Sustainability + Social Impact Associate Manager

Founded in 1984, Free People (www.FreePeople.com) is a women’s fashion label that operates whole­sale, retail, and direct-to-consumer businesses. The retail and wholesale presence encompasses over 75 stores in the United States as well as three wholesale showrooms whose teams have cultivated relationships with over 1,400 specialty boutiques and department stores across the globe. In addition, we produce a direct-to-consumer catalog and website, providing an inspiring shopping experience for the carefree, confident, and curious young woman who appreciates our distinctive assortment of apparel and accessories.

Title: Free People Sustainability + Social Impact Associate /Associate Manager

This role requires a strong passion and understanding of current sustainability and social impact challenges in the retail/apparel industry, an ability to apply analytical skills to help further develop Impact projects within Free People and URBN. This person will be able to think strategically about future goals, help shape them into executable projects, roll up sleeves to help execute programs on the ground with our partners and community, and then communicate the impact. Reporting to the Director of Sustainability, this role will collaborate closely within the team, and also across departments – Design, Merchandising, Creative and Digital Marketing, Sourcing, Finance, Retail, Ops etc. – across URBN brands, as well as externally with our nonprofit and brand partners to move our goals into action.

The ideal candidate has a thirst for environmental and social change, has strong business and sustainability acumen, innovative problem solving skills, a passion for being a part of transformative change and an ability to work cross-functionally.

Job Responsibilities

• Support the development and project management of our Sustainability + Social Impact strategy and goals.
• Drive the execution, and progress tracking, and communication of these commitments working cross functionally across the organization and with external partners. 
• Manage Care FP communication from an analytical impact perspective - devising ideas and owning through to execution how to better communicate our impact on site, as well as utilizing this data in stores and wholesale channels as well.
• Manage overall execution of sustainability and social impact program initiatives, working closely with cross-functional teams and our business units to ensure alignment.
•  Own the Impact tracker, measuring sustainability and community impact for progress measuring and internal and external communication.
• Help develop measurement systems and maintain tools to benchmark and track our progress against key sustainability goals, standards, and frameworks.
• Partner and engage with external nonprofit and brand partners and run multi-stakeholder initiatives.
• Support the rollout of sustainable packaging initiatives across stores and to our customers.
• Constantly have an eye on the industry, benchmark, and share industry research with the team, to help identify areas of impact .
• Support the management of our charitable donations in collaboration with the finance team. - Support community initiatives including our volunteer program, and initiatives rooted in our Diversity and Inclusion Committee action items.
• Support the extension of our in house Sustainable Standards from textile and fiber into production bi-products (packaging, energy, water, dying/tanning, carbon, etc), and track accordingly.