Responsibilities

• Build and maintain detailed non-elected stakeholder maps for each active or prospective DataBank market, covering schools, homeowner and neighborhood associations, sports leagues, chambers of commerce, organized labor, faith communities, civic clubs, and related organizations.
• Plan and lead listening tours, one-on-one stakeholder meetings, facility open houses, and community update events across all three engagement scenarios described in DataBank's Community Engagement Playbook: established markets with no expansion planned, established markets undergoing expansion, and new market entries.
• Synthesize stakeholder feedback into documented community needs assessments and use them to guide charitable and volunteer commitments, drawing on DataBank's activity library and existing local partnerships.
• Own the stakeholder tracking log and feedback intake process for every market, ensuring commitments are tracked to completion and reported back to the community.
• Manage relationships with existing charitable and community partners and identify new partnership opportunities aligned with locally identified needs and available budget.
• Work with the Construction team to understand project timelines, site-level impacts, and hiring plans so engagement materials and open houses reflect accurate, current information.
• Partner with Corporate Development on newly identified sites to begin stakeholder mapping and early relationship-building once land and zoning are secured.
• Align local charitable and volunteer commitments with Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability priorities, particularly on environmental topics such as water stewardship and energy use where community concern is often highest.
• Coordinate all charitable giving and community volunteer activities with the rest of the Marketing team (Events/PR/Social Media) and the Culture/Volunteer/Employee Resource Group leads.
• Brief the SVP of Marketing and other executive stakeholders regularly on community sentiment, program status, and emerging issues.

Requirements

• 8+ years (Director) or 12+ years (Senior Director) of experience in community engagement, community relations, public affairs, or corporate communications, with a track record of designing and running structured stakeholder engagement programs.
• Direct experience engaging communities around a physical infrastructure project that faced, or had the potential to face, organized public opposition. Relevant industries include wireless and telecommunications infrastructure (e.g., cell tower or small-cell siting), energy and utilities, industrial development, transportation infrastructure, or data centers.
• Demonstrated project management skills, including the ability to run multiple concurrent, multi-stakeholder engagement processes across geographically dispersed markets.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate technical or industry-specific concepts into plain language for non-technical community audiences.
• Comfort operating cross-functionally with legal, government relations, construction, and sustainability colleagues, and the judgment to know when to escalate a sensitive community issue.
• Willingness to travel frequently, including to markets outside the candidate's home base, on a schedule that may include evening or weekend community events.
• Bachelor's degree in communications, public affairs, urban planning, political science, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Comfort tracking and synthesizing regulatory, legislative, or industry-association communications for a non-specialist business audience; prior government affairs or lobbying experience is not required.

Preferred

• Experience specifically within the data center, colocation, or broader digital infrastructure industry.
• Existing relationships with national or regional organizations relevant to DataBank's charitable focus areas (education and workforce development, emergency services, environment and sustainability, economic development).
• Experience managing or building out a community engagement function, including hiring and developing future team members as DataBank's site portfolio grows.
• Familiarity with land use, zoning, or permitting processes sufficient to understand how community engagement interacts with (but remains distinct from) regulatory work.
• Familiarity with the Data Center Coalition or similar industry or trade associations, and experience participating in or monitoring industry-coalition meetings and communications.