Director of Community Job Description

Owned by Erica Kigotho
Last updated: Mar 05, 2024 by Grace Potma
5 min read

The Director of Community in many ways acts as the day-to-day "face" and voice of our community.  A key responsibility of this role is ensuring that all participants within OpenMRS understand and can unlock the value of the community.  Therefore, the director is responsible for coordinating, and directly participating in, the group effort it takes to inspire and support a self-sustaining open source community.  This role also keeps an eye on the "big picture" and is responsible for planning and delivering on the community roadmap through program management. 

As Director of Community, you will lead, coordinate, and manage our global community initiatives. You will use your community leadership experience to shape our community experience and core support through partnerships, community member and implementer engagement, and program management.  You will work with the Directors of Product, Operations, and Engineering to understand community needs and requirements; build growth and engagement of members and key stakeholders; establish and lead community programs; and establish partnerships with Ministries, service providers, implementers, funders, and other key stakeholders. You will help connect, celebrate, and amplify the community work in OpenMRS and assist new sub-communities as they form. You will help our members to think bigger, achieve our collective vision and goals, and succeed more. You’ll work across teams within OpenMRS to promote the community’s voice within our different internal teams and squads. You should be an open-source evangelist, superb communicator, and humble facilitator.

  • Length: 12 months, renewable, full-time

  • Location: Remote (Global)

Role Overview

Typical activities for this role fall within several areas of work:  Community Management, Partnership Development, Community Marketing, and Support for Operations.

Community Management (35% of role)

  • Building and executing community programs that grow the OpenMRS community, and empower and reward and recognize contributors to do great work within OpenMRS.

  • Taking a systematic and structured approach to identify, define, and recruit for community roles, on-boarding for those roles, and working with our teams and squads to ensure community members have a simple and powerful experience with a clear pathway for engagement.

  • Own the community programs strategy and roadmap, and provide routine updates as programs progress and are led by various community members & organizations.

  • Always challenging our assumptions, our culture, and being singularly focused on delivering the very best communication and collaboration platform in the world.

  • Maintain knowledge, such as with external assessments, about how we can always lead the industry with powerful, engaged, thoughtful, and surprising community engagement and strategy.

  • Developing content that promotes the longevity and sustainability of a fast growing, organically built community with high impact outcomes.

  • Work with product and engineering support teams to inform roadmaps for community features and needs from non-technical community members, stakeholders, and other underrepresented cadres in the engineering discussions.

  • Engage and coordinate community members to lead a variety of OpenMRS community programs; such as, the OpenMRS Learning Academy, OpenMRS Events, and more.

  • Manage all OpenMRS social media presence and community newsletters

  • Research & recommend community tools to improve community onboarding pathways and engagement, community communication, and community coordination.

  • Support the evolution and oversight of community governance for contributions and recognition.

  • Manage and participate in user facing community social platforms and communication tools globally, with a focus on a specific region's use of those tools

Partnership Development (35% of role)

  • Conduct consistent outreach to both existing and potential partners to understand their needs, the value OpenMRS can provide them, and to improve ways in which OpenMRS can help them achieve their goals.

  • Building strong relationships within the industry and our community to be their representative for OpenMRS in helping to engage, be successful, and deliver great work and collaboration.

  • Being active in other open source communities and global goods platforms to help foster collaboration and relationships with other communities and organizations.

  • Establish clear pathways for engaging committed new partners, and defining ways in which they can affect the OpenMRS direction through merit and involvement.

  • Work with partners to ensure a strong ongoing collaboration, space for identifying opportunities for further engagement, and communication and processes for partners to feel well supported and valued by OpenMRS.

Community Promotion (20% of role)

  • Being an OpenMRS representative and spokesperson at conferences, events, and within the media and external communities.

  • Running powerful social media, events, and other outward facing efforts that will grow our customer, community, and user base.

  • Support the collection of evidence-based community metrics for showing community impact, and disseminating the story of that impact broadly.

  • Integrating organization brand, voice, and messaging into developed content.

Support for Operations (10% of role)

  • Support the Events team in executing the annual OpenMRS meeting, as well as, other virtual and regional events throughout the year.  Examples include engaging Ministries to pursue hosting events, supporting the team in planning where needed, and facilitating parts of events.

  • Support the Operations team in identifying resource needs and gaps in the community programs and goals; and in developing annual and programmatic planning for resources to support the community.

  • Support the Operations team in reporting community success stories, progress, and impact to external stakeholders; including, contributing content to the OpenMRS Annual Report as needed.

Requirements

  • 5 - 7 years of experience in leadership, such as leading organizations, leading teams, leading programs or projects, or equivalent leadership roles.

  • 5 - 7 years of experience participating in and/or building communities of practice.

  • Experience in business development, including relationship building with organizations, stakeholders, potential partners, government officials, funders, or similar key roles.

  • Experience with open source and other online communities.

  • Experience leading teams, working with stakeholders, and building consensus for decisions.

  • Experience in public speaking, social media (e.g. blogging), and content development for a variety of purposes and audiences.

  • Facilitating complex and sensitive situations with humility, judgment, tact, and humor.

  • Working independently and autonomously, managing multiple competing priorities.

  • Flexibility to accommodate working with collaborators in various international timezones

  • Access to high-speed internet for team and community real-time calls (e.g. via Zoom, Slack Huddle, etc).

  • Proficiency in the English language, both written and verbal. 

Desired Skills and Attributes

  • 3-5 years of experience leading community management programs within a software or Internet-based organization.

  • Existing network from a diverse set of communities and social media platforms.

  • Action-oriented and results-driven person, passionate about building consensus and enthusiasm for a shared vision and goals.

  • Past experience working with, coaching, and learning from folks from very diverse cultures.  Experience working with global teams.

  • Familiarity with collaboration and community tools, such as, Discourse, Wordpress, Confluence, Slack, GitHub, Zoom, or similar technologies.

  • Familiarity with electronic medical records or other health information systems used at the clinic or point of service level.

  • Experience with healthcare and/or LMIC settings. Experience outside of the humanitarian or healthcare industry is also highly desirable (fresh ideas).

  • Software development teams experience (e.g. as a BA, PM, technical writer, developer, or other team member or interaction with software development lifecycle).

  • Bachelor’s or higher degree in Communications, Information Science, Marketing, Psychology, Human Centered Design, Informatics, Public Health, Business, or a related field.

  • Self-driven work ethic & problem-solver. Self-starter who loves taking initiative and seeing things through to completion..

  • Proficiency in additional languages.

Travel Expectations

This role will be expected to travel internationally up to 25% of the time with expenses funded/reimbursed by OpenMRS Inc., and supported by the OpenMRS Inc. Operations team.

Compensation

Rates commensurate with experience and location the person is based. Location is determined by the country where the person is residing at the start of the contract.

How to Apply

Submit a cover letter and resume that addresses the responsibilities and skills outlined in the job descriptions to community@openmrs.org and cc Program Officer Erica Kigotho at erica@openmrs.org no later than March 15, 2024. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

Ideal starting date: April 1, 2024 or sooner if available.

For more information on OpenMRS, please see our website: openmrs.org