Senior External Communications Lead

About PLEJ

The Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions (PLEJ) is a national, nonpartisan community of support, best practices, and peer engagement among election offices serving the largest and most diverse populations in the U.S. PLEJ empowers election leaders to address operational challenges, communicate with clarity and transparency, and drive innovation. Through collaborative problem-solving and practical innovation, PLEJ helps build more resilient, efficient, and voter-focused election systems that improve the experience and confidence of millions of Americans. PLEJ is entering a critical phase of growth and impact—expanding its capacity, strengthening its institutional role, and positioning large jurisdictions as national leaders in election administration.

Position Summary

The Senior External Communications Lead (SECL) supports and operationalizes PLEJ’s external communications, media engagement, organizational messaging, and public relations strategy. Reporting to the Senior Director of Communications and Digital Engagement, this role helps ensure that PLEJ’s communications function is disciplined, responsive, well-coordinated, and aligned with organizational priorities.

This position is designed for an experienced communications professional with strong public relations, organizational communications, and media relations experience. The person in this role does not need to have worked in a newsroom, but must understand how reporters operate, how stories develop, and how to build credible relationships with media, partners, and public audiences.

The SECL serves as a day-to-day communications manager and execution lead—helping translate strategy into action, manage communications consultants and vendors, prepare materials for public and partner engagement, support reporter outreach and pitching, and ensure high-quality communications outputs across the organization.

This role is especially important as PLEJ grows its national presence, strengthens its institutional voice, and supports local election officials as credible, trusted experts in a complex and fast-moving information environment.

Requirements

Core Responsibilities

The SECL sits at the intersection of organizational communications, media engagement, and execution—ensuring that PLEJ’s communications priorities are translated into clear plans, strong products, and timely public engagement:

Strategic Communications Execution

• Implementation of PLEJ’s communications and digital engagement strategy in coordination leadership.
• Translate strategic priorities into communications plans, project timelines, editorial calendars, and deliverables.
• Help ensure consistency of messaging, tone, voice, and positioning across PLEJ communications.
• Day-to-day comms lead for assigned initiatives, campaigns, events, announcements, and PLEJ priorities.
• Identify gaps, reputational risk, and opportunities to strengthen public understanding of election administration.
• Maintain organized workflow for timely, high-quality execution across internal team and external partners.

Media Relations and Reporter Engagement

• Build and maintain relationships with reporters covering elections, democracy, government, public administration, civic engagement, technology, and related issues.
• Develop and execute media outreach plans, including reporter research, pitch development, background materials, and follow-up.
• Support proactive storytelling that elevates PLEJ members as credible election administration leaders.
• Coordinate media opportunities, interview prep, talking points, press materials, and background briefings.
• Monitor media coverage and emerging narratives to help identify opportunities, risks, and response needs.
• Support rapid response communications during high-profile, sensitive, or time-sensitive moments.

Organizational Communications and Public Relations

• Draft and edit PLEJ messaging, statements, talking points, newsletters, reports, web copy, op-eds, and decks.
• Support PLEJ leadership comms (e.g. executive messaging, public remarks, external briefings, and events).
• Ensure that comms reinforce PLEJ’s nonpartisan, member-centered, operationally grounded voice.
• Support organizational growth, partnerships, fundraising, external engagement, and institutional visibility.
• Coordinate with all other PLEJ departments to align communications with organizational priorities.

Consultant, Vendor, and Project Management

• Manage comms consultants, writers, designers, agencies, vendors, and other external partners as assigned.
• Develop clear scopes of work, project timelines, review processes, and quality standards for deliverables.
• Ensure consultants produce work accurately, timely, and consistently with PLEJ’s nonpartisan mission/posture.
• Track communications projects, deadlines, dependencies, and approvals across multiple workstreams.
• Support leadership in building comms systems, processes, and infrastructure appropriate for scaling.

Content Development and Narrative Support

• Help translate complex election administration topics into clear, accessible, public-facing content.
• Develop media resources, explainers, issue briefs, FAQs, public education materials, and comms toolkits.
• Support narrative development around the role, expertise, challenges, and innovations of large election offices.
• Work with PLEJ comms/membership teams so public-facing materials are grounded in operational realities.
• Package content for web, email, social media, presentations, reports, and visual storytelling products.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner closely with leadership, PLEJ team, external consultants, and external partners to advance the work.
• Support preparation for convenings, briefings, webinars, partner meetings, and external engagements.
• Help ensure comms efforts support PLEJ’s broader organizational strategy, partnerships, and resource creation.
• Contribute to a professional, collaborative, nonpartisan, and service-oriented organizational culture.
• Support broader organizational efforts and collaborate across teams to meet evolving priorities, including taking on additional responsibilities as needed that contribute to PLEJ’s mission and impact.

