Senior Advisor for Reporting Standards & ESG

About Shift

Shift is the leading center of expertise on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Shift’s global team of experts works across all continents and sectors to challenge assumptions, push boundaries and redefine corporate practice in order to build a world where business gets done with respect for people’s dignity. Shift is a non-profit, mission-driven organization headquartered in New York City.

The Role

Playing an essential role in our small, dynamic team, this new position is responsible for advancing our work related to corporate reporting standards on social (human rights) issues. The role will lead Shift’s work on social dimensions of the EU’s sustainable finance agenda and support Shift’s leadership in engagements with the Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures (TISFD) and through the Sustainability Reporting Board of EFRAG (European Financial Reporting and Advisory Group). It will help cultivate and lead relationships with other national, regional and international standard-setting organizations, governments, companies, financial institutions and civil society organizations with regard to social reporting. The role will also include engagement with internal audit and assurance practitioners on the evolution of their roles in the implementation of social reporting standards, and with experts inside and outside Shift who are working to advance more meaningful social indicators and metrics to evaluate companies’ social performance.

The Senior Advisor will have deep knowledge of reporting and assurance standards, experience using indicators, metrics and data in the analysis of corporate sustainability performance. They will have a sound understanding of EU sustainability due diligence legislation and its relationship to reporting standards, as well as of the UN Guiding Principles (UNGPs) and their practical application.

The Senior Advisor independently designs and facilitates meetings and initiatives with a variety of stakeholders. They have experience engaging with and advocating towards standard-setting bodies and processes. They analyze proposed standards and suggest how to strengthen them, in collaboration with other Shift staff. They bring a strategic lens to the engagements they lead, connecting the aims and outcomes of Shift’s standard-setting work with our wider engagements with business and financial institutions. The Senior Advisor provides coaching, mentoring, and oversight to other colleagues in the organization.

What You Will Do

You will have an initial onboarding period of about 6 months, with time to deepen your knowledge of the UN Guiding Principles and Shift’s methods, tools and resources, and working with other team members. During this period, you will also begin to:

• Lead substantive work regarding corporate reporting on material impacts of business practices on people, the nexus of these impacts with financially material risks and opportunities, and the articulation of these issues in emerging reporting frameworks and methodologies applicable to companies and financial institutions.
• Cultivate and lead strategic relationships with partners, coalitions and other collaborators that Shift works with in accomplishing its strategic aims in this area and coordinate our participation in key initiatives.
• Collaborate with Shift colleagues working on strengthening ‘social’ indicators and metrics, including just transition metrics, and develop new partnerships that can embed more rigorous approaches to social metrics into standards as well as corporate and professional practice.
• Lead some of Shift’s engagements with standard-setters and practitioners on the internal audit and assurance of social/human rights information, including capacity-building collaborations to deepen the profession’s familiarity with human rights.
• Identify opportunities to engage and collaborate with standard-setters, professional bodies and other partners in the Global South working to advance improved reporting, audit and assurance on social/human rights issues.
• Lead internal knowledge building on social reporting standards, and support interactions between Shift’s work on Standards and our other strategic pillars.
• Draft concise and impactful analysis, recommendations and other outreach materials in relation to specific standards, collaborating with other senior staff and our communications team.
• Lead and/or support the design and facilitation of discussions and capacity-building with partners and other stakeholders on applying the concepts in the UN Guiding Principles to standard-setting initiatives to help build consensus among diverse stakeholders.
• Project manage individual partnerships or projects in support of our standards work to help ensure they are delivered on time, on budget and to a high quality with maximum impact.
• Proactively recognize trends, make connections, and share lessons learned, both informally and formally, across Shift’s work areas.
• Coach and mentor Advisor-level colleagues to drive the impact of our work and act as a thought partner for senior colleagues and Shift leadership in service to Shift’s mission.
• Be a brand ambassador for Shift, including speaking on high-level public platforms.
• Support Shift’s fundraising efforts related to this area of work, specifically with grant proposals and reporting.
• Lead and/or contribute to internal organizational projects.
• The person in this role will be expected to travel, as needed, to conduct engagements in a wide range of settings.