POSITION SUMMARY: 

Under the general direction of the Principal Investigator(s), Director(s), or designee, the Implementation Support Specialist I aids organizations, leaders, and staff in implementation of innovations by identifying, contextualizing, and improving the use of implementation strategies across a range of settings and building capacity among teams, organizations, and systems. This position involves working with UMass Chan team members and external partners in co-creation and engagement activities, on-going improvement and support, and sustainability efforts.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

• Promote and facilitate active involvement of stakeholders in all stages of the design and implementation process, resulting in service models, approaches, and practices that are contextualized and tailored to local settings.
• Create welcoming and engaging spaces for all stakeholders in meetings and other implementation activities.
• Prepare for stakeholder meetings and other communication vehicles, making sure relevant individuals and groups are involved in communication and ensuring equitable access to meeting materials and preparation across groups.
• Assist with meeting facilitation, including creating space for new ideas to emerge, building trust and respect for all perspectives, communicating, and listening for mutual understanding and opportunities for integration of different perspectives/types of knowledge, and synthesizing differing perspectives of thought and checking for understanding across stakeholder groups.
• Build trust with others by modeling transparent communication, action and
• Support collaborative implementation planning and the co-development of implementation plans involving all relevant stakeholders.
• Facilitate the co-design of tools, products, processes, governance structures, service models, interventions, implementation strategies and policies related to implementation.
• Facilitate to use of quantitative and qualitative feedback at all implementation stages by participating in regular stakeholder debriefings, contributing to reflection, promoting shared learning and improvements along the way.
• Conduct evidence reviews to determine relevance and fit of proposed innovations with identified
• Support the continuous and systematic identification of barriers to implementation among its different stakeholders.
• Other duties and responsibilities as assigned to support implementation efforts.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher
• 1 year of professional experience that involves planning activities, teamwork, communication, collaboration with diverse stakeholders. Experience with these activities during academic programs and advanced training will be accepted.
• Empathetic, curious, strong critical thinking skills, committed to change initiatives, committed to advancing equity in implementation efforts, embraces cross-disciplinary approaches.
• Computer proficiency: ability to use email, spreadsheets, and other applications.
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills

Preferred Qualifications:

This position involves close collaboration with criminal-justice agencies to support coordinated efforts in data collection and deployment of support strategies.

Preference will be given to candidates with demonstrated experience working directly with criminal-justice agencies or stakeholders. This is a hybrid position with travel to sites required.