Host: City of Sacramento – Office of Climate Action & Sustainability
Openings: 1
Project Focus: Climate Adaptation (e.g., sea level rise planning, environmental justice, climate migration planning), Climate Mitigation
Skills Needed: Project Management, Public Speaking, Community Outreach, Environmental Justice,

Remote or On-Site Placement

Hybrid – The CivicSpark Fellow should expect to work in the office 2 days per week on average. The Fellow should expect to attend in-person outreach and engagement events as needed (e.g., Highwater Jamboree, Arbor Day, Earth Day, project-specific events, etc.). These events may take place outside normal working hours (e.g., evenings and weekends).

Service Needs & Plans

The City of Sacramento’s Office of Climate Action and Sustainability (OCAS) works across City departments and with external partners to coordinate equitable implementation of sustainability initiatives. OCAS works within the City to develop a sustainability culture among staff, and with the broader Sacramento community to encourage behavior change and neighborhood resiliency. As a relatively new office, OCAS is still building key relationships and engagement practices to facilitate this work. While OCAS works across all sustainability topics, many of OCAS’ current projects focus on urban forestry, building electrification, and climate adaptation / disaster preparedness.

Project Description

The CivicSpark Fellow selected for this role in OCAS would have two main projects:

Community Engagement: OCAS is about to implement multiple large-scale grants to support urban forestry, disaster preparedness, and neighborhood resilience.

1. The OCAS Fellow will support the outreach efforts for these grants, including coordinating event logistics, preparing outreach materials, and conducting the engagement efforts.
2. The community engagement work will include tree planting events, trash pick-up events, disaster preparedness trainings, community conversations regarding adaptation of the City’s transportation infrastructure, youth engagement, and general neighborhood engagement. These community engagement efforts aim to share the information and resources to facilitate climate action capacity and long-term change within the Sacramento community.
3. The OCAS Fellow will support the development of the planning materials that are the focus of the broader engagement efforts in order to build continuity and clarity into the engagement work.
4. The OCAS Fellow will track community engagement and associated key metrics, including participation, deliverables, and lessons learned.

City staff engagement:

1. Staff Sustainability Training (SST): The OCAS 2023-24 CivicSpark Fellow developed an initial SST that is being piloted with the City’s Green Team. The 2024-25 Fellow will build upon this SST to incorporate additional interactive elements before leading a campaign to promote staff participation in the SST in April 2025. This SST aims to create a strong sustainability culture among staff and show how all City staff play a role in climate action, including those that do not explicitly have sustainability within their job descriptions.
2. Other internal trainings: The OCAS Fellow will research and facilitate trainings / informational sessions for City staff to build understanding and capacity on how staff can engage and expand their sustainability-related work.

Desired Skills

The ideal Fellow will enjoy organizing and implementing outreach and educational events, have an ability to “translate” climate action topics into accessible and actionable information, and be able to work effectively individually or as part of a team. Fellows should have strong communication skills (verbal and written), outreach and engagement experience, and project management skills. Bilingual capabilities are desired to support more accessible and inclusive engagement.

Organization & Workplace Highlights

Home to 500,000 residents and known as the City of Trees, the City of Sacramento has a long-standing commitment to foster sustainability in government operations and community activities. The Fellow will work within OCAS, a small team in the Public Works Department. OCAS collaborates extensively with other staff across the City (e.g., Public Works, Community Development, Utilities). The OCAS Site Supervisor is a CivicSpark alumna – with this understanding of the CivicSpark fellowship, our team will support our Fellow in pursuing career and personal development opportunities throughout the fellowship.

Community Highlights

Home to 500,000 residents and known as the River City or City of Trees, the City of Sacramento has a long-standing commitment to foster sustainability in government operations and community activities. It is said that living in Sacramento can feel like living in a park as Sacramento is the greenest city in the States and ranks third in the world on tree canopy coverage. The City is just few hours from San Francisco and Lake Tahoe with a Mediterranean climate and well known for its local farms that cater to the area chefs providing farm-to-table delights.

The City also prides itself in being one of America’s most diverse cities. With leadership from the City’s Office of Diversity and Equity, the City is committed to becoming a more diverse and equitable organization in assessing, evaluating, and building infrastructure, operations, policy, and programs that establish systemic capacity and results in workforce equity.