About Project for Public Spaces, Inc.
Project for Public Spaces is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people turn their public spaces into vital community places, with programs, uses, and people-friendly settings that build local value and serve community needs. Founded in 1975, PPS embraces the insights of William (Holly) Whyte, a pioneer in understanding the way people use public spaces. PPS is an internationally recognized center for best-practices, information, and resources about Placemaking.
PPS is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and persons of color are strongly encouraged to apply.
Jobs
Associate Executive Assistant
The Executive Assistant acts as an essential key to PPS’s operations as organizer, planner, problem solver and overall administrative support for the President and two Senior Vice Presidents. The EA also provides administrative support to the marketing and office management teams.
The successful candidate must be able to manage themselves and be capable of prioritizing, multi-tasking, and managing multiple projects. They must communicate effectively verbally and in writing and facilitate solutions, acting as a strong foundation and support to executive, professional and administrative staff as well as senior consultants. They will be team oriented, able to maintain the flexibility to adapt when goals change, and possess a passion for public space planning and have a sense of humor.
The role has growth potential. The person who fills this role successfully will take initiative in expanding their duties and responsibilities.
Support the work of the Senior Executive Team. Must be able to take a proactive approach in each of the following:
- Manage and coordinate workflow and schedules including travel plans of the senior team.
- Maintain a working up-to-date knowledge of the senior team daily events and administrative needs and communicating these as necessary to others in the office.
- Maintain essential communication for the senior team as required through emails, mail and phone.
- Help organize staff meetings and other meetings involving teams of PPS staff.
- Maintain a working knowledge of the office-wide financial status and provide support for budgeting and workload projections.
- Assist with Human Resource efforts in the office; foster the development of teams and good working relationships among office staff members and colleagues outside of the office.
- Assist with the coordination of Information Technology efforts and the work of the Webmaster and the Network Manager.
Manage priorities from one or more of the internal activities simultaneously:
- Coordinate Project for Public Spaces’ Internship Programs during summer and the academic year, including marketing the positions, coordinating the hiring process, and running a stimulating and rewarding program for both the interns and PPS. Must be able to proactively continue to develop these programs.
- Help the Marketing & Communication staff with the coordination of the Membership Program to ensure membership communication is done in an effective and timely manner.
- As the front line of communication for the office, this person is responsible for answering phones, managing the general email box and maintain relationship with the phone company. Manage all changes and support to the system.
- Help organize mailings and materials to be sent in response to general inquiries as well as requests from donors and foundations.
- Coordinate meeting planning: work with project managers in charge to make calls, send out invitations, order food, set up refreshments, furniture and audio-visual equipment, etc.
- Organize staff meetings for various working teams, e.g, Lines of Business Directors, full staff meetings, temporary task forces, meetings with vendors, prospective clients, members of the Board, general visitors, etc.
- Keep contact database up to date (e.g. enter new information on a regular basis.
- Assist with facility management: ensure office appearance is neat; manage special cleaning or maintenance projects (e.g. carpet cleaning, painting, etc.)
Required Skills and Abilities:
- A strong working knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite. Ability to work with relational databases such as Salesforce and FilemakerPro. Additionally, a working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite CS3 (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator) is favored.
- Strong communication skills in both verbal forms (i.e. day-to-day discussions, project team meetings, presentations, etc.) and written forms (weekly program and project status reports, day-to-day letters and e-mail correspondence, meeting notes, program / project summaries, etc.) Communications must be clear and concise overall with internal staff, clients and colleagues.
- Strong decision making, problem solving, and resource allocation skills/experience.
- Demonstrated attention to detail skills through prior experience at the tactical, implementation level.
- Ability to set tactical goals and directly implement the steps to reach the goals.
- Ability to influence the managing leadership in regard to day-to-day activity.
Education and/or Experience:
A Bachelor’s degree or equivalent, preferably in urban planning, public policy, or a design-related field (architecture, urban design, etc.), or at least two (2) years of office experience with progressive leadership responsibilities.
To Apply:
Send an email with a cover letter, resume, and brief writing sample to Meg MacIver at mmaciver@pps.org. Please write “Associate Executive Assistant” in the subject line.
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Web Application Developer
Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is looking for a part-time professional web developer living in the NYC area to work onsite and offsite as part of a new PPS digital media team. PPS helps communities around the world make great public spaces, in part by providing placemaking tools and resources for communities to use. PPS is looking for a developer interested in making great digital spaces, mass collaboration, and increasing civic participation.
Experience Requirements
- 3+ years experience as a standards-based web developer, with strong PHP skills.
- The idea that “Drupal is the Linux of CMS’s” excites you because of the social impact this could lead to.
- 1+ years of WordPress experience (customizing plugins, themes, system architecture)
- 1+ years of Drupal experience (customizing modules, themes, system architecture)
- For Drupal, experience must include customizing the CMS interface for day to day ease of use by non-technical users.
- Experience with GIS/mapping.
- Google Map API mashups.
- Work in teams using SCRUM or similar Agile methods (or strong desire to learn this)
- Work on social applications and/or successful blogs
- Experience with Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, (LAMP), AJAX, jquery, JavaScript, XML, JSON, SQL
- Experience and/or interest in Google App Engine
- Experience and/or interest in Amazon Web Services
- Skillful in both back end and front end development
- Have worked with both Interaction Designers and Visual Designers; in teams highly focused on the details of great user experiences; in complete teams that have all the core web disciplines working together.
- System administrator skills in terms of setting up web and app servers
- User of many leading social applications; you love checking out and commenting on the latest good tools out there
- Interested in the subject matter of PPS; placemaking, urban planning, community building, sustainable tranportation, civic engagement
Other consideration factors
- You love being a programmer and see it as a creative practice
- Participate in WordPress & Drupal developer communities, either online or also in person at Word or Drupal Barcamps
- Experience and/or interest in web-based mobile app development
- Great online and offline working rapport & communication skills
- Enthusiastic user of social media, active on Twitter or a blog in the subject areas that you care about
- Desire for mentoring and being a mentor; willingness to learn about contemporary product development
To Apply
Send an email to jobs@pps.org
- Subject line “Web Application Developer”
- State your interest
- List any relevant links to sites you’ve built
- Include your Twitter, blog, or LinkedIn links
- Attach your resume
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Internships
General
Project for Public Spaces accepts resumes and cover letters from interested intern applicants on an on-going basis. Please send a resume, writing sample, and cover letter describing how your interests align with PPS’ program areas to Dana Kitzes at dkitzes@pps.org.