Qualifications

Candidate should demonstrate the following experience, skills, and leadership qualities:

Required

• 7+ years of experience in communications, public relations, public affairs, media relations, or a related field.
• Prior experience developing and executing communications plans across multiple audiences and channels.
• Strong media relations experience (e.g. pitching reporters, preparing materials, and supporting interviews).
• Excellent writing, editing, and messaging skills; able to translate complex topics into clear, accessible content.
• Experience managing consultants, vendors, agencies, freelancers, or cross-functional comms projects.
• Strong project management skills; ability to move multiple workstreams forward in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with senior leaders, subject matter experts, partners, and internal teams.
• Sound judgment, able to work on sensitive topics, maintaining confidentiality, nonpartisanship, and credibility.

Preferred

• Experience in elections, democracy, public administration, civic engagement, public policy, or nonprofit comms.
• Experience supporting comms during high-stakes, time-sensitive, or reputationally sensitive moments.
• Experience working with coalitions, associations, membership organizations, or multi-stakeholder initiatives.
• Experience supporting executive, partner, and/or development communications, or institutional positioning.
• Familiarity with media monitoring, audience insights, message testing, or communications analytics.
• Experience scaling an organization and building systems, templates, workflows, and comms infrastructure.

Key Competencies

• Strong public relations instincts and ability to identify communications opportunities and risks.
• Ability to build trust with reporters, partners, consultants, internal teams, and senior leaders.
• Strong writing and editing skills across organizational comms, external content, and executive messaging.
• Ability to translate strategy into clear plans, timelines, assignments, and deliverables.
• Strong project management and consultant management skills.
• Ability to operate in politically sensitive environments while maintaining neutrality, accuracy, and credibility.
• Ability to work collaboratively with election administration, programmatic, digital, and operational experts.
• Commitment to service, professionalism, nonpartisanship, and strengthening public understanding of election administration.

Key Outcomes (First 1–2 Years)

• Stronger Communications Operations: PLEJ has a clear, reliable communications workflow, editorial calendar, consultant management system, and process for moving communications priorities from idea to execution.
• Expanded Reporter Engagement: PLEJ has stronger relationships with reporters covering election administration, democracy, government, and related issues, resulting in more accurate and proactive storytelling opportunities.
• Improved Public-Facing Materials: PLEJ produces timely, clear, high-quality media materials, public-facing explainers, statements, newsletters, reports, and partner communications.
• More Effective Rapid Response Support: PLEJ is better prepared to respond to emerging issues, reputational risks, inaccurate narratives, and high-profile moments with discipline and clarity.
• Stronger Consultant and Vendor Performance: External communications partners are well-managed, aligned with PLEJ’s voice and priorities, and producing high-quality work on time.
• I ncreased Organizational Alignment: Communications efforts are better coordinated across member engagement, programs, resilience, partnerships, fundraising, and leadership priorities.

Benefits

Compensation & Location

• Salary range: $113,890.00 – $136,082.00 , commensurate with experience.
• Location: Flexible, with regular travel for staff meetings, member convenings, and national engagement (up to 30%).
• PLEJ is a fully remote team. This role must be located and performed within the United States and be online and available between the hours of 9a and 5p ET, regardless of where candidate lives.
• Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of hire.
• Benefits: PLEJ offers a generous benefits package including:
• Fully covered medical, dental, vision, short-term and long-term disability, and term life insurance premiums for the employee (employee’s family may be added at employee’s expense)
• Unlimited PTO
• 14 observed holidays and generous holiday schedule
• 401(k) retirement plan

The Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions (PLEJ) is a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization committed to providing a community of support to election jurisdictions nationwide.

PLEJ is an equal opportunity employer. Employees and job applicants are protected from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, parental status, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, political affiliation, military service, or other non-merit-based factors. These protections apply to all employment decisions, including recruitment, hiring, performance evaluations, promotions, training, and career development. Additionally, PLEJ provides employees and applicants reasonable accommodations for disabilities; for pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions; and for religious beliefs, observances, and practices.

This job description is intended to outline the general scope and responsibilities of the position and may be subject to updates based on organizational needs. It does not constitute a contract of employment.