About AESI

The American Economic Security Index (AESI) is an intuitive 0-100 barometer of the share of workers and families who can afford to live where they live, calculated across all 3,143 U.S. counties and 384 metro areas, with roll-ups to state, congressional district, and national levels. It is being built by Goodnation Foundation in partnership with the Living Wage Institute (LWI), which brings more than two decades of living wage methodology and the Living Wage Calculator lineage.

Our ambition is that AESI becomes a standard measure of American economic life. GDP, unemployment, inflation, and the official poverty rate can all look healthy while families cannot cover rent, child care, and health care where they live. AESI answers the question people are actually asking when they ask how the economy is doing: can families afford their lives here? We intend for the Economic Security Score to be read alongside the unemployment rate - cited by mayors, governors, congressional offices, funders, employers, and reporters as the ordinary way to describe how the economy is working for families in a given place.

Closer in, AESI is the North Star metric for the National Roundtable's federal policy agenda across taxes, wages, housing, care, and healthcare costs, and a shared language connecting local affordability conditions to philanthropic strategy, federal advocacy, and place-based action. The Senior Director's job is to carry AESI from a credible new dataset to a measure the country relies on.

The Role

Goodnation seeks an AESI Senior Director to build, maintain, and grow the American Economic Security Index into a durable, self-sustaining national institution.

The build is underway, financed by initial philanthropic support and executed by our partners at the Living Wage Institute (LWI). The Senior Director will have four main priorities from day one: overseeing the LWI build against scope, schedule, and quality; stewarding existing funder relationships and raising the philanthropic resources needed to complete the build; delivering a successful launch of AESI to the National Roundtable coalition, Congress, state and local governments, and the American public; and defining the earned revenue strategy that sustains and grows AESI beyond it.

This is a strategist-builder role: senior enough to set direction alongside the Founder and President, and hands-on enough to do the work in the first year. The AESI Senior Director will report directly to Goodnation's Founder and President and work closely with the Senior Director of National Policy and Coalitions and the Senior Philanthropy Advisor.

What You Will Own

The role has five areas of ownership. They are described as outcomes rather than tactics, because we expect the person in this seat to shape the plan.

1. Sustainability and the Business Model

• Build and steward institutional funder relationships, including national and local funders in close partnership with Goodnation's Founder and President.
• Develop the long-term sustainability model, including philanthropic underwriting, licensing, membership dues, and appropriate paid-access uses. Conduct market testing and stakeholder feedback to determine which models strengthen adoption without compromising AESI's public-interest mission.
• Protect mission integrity. Set the usage terms and pricing exemptions that keep AESI a public-benefit asset and keep the measure credible with the communities it describes-the headline Economic Security Score stays free and public.

2. Adoption and Partnerships

• Assemble the partner set that makes AESI credible and useful: the Living Wage Institute as methodological spine, academic and policy validators, business and civic validators, and early, non-adversarial alignment with existing measures and peer research organizations.
• Drive diffusion through the Roundtable's network, including roughly 900 community foundations and 400-plus community health funders, alongside chambers of commerce, government associations, national intermediaries, and research partners.
• Institutionalize use: Build toolkits, briefings, templates, and training that deepen use.
• Track evidence of use: Document how AESI changes grantmaking, budgets, and legislation, and feed that evidence back into both the funder case and the sustainability case.

3. National Roundtable Integration

• Partner with the Senior Director of National Policy and Coalitions to embed AESI across the National Roundtable's Funding, Advocacy & Information, and Regional Leadership work - using the index to connect local affordability conditions to philanthropic strategy, federal policy, member engagement, and place-based action.
• Position AESI within the National Roundtable's membership structure in a way that strengthens both, and integrate it into the National Roundtable Working Groups and coalition activity.

4. Data, Methodology, and Partner Management

• Serve as Goodnation's principal on the Living Wage Institute agreement: Hold LWI to phase scope, delivery deadlines, and update cadence; authorize optional phases; and steward the intellectual property, licensing, and confidentiality terms that make AESI a Goodnation-owned public-benefit asset.
• Sequence the build: Dataset production, release frequency, demographic and family-type depth, and interactive delivery - matching each phase to secured revenue.
• Direct the public data platform: The interactive public dashboard and the data environment behind it, managing external development partners against scope, budget, and release schedule.
• Explain and defend the methodology: Convene technical advisors and academic validators, and publish methodology documentation and codebooks. Answer relevant methodological questions.

5. Public Voice

• Serve as a visible, credible public voice for AESI with funders at National Roundtable coalition convenings and beyond, policymakers, business audiences, and the press.
• Manage the communications agency and spokesperson bench that carry the story after launch, and maintain frequent, transparent communication with the Planning Team, partners, coalition members, and funders.

Other Duties

• Domestic travel (15-25%) to meet with relevant stakeholders including but not limited to coalition members and policymakers throughout the country.
• Proactively share important updates along with opportunities to participate and engage with AESI with the core team over email, Slack, and in our weekly all-team meeting.
• Additional responsibilities may arise to support the build and growth of AESI, as assigned by the President.

Who You Are

We are looking for a bridge-builder with an entrepreneurial temperament - someone who can move credibly among researchers, funders, policymakers, business leaders, local partners, and the press.

• 12+ years of experience spanning some combination of coalition or field building, public policy, philanthropy, data or research products, and social enterprise or earned-revenue design.
• Experience building a sustainable revenue model - including institutional philanthropy, licensing, membership, subscription, blended earned and philanthropic, or comparable.
• Experience bringing a data product, index, dashboard, or research platform from build to adoption, including managing technical vendors or research partners.
• Comfort with measurement and methodology: you do not need to build the dataset, but you need to understand it well enough to defend it, price it, and explain it.
• Communication range: you can make AESI understandable to a reporter, a mayor, and a program officer.
• Deep commitment to sustainable, equitable, systemic change.

Goodnation Salaries, Benefits and Paid Time Off

This full-time position will be hybrid remote for employees located in the NYC area, with every other Wednesday in the Financial District office. This schedule is subject to change. Other employees will be fully remote.

This role will be hired by Goodnation Philanthropy Advisors, with the option to be hired under Goodnation Foundation if there is a need for loan forgiveness.

Goodnation offers competitive salaries combined with a comprehensive benefits package that supports the well-being and work-life balance of our team:

• Goodnation salaries are set at the 90th percentile of the market for comparable roles
• Medical, dental, and vision plans with generous employer contribution and a zero waiting period
• Health Advocate, Employee Assistance Program, and a Flexible Spending Account or Health Savings Account
• 401(k) plan with 4.5% employer match and immediate vesting schedule
• Stipends and reimbursements:
  
  
  • • Monthly tech stipend of $175
    • Annual work-from-home stipend of $200
    • Reimbursement for annual bike share membership
• Unlimited PTO, early closure on summer Fridays, soft close between Christmas and New Year's, and 13 company holidays including Juneteenth, Veterans Day, and Indigenous Peoples' Day
• Four months paid parental leave