Senior Associate (Contract)

About Us

We are a strategy and innovation consultancy that helps organizations thrive in the face of change. Thorny problems are our strong suit.

We’re a team of consultants who are energized by big, messy problems. We are strategists, analysts, designers, and editors who bring agility and flexibility to projects focused on stemming chronic disease, closing the skills gap, rethinking the future of work, supporting digital transformations, using data to make smart cities safer, developing sustainable business models, and making moonshot investments.

We help companies thrive in the face of change. Our clients are “innovation mavericks” — leaders inside global corporations, nonprofits, and federal agencies who are tasked with helping their organizations adapt to the technological, economic, political, and social norms of the 21st century. We’re the strategy and innovation consultants they call when there’s no playbook for the problem they’re trying to solve.

Our open innovation practice was established in 2011. We are particularly focused on open innovation for impact, making use of incentive prize mechanisms to accelerate innovations such as artificial organs (Artificial Kidney Prize), early biothreat detection (DHS Hidden Signals Challenge), access to career and technical education (the Ed Prizes challenge series), and improving our understanding of Earth’s magnetism (NGA MagQuest).

We have an equal appreciation for strategy and execution. We offer our clients the upfront thinking that goes into careful strategy development and can become partners in execution to ensure those strategies are implemented.

We believe that career choices are not binary; you can have a challenging and rewarding career as part of a high-performing team and also live your life. Our clients appreciate that we bring the highest level of excellence to everything we do, and our team appreciates that we are extraordinarily efficient so that you aren’t expected to be online later.

Please note: for employment at Luminary Labs, you must be fully vaccinated (including booster) for COVID-19 to ensure compliance with enhanced health and safety protocols.

The opportunity
Supporting one of the most meaningful programs in Luminary Labs’ portfolio. Mission Daybreak is a flagship initiative to to accelerate and integrate suicide prevention innovations. You will help support pilot management, event planning and facilitation, and program operations documentation working alongside agency staff, innovators, and Veterans Service Organizations.

This is a remote contract position.

About you
You are known for quickly ramping up on any subject and for synthesizing large amounts of information to tell a story.

You enjoy solving problems, large and small, and think both critically and expansively in doing so. Having worked in or for large organizations, you partner well, knowing the conditions for success to advance decisions. You have experience super-flexing across a range of activities, sometimes outside of your comfort zone.

You care about the impact your work has on the world and have been looking for work that is both high-performance and high-impact. Veteran health and suicide prevention resonates with you.

Roles and responsibilities:
• Event support:
• Plan, develop, and execute event plans for virtual and in-person events highlighting VA mental health innovation (webinars, VA/non-VA highlight events, outreach events)
• Create event support packages including themes, agendas, event strategy, objectives, marketing materials, invitations, and logistics management
• Coordinate speaker and partner logistics, prepare talking points and briefings, and conduct post-event impact analysis
• Support external operations strategy, stakeholder outreach, and engagement tracking using Microsoft tools
• Program operation documentation:
• Produce program communications and artifacts—briefing decks, data calls, one-pagers, and talking points
• Prepare and maintain weekly status reports and monthly project reviews covering completed/planned work, issues, and resolution timeframes
• Track deliverables, milestones, and action items across pilot teams using integrated program schedules and planning boards
• Ensure all materials meet Mission Daybreak brand guidelines, OSP communication guidance, and 508 accessibility compliance
• Project management for pilot teams
• Provide hands-on project management support for pilot teams, working closely with vendor teams, VA Project Managers, and Contracting Officer Representatives
• Help teams create and maintain project plans including schedules, milestones, risks, and mitigation strategies
• Facilitate stakeholder engagement, meeting coordination, agenda development, documentation, and action item tracking
• Support pilot teams through discovery, prototyping, testing, pilot implementation, and scaling activities

Desired skills and experience:
• 3-5 years+ experience; client services, federal government, or healthcare experience a plus
• Demonstrated work and/or educational experience in synthesizing data, drawing meaningful insights, and providing actionable strategies
• Stellar communication skills and a high EQ, with an ability to strike the right tone with clients in e-mails and verbal communications
• Strong technological literacy and ability to quickly learn and navigate tools like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Microsoft Teams
• Quick learner who is eager to absorb feedbackAbility to structure thinking in an easy to follow manner
• Thrive in a fast-paced and dynamic environment
• Comfortable working within a hybrid team and independently owning tasks and deliverables
• Familiarity with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and/or other equivalent LLM, and sound judgement when it comes to using AI tools in a client services environment

Requirements:
• Ability to pass a federal background check and obtain a VA PIV (Personal Identity Verification) card
• Available during East Coast business hours (9am - 6pm ET)
• Must be authorized to work in the U.S.

Apply

Does this sound like you?

Submit your resume and a brief cover letter explaining your interest in Mission Daybreak and what draws you to Veteran health innovation. In your cover letter, share an example of a project or initiative where you provided critical support that helped a team succeed. Let us know your availability for employment.

No agencies, please.