Research Fellow (1-Year)

Organization Overview

The National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) champions effective financial education. NEFE is the independent, centralizing voice providing leadership, research and collaboration to advance financial well-being. As one of the first organizations to embark on the mission of wholly dedicating its efforts on improving the effectiveness of financial education, NEFE continues its legacy of strengthening action-oriented research agendas, mobilizing intermediaries, and creating better solutions for researchers, educators, practitioners and policymakers. For more information, visit www.nefe.org.

Job Description

The National Endowment for Financial Education is seeking a one-year Research Fellow to join the research team. The fellow will support the foundation’s directed research, literature summaries, research-to-practice activities, and research dissemination efforts. The preferred start date is January 4, 2021. Preference for in-office work, but remote work would be considered.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Support the foundation’s directed research and grants activities; includes providing technical and/or methodological support, reviewing deliverables, and writing summary reports
• Represent the foundation at research conferences; includes distilling and disseminating relevant research information back to the foundation
• Support the departments goals of cultivating a network of researchers who work in the area of financial well-being and to promote financial well-being as a viable research agenda to graduate students and junior faculty
• Keep apprised of current research published in the field of financial well-being; synthesize and disseminate key findings and trends to the foundation and external audiences
• Translate technical academic research into plain language for use by practitioners and other non-technical audiences; includes the foundation’s grants research, sponsored research as well as external publications
• Implement and coordinate projects as directed by Managing Director, Research
• Collaborate with the foundation’s operations, programs, research, and external affairs staff on various projects and initiatives
• Other duties as assigned

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in economics, business, social sciences, education or a related field
• Demonstrated research literacy, including the ability to understand qualitative and quantitative research studies and summarize key findings
• Knowledge of, or ability to quickly learn, the current body of research on financial well-being
• Baseline understanding of various data collection methods in the social sciences (qualitative and quantitative)
• Ability to translate technical research into plain language, both conversantly and in writing
• Demonstrated technical and scholarly writing skills
• Strong personal belief in the importance of research integrity (e.g., conducting, citing, and using it appropriately)
• Comfortable collaborating with a team as well as working alone

Additional Desired Qualifications

• Master’s or Doctorate degree in economics, business, social sciences, education or a related field

Physical/Mental Demands of the Job

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to, stand, sit, talk, hear, and use hands and fingers to operate a computer and telephone keyboard. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision requirements due to computer work. Light to moderate lifting is required (e.g., 20lb box of research papers). Ability to uphold the stress of traveling. Ability to uphold the stress of giving presentations.

Compensation and Benefits

This salary range for this position is between $50,000 and $60,000 and commensurable with experience. NEFE offers a generous employee benefits program that includes: vacation, sick and holiday leave; health, dental and vision insurance; contributions to defined contribution retirement plans; and a host of additional benefits.

Application Instructions

Please email your resume and cover letter with "Research Fellow" in the subject line to hr@nefe.org.

No phone calls. Application materials must be received by 5:00 pm MDT on Friday, November 13.