If you think I could be a good fit for your next project, keep reading to see what I'm looking for, then contact me below.
Special thanks to Asia Hoe for sharing Maurice Cherry's for hire page for inspiration.
Who are you?
I'm an integrating generalist with 18+ years of professional experience spanning leadership, design, technology, travel, and people management—as an employee, entreprenuer, and intraprenuer.
You can read more about me, my strengths, and my work on this website.
What are you looking for?
Overview
I'm looking for organizations that believe in things like equity, accessibility, diversity, sustainability, openness, transparency, wonder, or kindness. I have eight tattoos on my arms. Each are multiply represented.
I want to learn about agencies. I stepped into team management and organizational leadership—line manager and manager-of-managers, respectively—with an intent of founding my own agency someday.
I want to work on things that live on the web. Specifically, helping make the Internet a more accessible, performant, independent, sustainable, weirder, and—overall—open space. Also aligns with the totality of my professional skills, experience, and knowledge.
Organization
I'm open to a lot of different things right now—freelance, contract, or full-time work—but here are a few things that're important to me, wherever's next:
Open
I've been a longtime fan of the Open Culture Movement—building a more open approach to building trust at work, grounded in principles of clarity, authenticity and alignment.
This is alongside any work that's related or contributes to other Open Movements—Open Source, Open Web, Open Standards, Open Data, Open Start-ups, and OpenType.
Accountable
I'm curious about working in places with different organizing models—cooperatives, agencies, non-profits, employee-owned. I'd love to work with a B-Corp—but it's not a must.
[A B-Corp is] a designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials.
It doesn't need to be massive—and it's not a deal breaker if it is.
Communicative
I prefer an asynchronous default culture of communication. There may, will, and have to be exceptions to it. But—if it's one of the defaults—great!
I find communicative cultures would have practices like: agendas for meetings;
materials shared beforehand for preparation; explicit expectations for performance management.
Basically: writing things down is a company practice.
I approach work by building context that creates boundaries & defines margins through the creative process. It involves lots of writing, sharing, and continuous iteration. It's part of knowledge management and cultivating no-blame cultures of learning.
Each piece of information—both exclusionary (e.g. we're definitely not needing this or doing this because $reasons) and inclusionary (e.g. we have to be able to do this; accessibility & legal compliance)—enbiggening and narrowing decisions, finding the best paths & ways to take.
Ways & Norms
Does everyone in the company—or a large proportion—understand how decisions are made and communicated? How processes are built and scaled? How they handle failure, individually and collectively? How wins are celebrated and losses are learned from? How and why initiatives are prioritized? How individual performance is measured or how people are fired?
For me, answers to these questions are foundational Ways & Norms of leading high-performing, psychologically safe organizations.
We all come from different life experiences, cultural norms, and backgrounds. Writing the company's Ways & Norms helps bring people into the team, and understand what's acceptable and what's not, very quickly.
If you don't have these, I'd be happy to join, helping grow & build this sort of culture.
Long(er) View of Time
It's not just about the next quarter, it's about the next century and how we can build something impacting the future for the better.
This is explicitly opposite of a nascent-startup—or building something just to "make it through the next funding round."
Environment
Remote or Hybrid
Remote and hybrid style working models allow me to deliver my best work.
I enjoy spending time with colleagues, being in an office, having meetings, brainstorming.
Sharing space.
I also need time and space for focused work. From professional—writing time, making time, processing time, documenting time—to personal:
sharing home responsibilities, taking care of littles.
My perfect hybrid working model would be a need to be in office one to three times a week. A remote working model where we meet up once a quarter or a few times a month would work, too.
Flexible, core working hours
Defined core working hours aids in planning how I send and use my time (especially if working with an internationally located team).
I understand and value the need to be available for others in the team—there'll always be a need for synchronous work.
My best brain hours are in the morning. That's when I get most of my focused work done. It sets the pace for the rest of the day.
Multi-modal commute
If working in a hybrid in-office model: I've worked in places, even in the United States, where I have options of walking, cycling, public transport, and driving to the shared working location. I prefer to have multiple options for getting to work, preferentially down this spectrum:
- Walking: most preferred.
- Cycling: very preferred.
- Accessible public transport: very preferred.
- Driving: least preferred.
A one-way trip should, on average (during high-traffic times) take less than one hour—maximum—of travel.
Physical location & moving
I'm an American citizen, married to a Spanish citizen, currently living in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States.
I lived in Amsterdam for a decade, on a kennismigrant visa, and even received a permanent resident permit. I'm open to locations in any of these three countries: United States, Spain, and the Netherlands. I am open to others, but these are of particular interest.
I don't need a sponsor for moving to Spain, but anywhere else I'd need a visa sponsorship. I'd welcome any support to move my family and I over, too. Language levels: English, Native; Spanish, B1; Dutch, A2.
When can you start?
I have a contract until the middle of November It's 20-hrs/wk, so I have capacity for additional workload now. After November is when I can begin more full-time, or on a new contract.
Where are you located?
I am located in Raleigh, North Carolina, but am looking to join organizations—physically—in the Netherlands, Spain, and in the United States.
Why are you doing a “for hire” page?
I'm inspired by Maurice Cherry's and Julie Pagano's pages. I enjoy the idea of the reverse job posting and think it may be the better route for finding my next gig, rather than joining thousands applying for roles through resumes.
Also, my experience is quite broad and diverse, hard to "pin down" or "put a label on" or "box me into" a specific position or role.
How can I reach you?
You can email me at hello@jonathanstephens.us, reach out via LinkedIn, or send a message on Bluesky.