Business Engagement Lead - JUST Stories

ABOUT IHRB

The Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) was founded in 2009. Our vision is to achieve a more just, regenerative global economy where:

• Workers and communities are free and able to use their voices effectively to ensure their rights are respected.

• Businesses demonstrate respect for the rights of workers and communities, and the natural systems they depend on, in their purpose, operations, relationships, and value creation.

• Financial actors use their leverage to positively impact the scale and performance of their partners’ human rights and environmental responsibilities.

• Governments actively implement a smart mix of long-term incentives and disincentives that drive rights-respecting and planet-aligned business.

IHRB’s mission is to make respect for people and planet part of everyday business. We advance our mission through human rights-based research, targeted convening, and development of collaborative action with businesses, governments and civil society to shape policy, advance practice, and strengthen accountability at all levels.

ABOUT IHRB’S WORK ON CLIMATE

IHRB’s Just Transitions Programme focuses on a central challenge: current climate action models are structurally misaligned – and this is undermining delivery. Decision-making remains top-down across sectors, financial systems misprice social risk, and practitioners lack awareness of usable, investable models. The result is an implementation gap, where ambition is rising but delivery is contested, delayed, or fragile – raising material risks for workers and communities, company operations, and the transition itself.

Our core contention is that climate action succeeds when governed as a social process, not just a technical or financial one. Embedding the rights and agency of workers, communities, and affected stakeholders into how decisions are designed, sequenced, and financed is not a moral add-on – it is a precondition for effective, investable climate action. This approach is grounded in international standards, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which establish participation, accountability, and due diligence as baseline conditions.

IHRB works to shift practice through three interconnected approaches:

• making risk visible – by demonstrating how social exclusion translates into financial and operational costs

• making the possible tangible – by identifying real-world models and mechanisms, and translating them into operational insights for diverse practitioners

• making change actionable – by convening and engaging business, finance, policy, and civil society in dialogue on shared challenges and emerging issues
  

PROJECT PURPOSE

The case for people-centred transitions is no longer theoretical. Transitions that exclude workers and communities from meaningful decision-making, regardless of sector, face mounting resistance, reputational damage, and outright failure. Transitions designed with workers and communities tend to be more durable, investable, and effective.

Yet these models remain poorly documented and systematically underused. Practitioners navigating real-time transition decisions – in boardrooms, investment committees, and government ministries – lack access to credible, peer-relevant evidence of what stakeholder-informed transitions actually look like in practice: how they were designed, what trade-offs were made, and why they worked.

JUST Stories was built to close this gap.

Launched in 2024, JUST Stories is a global search for stories of people working together to advance people-centred climate action. Phase I (2024–2026) produced four in-depth stories spanning coal transition in Australia, salt-pan workers and solar energy in India, affordable housing in Catalonia, and agricultural transition in Brazil – each documented through participatory fieldwork and translated into practitioner-grade insights for business and policy audiences.

Phase II builds on this foundation. From 2026–2028, JUST Stories will produce two complementary bodies of work: 2–3 new stories on people-centred decarbonisation; and 2–3 stories on community-led climate adaptation and resilience. This role spans both strands, holding the influence and engagement strategy across the full portfolio of up to six new stories.

ROLE OVERVIEW

IHRB is seeking an experienced Business Engagement Lead to drive the practitioner influence strategy at the heart of JUST Stories Phase II – ensuring that the stories, insights, and lessons produced reach and genuinely inform the companies, investors, and sector intermediaries shaping real-world transition outcomes.

This is not a communications or dissemination role. It requires someone who understands how senior business and finance practitioners think about transition risk and governance, can identify the specific decision-making moments where JUST Stories insights are most relevant, and has the credibility and relationships to place those insights where they will be acted on.

The role spans the full JUST Stories portfolio: decarbonisation stories and adaptation and resilience stories. Different stories will engage different primary audiences – industrial operators and transition-exposed corporates for decarbonisation; DFIs, insurers, and climate finance institutions for adaptation – but many practitioners operate across both domains, and the influence strategy should reflect that.

The Business Engagement Lead will work in close collaboration with two Researchers/Writers – one leading the decarbonisation stories, one the adaptation stories. The writers generate the raw material; this role determines how it reaches and moves its audiences. That division is clear, but the collaboration is continuous: the influence strategy must be shaped by what the research surfaces, and the research must be shaped by what the influence strategy requires.

The role will be supported by and embedded within IHRB’s wider team, drawing on nearly two decades of trusted relationships with companies, investors, and sector bodies across the just transitions landscape. IHRB enters Phase II with an established private-sector network spanning utilities, infrastructure investors, industrial developers, housing providers, food system actors, and financial institutions. The Business Engagement Lead will build on and extend this network.

