About Aurora Sustainable Lands

General Summary: Aurora Sustainable Lands (Aurora) is seeking a Forest Sustainability Manager to support the company’s Carbon Operations Team. This role will have responsibility for Aurora’s stakeholder engagement, reporting on sustainability and impact, biodiversity tracking, monitoring, and monetization, and mission-aligned partnerships to enhance the community, economic, and ecological value of our lands. These strategic initiatives are critical to Aurora’s continued success and contribute materially to the value proposition for our carbon projects. The successful candidate will have a unique mix of tactical and strategic skills, including familiarity with biodiversity and wildlife management, knowledge of forestry and nature-based climate solutions, and experience with community-based environmental management. Success will also require strong project management and interpersonal skills. This is an excellent opportunity for a mid-career professional seeking experience in private-sector forest conservation and exposure to forest carbon markets and large-tract management.

Primary Responsibilities and Competencies:

• Implement Aurora’s Stakeholder Engagement Plan by working with forestry consultants, developing project documentation, engaging with various property-level stakeholders, and developing a stakeholder engagement tracking framework.
• Expand Aurora’s biodiversity, habitat, and wildlife projects, including developing data collection methodologies for biodiversity indicators and coordinating with the geospatial team on data tracking.
• Generate and manage strategic partnerships on the properties in Aurora’s portfolio to enhance the community, economic, climate, and ecological values of Aurora’s forests. Partnerships can include universities, researchers, non-profits, governments, and community organizations.
• Project management of Aurora’s sustainability report, including annual impact reporting related to biodiversity, partnerships, and ecological projects, including the following frameworks: TNDF and LEAP, TCDF, SASB, and FSC, and carbon credit buyer and investor reporting.
• Communicate with Aurora’s investors, carbon credit buyers, media, and various other stakeholders on Aurora’s work related to biodiversity and partnerships.
• Support on of Aurora’s Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification through development of documentation and processes to meet operational standards under FSC and annual FSC audit support.

Required Education, Experience, and Certification:

• Having completed a bachelor's program with studies focused on forestry, environmental management, wildlife or natural resources, and/or sustainability.
• 3-5 years of professional experience in forestry, conservation, or natural resource fields.
• Experience facilitating meetings or workshops, ensuring alignment and productive outcomes among varied stakeholders.
• Comfortable working in dynamic environments, with the flexibility to adapt to shifting priorities and organizational needs.
• Proven experience in stakeholder coordination across multiple organizations, including managing timelines, expectations, and deliverables.
• Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to build trust and rapport with diverse external partners.
• Strong organizational and project management abilities, including experience with collaborative tools and cross-functional workflows.
• An enthusiasm for using environmental markets to address critical climate challenges.
• Willingness to travel to remote forest locations to communicate with stakeholders and engage with boots-on-the-ground project partners.

Preferred Education, Qualifications, and Experience:

• Having completed a graduate degree relevant to forestry, wildlife, and/or environmental management (e.g., Master of Forestry, Master of  Environmental Management, or Master of Science with a Forestry focus).
• Experience with geospatial information systems, remote sensing, and statistical analysis
• Awareness of trends and developments in biodiversity monitoring frameworks
• Familiarity with forestry concepts and terms
• A demonstrated strong background, keen interest, or past work experience in collecting and synthesizing ecological data of natural ecosystems

General Summary: The Portfolio and Systems Analyst is a remote position that will report to, Aurora’s Senior Director of Portfolio Management. This position will have the opportunity to develop analytical and professional skills in a fast-moving company focused on innovative forest management and land stewardship practices.

Primary Responsibilities and Competencies:

• Lead on - and work with Portfolio Management and Carbon Operations teams - in advancing forest management tools, timber inventory and growth projections, and support the development of a climate adaptation and resilience strategy across the Aurora portfolio
  • Create tools and systems to manage timber inventory and growth and yield
    • Develop growth and yield modeling systems
    • Integrate inventory update and maintenance systems across the organization
  • Develop processes and code (e.g. R) to improve systems and integration of our forest information system (Forest Information Portal (FIP)) and other data systems
  • Manage and administer Forest Accounting in the FIP platform
  • Support spatial team in the integration of data and systems
  • Support special projects and strategy
• Timberland and Portfolio modeling – harvest strategies and value optimization
• Contribute to initiatives of other Aurora teams, such as data visualization, dashboards, modeling, and property performance metrics with the Transactions team
• Forest inventory design, analysis, and reporting

Secondary Responsibilities:

• Evaluate and support modeling of silvicultural prescriptions, harvest locations, and volumes for timber planning in coordination with carbon team
• Work with portfolio management and carbon teams to optimize revenue mix between carbon credits and timber harvesting while ensuring compliance with existing carbon project protocols
  • Support strategy on developing proactive applications of the harvest analysis process, incorporating spatial, financial, and biometric forest and carbon data to optimize harvest activity and support harvest decision-making
• Engage with Transactions and Carbon teams on forest inventory, forest management direction, carbon analysis, and valuation
• Assist with annual FSC audit efforts
• Work with Portfolio Management team on generating and facilitating partnership opportunities benefiting value growth, biodiversity, wildlife, habitats, community education, and more

Required Education, Experience and Certification:

• Bachelor’s degree in forestry, environmental science, economics, or a related field
• A graduate degree in Forestry or Forest Sciences with an emphasis in biometrics is preferred by not required.
• 3+ years of experience in forest analytics, growth and yield, valuation, and timberland modeling. Experience in carbon project modeling/program maintenance, and ecosystem service markets is preferred.
• The ideal candidate will be experienced with FVS (Forest Vegetation Simulator), FIA (Forest Inventory and Analysis) datasets, carbon modeling, remote sensing and ESRI mapping software, and carbon project programs.
• Experience in programming languages such as, R and Python are also preferred.
• This is considered a mid-level role with immense opportunities for growth and development.

Skills:

• Excellent written and oral communication skills
• Comfortable presenting to an audience
• Highly effective analytical skills
• The Portfolio and Systems Analyst must be self-directed, goal-oriented, and accustomed to time and budget constraints.
• The candidate must be comfortable interacting with outside investors, consultants, and contractors and be willing and able to travel, as necessary.
• Finally, the successful candidate must be client service oriented and will have the professional presence and demeanor to be a member of one of the country’s leading timberland investment and management companies.