Job Description
Job Overview
The Beeck Center is looking to hire a temporary Project Researcher from January 2025 – November 2025, to support the Family Benefits Lab (FBL) project.
Beeck Center researchers play a vital role in transforming big ideas into actionable insights by joining project teams to gather, analyze, and document critical information. They conduct in-depth research to produce landscape scans, case studies, findings, stories, and insights that are shared widely across our networks. Project Researchers are essential for identifying opportunities, mapping existing solutions, and highlighting gaps where the Beeck Center and partners can drive innovation.
The Family Benefits Lab team is focused on implementing human-centered design to support teen and young mothers—a highly vulnerable population—in meeting their educational goals, pursuing family-sustaining career pathways, building wealth, and caring for their children.
The FBL Project Researcher will be responsible for:
- Finalizing and owning execution of the FBL research plan, which will employ research methods for surfacing insights about mothers’ experience connecting to supportive benefits in health and educational settings, drawing from principles of human-centered design, their research expertise as well as the Beeck Center’s research framework.
- Capturing and documenting the lived experience of these mothers, through surveys, interviews, case studies, case examples, and summary reports.
- Supporting the FBL team to convert research insights into a strategy for designing pilots/program improvements and interventions that can be operationalized by our partners in the field.
Before submitting your application to Georgetown University, visit the Beeck Center’s careers page to learn more about the recruiting process, timeline and supplemental application requirements.
Work Interactions
The FBL Project Researcher will work closely with the FBL project team including Innovation + Incubation Fellow, Maya Mechenbier, as well as Georgetown University student research assistants. The Project Researcher will report directly to Maya Mechenbier.
The Project Researcher will be charged with building and maintaining relationships with and among relevant stakeholders, including government and public-service practitioners and policy makers, as well as frontline staff that serve families. They will serve as a domain expert and point of contact for program participants, which could include employees of government agencies, non-profit organizations, and educational institutions.
The Project Researcher will also work to identify opportunities for collaboration across other teams at the Beeck Center, the broader Georgetown community, and other academic institutions.
Distributed Working Environment
The Beeck Center operates as a distributed team, with some team members working remotely and others working in-person in our Washington, DC offices. A distributed team means there will be heavy reliance on asynchronous communication channels such as Slack, Asana, and Gmail while also having many meetings fully virtual or hybrid to include remote employees, using Zoom.
This position has been designated as remote. Please note that work mode designations are regularly reviewed in order to meet the evolving needs of the University. Such review may necessitate a change to a position’s mode of work designation. Complete details about Georgetown University’s mode of work designations for staff and AAP positions can be found on the Department of Human Resources website: https://hr.georgetown.edu/mode-of-work-designation.
The Beeck Center has two office spaces in Washington, D.C.: one on Georgetown University’s Main Campus and a second downtown on Georgetown’s Capitol Campus. We prioritize spending time in person with our student analysts for collaboration and career development as well as building relations across the various other centers on campus. Remote employees will have the opportunity to and are expected to travel up to 15% for team retreats, conferences and in-person research site visits.
Responsibilities
Research, Synthesis, and Production of Research Deliverables (80%)
- Develop and manage the execution of a research plan for the project for the time period of January 2025 – November 2025, in partnership with the FBL team, implementing human-centered design principles with a focus on translating research into concrete service delivery improvement outcomes.
- Ensuring that the team’s research plan involving human subjects complies with federal, state, and institutional regulations, including managing the Georgetown University Institutional Review Board (IRB) process from submission through review, approval, and execution.
- Ensuring the collection and proper management of sufficient and appropriate data for analysis, including developing and maintaining research records in accordance with IRB requirements.
- Produce polished, plain language research deliverables against set deadlines, including drafting, editing, and publishing insights, potentially including:
- Written reports, in the styles of case studies, white papers, and/or policy briefs.
- Blog posts documenting insights and and/or research processes.
- Technical documentation of specific processes and/or data discovered through the landscape research.
- Ad-hoc outputs, such as podcast interviews, conference presentations, slide decks, or webinars.
- Communications and dissemination materials to promote the research outputs including social media posts, emails, etc.
- Anticipating and managing risks, including methodological and ethical risks and organizational and logistical challenges.
Cross-Team Coordination (20%)
- Work with the project team to incorporate the research plan and tasks into an overall project plan, identifying milestones, managing timelines, and tracking progress towards research deliverables.
- Work closely with and mentor Georgetown student research assistants (up to two at a time) hired to support the project.
- Communicate daily with FBL project team members, report community statuses and needs, and provide thought partnership; exchange ideas and share best practices for cohort engagement, learning, and development.
- Work closely with internal Beeck Center colleagues to:
- Support grant reporting, funding proposals, and other reporting activities to highlight project activities.
- Manage operations and internal project management tools used for the project.
- Provide regular and proactive communications with peer project teams and Beeck Center operational staff around updates, coordination points, and reporting expectations.
Qualifications
Ideal candidates for this role have the following experience:
- Bachelor’s degree and 3+ years of experience required (or equivalent combination of education and work experience).
- Experience conducting human-centered design research and converting research insights into policy and program action, preferably with service or product delivery in government or other large organization/bureaucratic settings.
- Experience working directly with families (such as co-designing policy or program interventions with parents and/or adolescents), on issues including benefits programs, social determinants of health, economic mobility, and/or with state and local government.
- Knowledge of and ideally experience in trauma-informed design and experience working with particularly vulnerable populations, including children and adolescents.
- Experience developing polished written materials in plain language for different audiences, such as families, government stakeholders, and policymakers.
- Excitement to work on a fast-paced project, create and build new processes in an experimental culture, take risks, be proactive and self-directed, take ownership of deliverable execution, and prioritize impact.
- Commitment to centering equity and impact in the development of the research plan and stakeholder engagement to improve service delivery.
- A flexible, adaptable, and collaborative work style, with a strong willingness to work as part of a team and a passion for co-creating a pioneering initiative.
Compensation, Benefits, and Employment Term
The Family Benefits Lab Project Researcher is a full-time (40 hours per week) temporary position from January 2025 – November 2025. The Beeck Center will utilize a third-party hiring staffing agency, NextSource to facilitate the hiring and benefits process.
This position will be paid monthly at a compensation range of $5,417 – $6,666, commensurate with experience, and includes benefits provided by NextSource.
Before You Apply
Please visit the Beeck Center’s careers page to review more details regarding the recruitment timeline and supplemental questions, which may be helpful to guide your Georgetown application.
Application Process
Please complete this application form to be considered for this role. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis, with a priority deadline of end of day Monday, December 23.
Need Assistance:
If you are a qualified individual with a disability and need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application and hiring process, please click here for more information, or contact the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Affirmative Action (IDEAA) at 202-687-4798 or ideaa@georgetown.edu.
Need some assistance with the application process? Please call 202-687-2500. For more information about the suite of benefits, professional development and community involvement opportunities that make up Georgetown’s commitment to its employees, please visit the Georgetown Works website.
EEO Statement:
Georgetown University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer fully dedicated to achieving a diverse faculty and staff. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation), disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.