5 Jobs of the Future That You Need to Prepare For Now

From “Chief Happiness Officer” to “Scrum Master,” scrolling through a job site shows many job titles that didn’t exist 10 years ago. This is true in the social sector as well, where new, creative job titles point to a profound shift in the world of social impact. 

The issues that organizations strive to address are becoming increasingly complex and require new tools, different expertise, and more collaboration. Achieving social impact, therefore, means new ways of working. 

At the dawn of a new decade, the Future of Good community helped us find people who are already working in the social impact jobs of tomorrow. Five social impact workers with uncommon roles that could soon become mainstream tell us about the how and why of their jobs.

Jason Shim oversees Pathways to Education’s digital transformation, from real-time marketing dashboards to Canada’s first Bitcoin donation program.

The job: “My role is two-fold: current state and future state. It’s essentially providing oversight and management of all technology and digital projects and properties, in addition to identifying and leading any new innovative ideas from concept to pilot to implementation. Things like our bitcoin donations program: what that looked like was identifying the opportunity, pitching it to internal stakeholders, working with partners like cryptocurrency exchangers, developing policies and procedures, and also making sure we could communicate our learnings internally and externally. The technology piece is just one part of it: there are policy and service delivery implications.”

Why it matters: “If we rewind the clock, 10 years ago, it was still a question as to whether non-profits should be on Twitter and Facebook and how they should engage. Technology is going to go faster and faster. There are some overall trends that you’re seeing: things like voice and facial recognition are getting more and more accurate, the cost for storing data dropping significantly, speeds are increasing. I think the convergence of all these things will make possible some new remixes of technology that we have never seen before. Are there things we can build, experiment or innovate that can help the work that we do? What are the long-shots that might pay off if we’re looking into experimenting?”

Key challenge: “People are not going to buy into technology if you don’t help them understand why this is effective, or if they feel left out of the planning process. You need to make sure that you are bringing the entire organization with you. Having leadership support around this is critical, and also being open to listening to staff.”

Leading the MaRS Solutions Lab, Claire Buré uses social science to improve how policies and systems are designed.

The job: “It’s very much looking into about ‘how are things currently working, how do we want things to be working, and how do we get there?’ and designing the processes to bring together stakeholders across sectors to identify opportunities for doing things better. It could be anything from designing an agenda, designing a convening, designing the process for the project activities and identifying the ideal outcomes we want to achieve.”

Why it matters: “Systemic design is definitely one of the types of jobs I hear about more and more often. It’s growing because our problems are more and more complex. I think this is the one area that’s going to be really exciting for young people who are looking for new types of careers. One of the things I really love about my job is I have so much autonomy to apply my own creativity to how I do design work.”

Key challenge: “This can be mired in institutional bureaucracy – a certain way of doing things, a paperwork trail that needs to be done etcetera – or it could be actual mindset: ‘well this is my role, this is the way I’ve always done it, it works just fine, why should I change?’ You will see so many different blogs and resources for people: ‘How to change your organization’s innovation mindset.’”

Following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the Circle of Philanthropy’s subsequent Declaration of Action, Tim Fox was charged to facilitate the change process for the Calgary Foundation.

The job: “I try to influence change to the Calgary Foundation from a systemic level, redesigning what you would see from a western perspective as workshops, as learning opportunities. What we’re designing is information from a theoretical perspective – when we talk about impacts of intergenerational trauma – but we’re also incorporating elements of lived experience. It’s important for me to share how I grew up with shame as an Indigenous person, and where that perception came from.”

Why it matters: “What I’m learning is that there’s this growing appetite around ways to change a system, regardless of what wicked problem exists for that system. It could be climate change, it could be sustainability, it could be reconciliation. There’s still a barrier and a challenge for some of these organizations to realize that it’s them as a system that has to change. Actions of colonization still exist, even at the Calgary Foundation.”

Key challenge: “As personally hard as this work is, and personal to me, it remains grounded and accepted as a collective responsibility across the board. I don’t think a lot of organizations can say that. They tokenize this work, they hire one person to do it and they go to that person for every single thing. The work of reconciliation is not the responsibility of Indigenous people.”

Paulina Jiménez is one of 60 new Heads of Solutions Mapping around the world. Her role involves investigating grassroots-level solutions to social and environmental challenges, and their implications for the design of UNDP policies.

The job: “The idea is that solutions taken from communities can inspire the design of different projects and experiments. Solutions mapping is literally going out into the field and doing an ethnographic exercise, where you can go out with a very broad scope and see what you find – basically by your observations and by talking to people – or you can also go out and search for solutions on a specific topic.”

Why it matters: “It tries to recognize that solutions are out there in the communities, and sometimes they don’t receive the recognition from government or NGOs. The redefining of what participatory processes are is very radical in this job position. You don’t go there with a solution you came up with in the office.”

Key challenge: “People who are there on the ground, working in direct contact with the population, are constantly building up registries but the information is not being processed. I think that’s a challenge… making sure there is data management, and the processing of data is very active, kept updated and disseminated in all directions.”

Instead of traditional HR or project management, Janey Roh works as a coach, connector, and strategist to maintain Kudoz’s organizational culture.

The job: “My role is quite a hybrid of things. That’s where the culture-first thing comes from: it’s not ‘oh that’s not my role, I don’t do that.’ Really it’s just maintaining a culture of experimentation, of welcoming failure, of embodying learning and growth, and creating conditions for team members to be able to take ownership. My voice is there to be a coach and connector, to help guide in terms of what are the real strategic priorities of Kudoz. I think it’s important for people to be able to articulate and have the opportunity to express learning goals for themselves.”

Why it matters: “It will remove that consultant-expert model that I see a lot of times, where people feel like they’re coming with an idea, often not with people but for them. It’s not a traditional management structure: it’s doing the work together. Many organizations say they’re culture first, and often times decisions get made from the top down. At Kudoz, we maintain a flatter structure, where everybody has some say in what’s going to happen. Culture matters because we rely on people to implement solutions. We are leading on interactions.”

Key challenge: “It does take a lot more time to introduce people into this way of working, to have people really embedded into the culture. It’s difficult because people often come into this space with a frame of reference from past types of work or work environments, or what they’ve been told work should look like. And so, when we operate this way, for some people it can be a bit of a shocker.”

So what does this mean?

From creating a less hierarchical internal culture, to transforming processes in a digital age, these roles demonstrate how new developments – from technological innovations to Indigenous relationships – create new demands and expectations for staff in social impact organizations.

That means “a culture of being able to learn and adapt based on what’s actually playing out” said Saralyn Hodgkin, a leadership coach who works with social impact organizations. As a result, she said, over 2020 and beyond we are likely to see completely new jobs emerging.

With social and environmental issues becoming increasingly complex, and the public questioning the role of social impact organizations in society, they need to use all of the tools at their disposal to keep up. And that includes the right people.

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