WHAT THIS ROLE WILL ACHIEVE

Working in direct partnership with IHRB's Head of Just Transitions, the Business Engagement Lead will drive the practitioner influence strategy across the full JUST Stories Phase II portfolio. By the end of the grant period, the role will have:

• Built and implemented a structured influence strategy for each story - mapping priority audiences, identifying decision-making moments, and designing bespoke engagement approaches that place JUST Stories insights where they can inform real transitions

• Produced practitioner briefs and sector-specific materials for each story that senior practitioners actually use: cited in corporate strategy discussions, referenced in policy consultations, and requested for internal circulation

• Established the annual dilemma forum as a trusted, sought-after space where senior practitioners work through real transition decisions with peers - not a conference, but a structured peer-learning mechanism with a growing cohort of repeat participants

• Produced masterclass series that are actively circulated within firms and used as internal learning tools, not published and forgotten

• Built an influence tracking and learning system that keeps the strategy adaptive - feeding signals on what is and isn't landing back into story selection, lesson framing, and practitioner targeting

• Contributed to early evidence that engaged businesses are adjusting how transition decisions are assessed, sequenced, or governed - even where outcomes are still emerging

Success is measured by depth of engagement, not breadth: follow-on dialogue, invitations to contribute to internal governance or strategy discussions, and practitioners returning across the grant period and beyond. Integrated with IHRB's broader just transitions programme, this role ensures that influence activities compound over time rather than concluding at publication.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Influence Strategy and Audience Mapping
For each story in the portfolio (existing and future), develop a structured influence map identifying primary business audiences with direct decision-making relevance, secondary enablers shaping norms and incentives, and just transition maturity levels across these groups. This mapping becomes the basis for all direct outreach, relationship-building, and forum targeting.

Practitioner Briefs and Business-Facing Materials
Working from the structured business lesson distillation provided by each Researcher/Writer, develop the practitioner brief for each story - designed for circulation within firms and at sector forums. Briefs should surface the tacit, practice-based insights practitioners consistently report are missing from existing just transition resources: decision sequencing, governance adaptations, commercial trade-offs, and enabling conditions. Produce sector-specific versions for targeted audiences, adapting framing without diluting the evidence base. The Business Engagement Lead holds editorial authority over final framing and targeting, with substantive input from the Researcher/Writer on accuracy and story integrity.

Direct Outreach and Relationship Stewardship
Lead targeted outreach to companies, investors, and institutions identified through influence mapping - briefings, follow-up conversations, and relationship management with senior practitioners responsible for transition strategy, capital allocation, and stakeholder engagement. Maintain and develop IHRB's private-sector network across the just transitions landscape, building on existing relationships and extending into new sectors and geographies as the story portfolio develops. Manage a CRM-style engagement tracking system recording the nature and timing of interactions, follow-up requests, referrals, and qualitative influence signals.

Sector Forum Engagement
Map and prioritise the sector forum landscape for each story's influence pathway, selecting events where just transition integration remains weak or contested. For each targeted forum, develop sector-specific materials and lobby for JUST Stories practitioners to be included as contributors. Represent JUST Stories at priority external forums with prepared materials and a clear influence objective for each.

Dilemma Forum
Design, curate, and deliver an annual invitation-only practitioner dilemma forum - IHRB's most intensive business influence intervention. Convening approximately 35–40 senior practitioners from 25–30 organisations, it is explicitly not a conference: no panels, no abstract best practice, but a structured peer-learning mechanism built around real decision dilemmas. Responsibilities include pre-forum engagement to surface live transition challenges, facilitation design, cohort curation, logistics management in collaboration with IHRB operations, and synthesis of outputs as an input to programme learning. (NB: The dilemma forum focuses on the decarbonisation strand; adaptation stories feed into sector forum engagement and direct outreach.)

Masterclasses
Lead the production and delivery of a chapter-based digital masterclass series for each story (~30–40 minutes; 4–6 minutes per chapter), featuring transition leaders as teachers and designed for in-firm circulation. This includes developing the structure and interview framework for each series, commissioning and managing the external production partner, overseeing editorial review, and designing the distribution and circulation strategy.

Influence Tracking and Learning
Maintain a light-touch but intentional tracking system across all engagements - contacts reached, interaction type and timing, follow-up requests, and qualitative influence signals. Run periodic internal learning reviews synthesising what is landing, with whom, and why, and feeding findings back into story selection, lesson framing, and practitioner segmentation. Conduct structured follow-up conversations with selected practitioners 3–6 months post-engagement to assess how JUST Stories insights are informing transition decisions. Contribute to quarterly donor calls and annual reporting on influence evidence and engagement outcomes.

Collaboration with Researchers/Writers
The Business Engagement Lead works in continuous, structured collaboration with IHRB's two Researchers/Writers - one leading the decarbonisation stories, one the adaptation stories. The writers generate the raw material and story relationships; this role determines how it reaches and moves the wider ecosystem. That division is clear, but the collaboration runs throughout: from input into story selection and mid-development field reviews, through to joint working on business lesson distillation, masterclass contributor development, and dilemma forum design.

ABOUT YOU

The ideal candidate combines senior experience in business engagement and practitioner influence with genuine fluency in just transitions, climate, and the corporate governance and investment landscapes through which transition decisions are made. They will bring existing networks across the relevant practitioner communities – companies, investors, sector bodies, and enabling institutions – and the credibility to open new doors.

