About the role

We're looking for a founding media producer to scale our second-chance storytelling. Our students live some of the most powerful stories of upward mobility in the country, breaking cycles of poverty and incarceration. Almost nobody sees them. You will change that.

Who You Are

1. You have a track record of success. You've personally grown an account to millions of views and 10K+ followers, and you can point to the content strategy that got it there.
2. You believe everyone deserves a second chance. You've thought deeply about poverty, incarceration, and opportunity—and you want your work to matter.
3. You argue from first principles. You don’t just copy blindly. You dissect trends into their mechanics. You know what works, what's overrated, and what most accounts get wrong. You have opinions on creative, on channels, on messaging.
4. You are AI-native, not AI-curious. You've built real workflows that compress hours into minutes. You think like an orchestrator: breaking work into discrete tasks, routing each to the right agent, and stitching outputs together into something production-ready.
5. You are data-driven and creatively rigorous. You don't guess about what's working. You obsess over attribution: you want to know not just how many students enrolled, but which channel, which creative, which touchpoint drove the decision. But you also know that data tells you what happened, not why, and that the best creative insights come from human judgment. You hold both things at once.
6. You are entrepreneurial. You're scrappy, autonomous, and low-maintenance. You don't wait for permission or perfect conditions. You run tests, see what works, kill what doesn't, and ship again. You're energized by the idea of being the primary stakeholder accountable for outcomes. You roll up your sleeves and solve problems. No job is too small.
7. You work hard. This isn't a 9-to-5. The average person at Emerge works 60+ hours a week because we care about the mission. If that sounds miserable, this isn't for you. If it sounds exciting, you'll fit right in.
8. You are a straight shooter. You don't hide bad news or dress up underperforming metrics. You bring clarity, honesty, and accountability to every interaction.
9. You are a clear writer. You believe clear writing leads to clear thinking. Great copy is a superpower in this role. You value brevity and clarity over length and jargon. You understand that in marketing, every word either earns attention or loses it.
10. You argue from first principles. You deconstruct trends into their mechanics. You know what works because you know what the audience needs, and you use data to test and refine your hypotheses. You have strong opinions on creative, channels, and messaging, all backed by data or research. You approach social media like a science.

Requirements

• You've personally grown a social account to at least 10K+ followers, turned it into an acquisition engine, and you can walk us through exactly how you did it.
• Willing to work in-person in Harlem, New York City
• Comfort with CapCut, Premiere, Final Cut, TikTok editing tools, Canva, or similar.
• A personal TikTok, Reels, or content portfolio
• Strong analytical ability

Bonus Points

• You've been a founder or founding hire, or built something impressive on your own
• You have direct experience working with underrepresented populations (e.g., through teaching, social work, volunteering)
• Higher-end video production experience

What You Will Be Doing

• Creative Strategy. You develop winning formats, identify hook patterns, and brief with specificity
• Full-Stack Video Production. You will use our content database or record videos yourself to create short-form videos.
• Creator Program & UGC Pipeline. Own our creator program end-to-end. Develop sourcing strategy, creator personas, and tier structure across markets. Write briefs and scripts that get results. Build the workflows, agreements, payments, feedback cycles and iteration loops that let us run a high-volume creator operation without things slipping.
• Creator Community. Manage and grow the creator community you create. Keep the roster engaged, informed, and producing. Run challenges, feedback loops, and incentive structures that maintain quality and volume at scale. Identify top performers and build them up. Cull what isn't working.
• Reporting & Optimization. You'll track what matters: CPM, CTR, creative performance by format and creator.
• Performance & Targets. Review what drives views, signups, CAC contribution by channel. You run a clean weekly report to get the best creatives each week. You know why something worked and double down.

About the interview

1. Intro & Work Experience (20 min). We’ll chat briefly about the role and we’ll spend some time reviewing your interests and work experience.
2. Take-Home Challenge. 3-4 hours
3. Take-Home Review (45 min)
4. Cultural Fit (45 min)
5. Work Experience (45 min)
6. Paid Work Trial (1-2 days) — You'll come onsite to work on a real project, with access to internal tools and team collaboration. You'll be paid $500/day. All travel expenses covered.
7. Reference Checks — We'll select 3–4 people you've worked with and request introductions when the time comes. We're looking for honest and raw, not flawless references.

About Emerge Career

Who We Are:

Emerge Career’s mission is to break the cycle of poverty and incarceration. We’re not just building software; we’re creating pathways to real second chances. Through an all-in-one platform deeply embedded within the criminal justice system, we recruit, train, and place justice-impacted individuals into life-changing careers.

Our vision is to become the country’s unified workforce development system, replacing disconnected brick-and-mortar job centers with one integrated, tech-powered solution that meets low-income individuals exactly where they are. Today, the federal government spends billions annually on education and training programs, yet only about 70% of participants graduate, just 38.6% secure training-related employment, and average first-year earnings hover around $34,708.

By contrast, our ten-person team has locked in 9 figures in government contracts and outperformed the job centers across 9 states. With an 89% graduation rate and 92% of graduates securing training-related employment, our alumni aren't just getting jobs—they're launching new lives with average first-year earnings of $77,352. The results speak for themselves, and we're just getting started.

Before Emerge, our founders Zo and Gabe co-founded Ameelio, an award-winning tech nonprofit that is dismantling the prison communication duopoly. Backed by tech luminaries like Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla, and Jack Dorsey, and by major criminal-justice philanthropies such as Arnold Ventures and the Mellon Foundation, Ameelio became a recognized leader in the space. Because of this experience both Zo and Gabe understood what it took to create change from within the system. After serving over 1M people impacted by incarceration, they witnessed firsthand the gap in second-chance opportunities and the chronic unemployment plaguing those impacted by the justice system. Emerge Career is committed to solving this issue.

Our students are at the heart of our work. Their journeys have captured national attention on CBS, NBC, and in The Boston Globe, and our programs now serve entire states and cities. And we’re not doing it alone: our vision has attracted support from Alexis Ohanian (776),  Michael Seibel, Y Combinator, the Opportunity Fund, and public figures like Diana Taurasi, Deandre Ayton, and Marshawn Lynch. All of us believe that, with the right mix of technology and hands-on practice, we can redefine workforce development and deliver true second chances at scale.

Why We Do This:

Emerge Career was designed to tackle two systemic issues: recidivism, fueled by post-incarceration unemployment and poverty, and labor shortages in key industries. Over 60% of formerly incarcerated people remain unemployed a year after incarceration, seeking work but not finding it. The reality is shocking, workforce development programs are severely limited inside prison, with only one-third of incarcerated people ever participating. To worsen, the available prison jobs offer meager wages, often less than $1 per hour, and often do not equip individuals with the skills for long-term stable employment