizations
#J-18808-Ljbffr