Core Experience & Knowledge

• 10+ years’ experience in roles centred on practitioner engagement, business influence, or stakeholder strategy – in a think tank, NGO, consultancy, investor relations, or similar context where the primary objective was shifting how senior business or finance actors think and act

• Demonstrated track record of designing and delivering high-trust practitioner engagement – not events management or communications, but substantive relationship-building and peer-learning facilitation with senior decision-makers

• Strong understanding of how companies, investors, and sector bodies make transition-related decisions: the governance structures, capital allocation processes, risk frameworks, and stakeholder pressures that shape what practitioners can and cannot do

• Familiarity with the just transitions landscape – including relevant frameworks, debates, and the ecosystem of actors (ILO, OECD, sector associations, investor platforms, trade unions, multilaterals) shaping norms and expectations

• Experience working across multiple sectors and geographies, with the ability to map a practitioner landscape strategically and identify where influence is most achievable

• Existing networks across at least some of the priority practitioner communities: transition-exposed corporates, infrastructure and industrial investors, DFIs and multilaterals, sector associations, or employer bodies

Core Skills and Abilities

• Ability to read a practitioner landscape strategically – identifying who holds relevant decision-making power, where they are in their just transition journey, and what evidence or framing is most likely to move them

• Strong convening and facilitation skills – able to design and hold structured peer-learning processes with senior practitioners, not just chair panels or run events

• Ability to translate complex, participatory research insights into short, peer-grade, decision-relevant materials that practitioners will actually use

• Exceptional relationship management: maintaining trust, confidentiality, and sustained engagement with senior practitioners over multi-year timeframes

• Comfort operating at the interface between rigorous research and high-stakes business contexts – credible to both researchers and senior executives

• Strong project management and organisational skills: managing multiple influence workstreams, external production partners, forum logistics, and CRM-style tracking simultaneously in a remote, globally distributed team

Nice if you have, not a dealbreaker if you don’t

• Experience designing or delivering peer-learning forums or structured dialogue processes with senior corporate or investor audiences

• Background in or familiarity with participatory research methodologies and the ethical dimensions of community-centred storytelling – important context for understanding what JUST Stories is and why practitioners find it credible

• Additional languages relevant to project geographies or priority practitioner communities

Attitude

• Proactive and self-motivating: Entrepreneurial and outcome-oriented, with a proven ability to design and own end-to-end processes and be accountable for results in a small, nimble organisation

• Disciplined: Able to hold the line on depth and quality of engagement – this role is built on trusted, high-value relationships, not volume or visibility

• Collaborative: Comfortable working at the interface between research/storytelling and business influence, and confident in drawing on colleagues’ expertise rather than working in isolation

• Diplomatically astute: Able to engage credibly and sensitively with the full range of actors in JUST Stories – from community organisations to CFOs – without losing sight of the rights-based foundation the work rests on

• Flexible and adaptable: Able to adjust aspects of the work, timelines, and working style as the project evolves across a two-year grant period

TIMEFRAME & CONTRACTING

• Deadline for applications: Sunday 5 July 2026 (11pm UK-time)

• Interviews: First interviews will take place the w/c 13 July between the hours of 2-6pm GMT. Second interviews will take place one week later and be scheduled with candidates closer to the time, including a short exercise prepared ahead of second interview.

• Expected start date and timeframe: As soon as possible. The consultant will be contracted through 29 June 2028, with a one-month notice period.

• Location:

  • This is a home-based role and open to candidates globally. To support effective collaboration, we are only able to accommodate candidates whose primary working hours align with time zones up to Central European Time (CET), or west of CET, ensuring substantial overlap with colleagues working on US/Europe/Africa time (MST/CET/SAST).

  • Candidates must already have the legal right to work in their country of residence, be able to manage all related taxes, provide their own laptop, and have reliable internet connectivity.

  • The role requires willingness to travel internationally, including to sector forums and for the annual dilemma forum. Site visits to story locations may occasionally be required in a supporting capacity.

• Hours: This is a full-time role of 5 days per week. Exact working patterns will be agreed with the successful candidate.

• Compensation: The consultancy fee is £5,833 per month from the agreed start date through 29 June 2028 (equivalent to £70,000 per year).

• Contracting: The successful candidate will be engaged through a consultancy agreement subject to UK law. They will need to be registered as self-employed and will be responsible for managing their own taxes, insurance, and any other legal or financial obligations. A consultancy offer will be subject to receipt of two satisfactory references.

Click on the “Apply Now” button to answer some specific application questions.

Please note: The following yes/no questions are intended to help you identify whether you are qualified and well-positioned for this role. Please answer honestly. We list these minimum criteria and constraints for a reason. If you do not qualify this time, there will certainly be other opportunities in the future. Answering dishonestly only takes away from our capacity to consider other applicants that are well suited for this particular role. So please note that if you answer "yes" to an answer and we find that to be untrue, your name will be added to a black list and you won't be considered for future roles at IHRB

Applications from unsuccessful applicants will be held on file for 6 months after the end of the recruitment process.