The Santa Fe Institute at 1399 Hyde Park Road in Santa Fe. Courtesy/SFI
SFI News:
The Santa Fe Institute is seeking an uncommon leader to guide the world-renowned nonprofit research and education center. Dr. Jeremy Sabloff will retire in August 2015 after serving two 3-year terms leading the Institute.
The President is responsible for defining and implementing a strategic vision to continue and extend the Institute’s leadership in computational and theoretical research within and across the natural and social sciences, while building bridges to the humanities. The President will strengthen the Institute’s impact in science broadly understood, raise its public presence, increase its global reach through education initiatives, and extend its financial well-being to protect its intellectual fabric from the vagaries of fashion and economic climate.
In partnership with the Resident Faculty, the President will cultivate key relationships with the Institute’s scientific community, including the External Faculty, Science Board, and Business Network, to augment existing research and outreach programs. He or she will extend the mission of the Institute by identifying new frontiers of scientific inquiry in need of the Institute’s integrative practice of science. Such endeavors are inherently high-risk and therefore require long lead times and stable sources of funding. The President reports to the Board of Trustees and will ensure the overall organizational effectiveness of the Institute with the support of in-house leadership in science, education, advancement, and administration.
The successful candidate to lead this complex and highly diverse academic enterprise has an established record of effective leadership in a dynamic academic, business, or government environment predicated on multiple scholarly perspectives. The critical competencies for success are:
Academic Leadership. The candidate should be an accomplished broad and synthetic thinker, capable of understanding and communicating the research pursued at the Institute, connecting its many threads, and conveying its excitement.
Organizational Capacity. The candidate has the ability to function in a culture where intellectual acuity is highly valued, to evaluate its existing capabilities, and to develop effective approaches for addressing gaps and opportunities. This will require the ability to motivate and lead faculty, postdocs, and staff through operational change, to communicate expectations in an inspiring way, and to drive accountability at both the team and individual levels.
Advancement Skills. The candidate is capable of inspiring and cultivating an ecology of supporters ranging from individual donors to foundations to corporations to federal agencies with a compelling long-term plan that positions the Institute as a unique center critical to our understanding of a complex world.
To apply, send a curriculum vitae and an informative cover letter to 2015president@santafe.edu. While e-mail submissions are highly preferred, applicants may fax materials, questions or requests for assistance to 505.982.0565. The Santa Fe Institute is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
The Santa Fe Institute
Since its founding in 1984, the Santa Fe Institute has pioneered a new practice of science by creating a unique research environment that rejects disciplinary boundaries. Here, leading scientists from many fields collaborate in search of fundamental principles that govern physical, biological, social, and informational organization at all scales. In this quest, the Institute supports and trains an emergent generation of scientists steeped in the study of interconnected systems and comfortable in the methods of many fields.
