about the job
The greatest waste of our time is the waste of talent. There are millions of people who once had the ambition to do great things with their career, but got stuck in jobs that don't make the world better.
The School for Moral Ambition (SMA) helps people turn their ideals into action. We run fellowships, community programs, and campaigns that empower talented people to work on the world's most pressing problems. From ending factory farming to fighting the tobacco industry and advancing tax fairness.
We believe that moral ambition — the drive to be one of the best, but measured by different standards of success — can become a cultural force. We're not driven by guilt, but by enthusiasm: we're simply excited about making the world a wildly better place.
You can read our founding principles here.
What we’re building
SMA is building an international movement for moral ambition, bringing together people and connecting talent, capital, organizations, and ideas across countries and across sectors, to work on some of the world's most pressing problems.
We started with a focus on shifting the allocation of talent. Increasingly, we are expanding that focus, exploring how financial capital and other forms of support can also be mobilized to accelerate real-world change. Our work spans four areas:
- Cause programs: matching talent to high-impact work directly
- University programs: supporting students with building a career that matters
- Community: providing a network and resources for people to turn intent into impact
- Media: reshaping the conversation on ambition and success
Around this, we are building a global network of fellows, funders, and partners. The goal is to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts and find ways to strengthen the wider system for change.
about the role
We are looking for someone who can help SMA grow up, while keeping what makes us special. SMA is young, fast-growing, and still finding its shape. That is what makes it exciting. Ideas become programs quickly, people take ownership, and things move fast. But growth brings new challenges.
As Executive Director, you turn entrepreneurial energy into focus, growth, and organizational strength. You are one of SMA's senior leadership voices: internally creating coherence, focus, and accountability, and externally helping to build trust, partnerships, funding, and influence around SMA's mission. Your job is not to direct everything, but to create the conditions for others to do their best work. There is no fixed blueprint: priorities shift, new opportunities emerge, and you will often decide with incomplete information. That should energize you.
You will work closely with Rutger Bregman, one of the founders of SMA, in a complementary leadership role. Rutger brings ideas, visibility, and opportunities. You bring a different kind of leadership: working alongside a strong founder, turning ambition and ideas into focus, alignment, and execution. You are a positive-critical thought partner to Rutger: supportive when it matters, challenging when it counts. You will work just as closely with the Operations Director, who holds people, technology, legal, and internal systems, while you carry ultimate responsibility for the budget.
SMA runs on Holacracy: authority and accountability are written down as roles rather than job titles, and anyone can change them through a defined process. We don't require experience with Holacracy, but we do expect affinity: you lead through explicit roles rather than positional authority.
SMA's boards are moving to a supervisory model (Raad van Toezicht) with a small day-to-day board alongside it; that transition should be completed around the time you start. As EU Executive Director, you report to the Board of the Dutch ANBI Stichting School for Moral Ambition. SMA US is a separate legal entity, but in practice we run as one organization with one org chart: the US makes its own formal decisions and aligns with the Netherlands, and vice versa.
Key responsibilities
- Strategy. Turn strategy into clear priorities and make decisions with incomplete information, so the organization always knows where it's heading.
- Leadership. Give a fast-growing team direction, and build a culture of autonomy and accountability.
- Fundraising. Represent SMA to major donors and institutional funders, and build the long-term relationships that fund our international growth.
- Finances. Oversee financial sustainability together with Finance and the Board, ensure strong governance, and manage risk wisely.
- Communication. Represent SMA with credibility across cultures and contexts, and bring diverse stakeholders along.
In short: you are responsible for SMA's coherence, health, and ability to grow.
What We’re looking for
Candidates will recognize themselves in most of the following:
- Comfortable in complexity. You have built or scaled an organization through change, ideally in a scale-up, social enterprise, consultancy, tech, or impact organization. You are comfortable with uncertainty and don't need perfect structure to get started; when things are complex, your instinct is to figure it out.
- Trusted leader. You have a track record of building trust, enabling autonomy, and creating accountability. You bring people with you, create clarity without micromanaging, and can have difficult conversations when needed, including when the answer is unwelcome.
- Systemic thinking. You connect strategy, people, operations, finances, and stakeholders across different domains.
- Financially astute. You have the confidence to weigh trade-offs and make sound decisions as the organization evolves.
- Complementary to a founder. You bring complementary leadership, structure, challenge, and momentum while staying close to the team.
- Curious and pragmatic. You are intellectually curious about impact, organizations, and systems change, with an entrepreneurial mindset and a calm, credible leadership style. You can hold a room and make decisions under uncertainty.
NB: You should already have the right to work in the Netherlands, as we're not able to sponsor visas for this role.
What we offer
- A senior leadership role at the heart of one of Europe's most ambitious nonprofits, with significant autonomy and the opportunity to shape SMA's next chapter. You will work directly with the founder and leadership team to build the organizational foundation for SMA's international growth and scale its impact.
- A highly ambitious, mission-driven team and network. SMA is already reaching thousands of people asking: What if I used my talent for something that really matters? You will play a key role in helping us turn that ambition into lasting impact.
- €90,000–€120,000 annual salary based on 40hrs/week including 8% holiday allowance paid monthly, depending on experience, plus a pension plan with an 8% employer contribution (growing to 12.9% in 2027 in line with CAO Sociaal Werk).
- A working environment that values ownership, learning, and impact over traditional credentials. We give people the space and responsibility to take initiative, learn quickly, and make things happen.
- A lot of fun. As we say in our founding principles: "We're not driven by feelings of guilt, but by sheer enthusiasm. We're simply excited about making the world a wildly better place, and about building a legacy that matters."
We value talent and a can-do attitude above traditional credentials. Even if you don't meet every requirement, and especially if you think we might overlook an aspect that could make you a good fit, we welcome you to tell us why and apply. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and non-traditional career paths.
Application process
If you are interested, please send your CV and motivation before September 18 to info@dux.nl, mentioning SMA.
