Living Carbon is a public benefit company with a mission to fight climate change by transforming marginal land into high-value environmental assets. Our team specializes in restoring abandoned mineland and degraded agricultural land into diverse, thriving forests. We’re backed by prominent investors including Temasek, Toyota Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Felicis Ventures, and YCombinator.

We are seeking a highly proactive Lead to join our Land Partnerships team. Backed by a groundbreaking carbon offtake agreement with Microsoft, Living Carbon is reforesting degraded mine and agricultural lands across the Eastern US, with the goal of achieving positive outcomes for the environment, local communities, and landowners. This position will have a particular focus on marginal and degraded agricultural lands in the US Southeast and Mississippi Alluvial Valley. You will be responsible for identifying, engaging and educating, and onboarding new landowners to build high-quality forest carbon projects with us. We are looking for someone with a creative mindset and strong community engagement skills, who can build long-lasting relationships with private owners, land trusts, nonprofits, corporates, government agencies, and tribal nations.

Your key activities in this role will be landowner outreach and engagement, educating them about Living Carbon forest carbon programs, aligning relevant stakeholders, and negotiating and closing commercial deals. You will work with a world-class internal team of land agents, foresters, carbon scientists, GIS specialists, and commercial strategists.

This role requires a candidate who can clearly and effectively communicate with both external partners and internal teams in a collaborative manner. A successful candidate will think creatively about project opportunities and strive to find win-win solutions for all stakeholders involved. You are empathetic to the problems others face, a good listener, and a team player and would be described as “willing to do what it takes to get the job done”.This role will report to our Land Partnerships Lead.

We highly encourage diverse candidates to apply and contact us with any questions about the application process.

Responsibilities

- Actively research, identify and build relationships with landowners in your region to onboard them to Living Carbon forest carbon projects.
- Prepare and present carbon project materials and partnership proposals and answer landowner questions about our forest carbon approach and partnership agreement.
- Conduct thorough site diligence including documentation of past land uses and land title and tenure.
- Identify key stakeholders in your region impacted by forest carbon project development.
- Maintain relationships with referral partners and external industry groups like state agencies, conservation groups, and landowner groups to generate new leads.
- Master the Living Carbon site qualification and landowner engagement process, using a variety of technology tools to confirm site feasibility and keep the team up-to-date.
- Synthesize and share feedback with the Senior Manager of Land Partnerships that will improve our landowner program to fit both partner needs and internal business needs.
- Collaborate with internal teams including forestry, finance, legal, and carbon modeling to develop deals and ensure seamless handoff to project development path.
- Willing and able to travel to project sites and to build relationships with landowners and local stakeholders, or attend association meetings, conferences, workshop events, and other strategic landowner partnership activities.
- Work collaboratively in a remote role with other members of the Living Carbon Commercialization, R&D, and Operations teams.

Qualifications

- 5+ years experience in land management, land acquisition, agricultural leasing, business development, or sales and exemplary track record for conducting outreach and developing partnerships. Maintains a proactive and positive attitude with partners.
- Must live within driving distance, or willing to relocate, to our major southern project sites (AR, MS, LA, TN, AL, GA, VA, NC, SC, KY).
- Excellent external communication and negotiation skills, able to build relationships with diverse landowners, communicate complex concepts, align multiple stakeholders, receive feedback, and iterate quickly with the internal team to get deals done.
- Ability to execute across the entire life cycle of initiating new carbon projects, from independently and strategically identifying leads, connecting and building relationships with landowners and negotiating land deals.
- Willingness and ability to travel multiple times per month; to project sites or to build relationships with landowners and local stakeholders, or attend association meetings, conferences, workshop events, and other strategic landowner partnership activities.
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in natural resource management, environmental science, agriculture, economics, or business.

Strong pluses:

Experience in the agriculture industry, farmland investment, planning, and management, or a track record of achieving ecological restoration outcomes in the southern United States. Candidates with an existing network of landowners and implementation partners are highly preferred.Experience in forest carbon markets. Skills in forestry mapping software, GIS data, and remote sensing.

$70,000 - $95,000 a year

Living Carbon PBC offers competitive compensation, and generous healthcare, dental and vision insurance.

Living Carbon PBC is an equal opportunity employer.

We believe the best solutions to climate change are created by diverse teams. Living Carbon is focused on building a multicultural and inclusive team with strong representation from the many diverse communities disproportionately impacted by climate change. As a public benefit corporation, ensuring solutions to slow climate change are widely distributed to all peoples is critical to the success of our mission.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

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Land Partnerships Associate / Senior Associate