Project Officer

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) is seeking a Project Officer to join our Strategy & Planning team. The ideal candidate is a highly focused, detail oriented and motivated multitasker with strong interpersonal and communication skills.

Reporting to the Director of Project Management, the Project Officer will support project managers with building and monitoring project timelines, auditing project data, identifying and tracking risks, and maintaining project documentation.

MJFF is a fast-moving, fast-growing nonprofit organization that is wholly dedicated to curing Parkinson’s disease in our lifetime, and effective project management is key to achieving our ambitious goals. The Strategy & Planning department functions as an enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO) within the Administration Division, alongside Finance, Digital Strategies, and Information Technology. Our purpose is to define, prioritize, resource, and manage a portfolio of programs and projects that meet the Foundation's strategic goals and to provide full-service project management for interdivisional projects.

We strive to create a partnership culture that embodies the MJFF values of urgency, optimism, resourcefulness, collaboration, accountability, and persistence. Our department behaviors are to continually ask how something can be improved, set personally high standards, keep things simple, and move quickly.

This is a full-time role with no expected travel. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Project Officer will begin as a remote position, but will eventually be expected to work at least part-time in MJFF’s office in the midtown area of New York City. Standard business hours are 9am to 5pm. The Foundation supports flexible and remote work schedules.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

• Build workflows and assign tasks to project team members.
• Monitor and control project timelines and the project team’s workload capacity.
• Build data visualization dashboards to track key project metrics and draft progress reports.
• Assess project risks, identify solutions, and map dependencies between projects.
• Ensure project metadata is accurate and up to date.
• Manage pre-defined, templatized projects.
• Manage intake requests and assign tasks accordingly.
• Maintain project documentation according to EPMO standards.

Qualifications and Skills:

• Minimum of 2-3 years of project experience, including a demonstrable track record of supporting successful integrated marketing campaigns and the implementation and roll out of new technology solutions.
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in business, project management, marketing, or a related field.
• CAPM, PMI-SP, and/or other project management certifications a plus.
• Experience with project management tools such as Asana and/or Jira.
• Competency in Microsoft applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
• Highly organized and detail oriented.
• Ability to work effectively both independently and as part of a team.
• Ability to multitask and work within tight deadlines.
  

About The Michael J. Fox Foundation

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) was founded in 2000 with one clear objective: accelerating meaningful therapeutic advances and, ultimately, a cure for Parkinson’s disease (PD). The Foundation applies extraordinary scientific, business and media assets to this singular focus — thus creating a unique and dynamic organization. Since inception, MJFF has quickly grown into the largest global funder of Parkinson’s disease research outside the U. S. federal government, having funded over $900 million in research projects in both academic and industry labs worldwide.

In order to achieve our mission of finding a cure for PD it is critical that we engage with, and bring together, members of the PD community including researchers, physicians, health professionals and most important, people with Parkinson's and their families. We believe that raising the Foundation’s profile with a broader audience will help us more efficiently reach and mobilize highly engaged stakeholders who are more likely to feel personally vested in helping speed progress toward a cure.

We believe that to find a cure for PD as quickly as possible, our capital needs to push research forward today — we therefore deliberately have no endowment. We instead start our fundraising from zero each year and seek to deploy funds raised as quickly and wisely as possible. MJFF raises over $100 million annually. Today, the Foundation’s staff comprises approximately 165 full-time employees, increasingly including remote employees as well as those based in New York City.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation strongly encourages applications from individuals who will contribute to our efforts to build and support a diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce. Diversity may refer to characteristics including, but not limited to, race, religion, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic circumstance, geographic background, ability and disability, political ideology and age.