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Are you a marketing or design researcher/strategist, ready to use your behavioral expertise to tackle some of the world’s toughest challenges? Join Appleseed and create lasting social and environmental impact in communities across the globe.

🌍 This is a remote position with travel required. You may be based anywhere.

Appleseed is building an inner circle of seasoned behavioral strategists who are also skilled researchers and client partners. This is not an academic or theoretical role: our consultants deliver B2B client services, leading field-driven research and crafting human-centered strategies that stick. We work only with nonprofits and funders fighting poverty and/or protecting the planet. This role requires behavioral insight, leadership & storytelling ability, and a deep commitment to continuous learning.

We are seeking to fill a full-time Core Team role with significant ownership and influence in shaping Appleseed’s craft and culture. This opportunity begins with a ~4-month freelance project to explore mutual fit.

  • Role Type: Full-time (starting as Freelance Consultant)

  • Location & Start Date: See project brief below

  • First Project Duration & Fee: 4–6 months for first project; USD $16,000–$20,000 (negotiable; part-time)

  • Core Team Salary Range: $87,000–$122,000 (growth potential to earn >$152,000)

  • Work Week: 4-day week (Thursdays off)

  • Benefits: 30 additional PTO days (178 annual workdays), paid international travel, stipends for workspace, professional development, and if needed, healthcare

Feel free to apply even if you are unavailable for a project immediately. We'd be happy to explore a fit now, so when the right project opportunity comes up, we can team up with no delay!

Why Appleseed?

🌍 Appleseed is a behavioral agency for global development. We are obsessed with one big problem across the sector: important solutions failing to stick.

Our clients are fighting to end poverty or protect the planet. When they struggle to engage people or drive uptake of a service, product, or idea, they and/or their funders will put us on the case. Appleseed consultants dive deep—taking an ethnographic approach to investigate the challenge and uncover human insights. Then we help our clients design accordingly and bring about changes required for impact.

We envision a day when all impact organizations design purely based on people’s needs and realities. We partner only with nonprofits and funders who seek to preserve human dignity as they go about fostering change within communities. See how we have enabled:

What you’ll find here:

  • Field-based work that is meaningful, challenging, and real

  • A small, candid, curious team with high standards and low ego

  • Real ownership and client partnership from day one

  • A flexible, learning-rich culture that prizes rigor and honesty

Want to learn more? Meet us at appleseedimpact.org/team

Upcoming Project Briefing

All projects begin with part-time remote prep (onboarding, lit review, stakeholder interviews, research design), followed by 2–3 weeks of full-time in-country fieldwork, then part-time remote work for reporting and strategy.

Each project has two consultants: a Lead and a Deputy. For this first engagement, you’d start as Deputy, with a Core Team Lead managing the project. If there's a strong mutual fit, you’ll partner closely with the Lead to co-own the work — with increasing leadership and client management responsibility.

Malawi Project We’re partnering with a client organization in Malawi to help children in schools across the country build math and reading skills with tablet-based instruction. We’ll explore what shapes how teachers and school leaders perceive, trust, and use the tablets — and what motivates or hinders sustained use. The goal: build a behaviorally grounded strategy to strengthen adoption and engagement.

  • Duration: 4–6 weeks part-time remote → 2–3 weeks in-country → 4–6 weeks part-time remote

  • Time zones: Requires cross-time-zone collaboration

  • Start date: September 2025

  • Fee: USD $16,000–$20,000

More projects are on the horizon — working on soil health, clean water, restoring eyesight, and more. If this one isn’t the right fit, apply anyway to explore future roles.

The Role: What You'll Do

As a Behavioral Researcher, Strategist, and Client Partner, you’ll be responsible for:

  • Field research: Lead or support in-depth field research in low-resource settings using immersive qualitative methods (contextual interviews, observation, journey mapping, shadowing, co-creation sessions)

  • Synthesis: Synthesize motivators and barriers into behavioral diagnoses using Appleseed’s methodology, similar to COM-B, EAST, CBSM, or Fogg

  • Deliverables & Storytelling: Craft clear, persuasive, narrative-driven strategy deliverables — including frameworks, visuals, decision-making tools, and client playbooks; and tell stories that move clients to act and help them align their teams

  • Intervention design: Design interventions ranging from messaging to org change, habit formation, environment design, product and service design, and more.

  • Client success: Guide clients through insights, ambiguity, and hard choices, acting as a genuine thought partner; Build long-term client relationships based on trust and candor

  • Team and project management: upholding Appleseed's values and ensuring clear, on-time, on-budget, and impactful delivery with yourself, teammates, and freelancers

  • Internal leadership and learning: Contribute to Appleseed’s evolving craft, methods, and culture

Who We’re Looking For 🦸

We want senior generalists who combine analytical sharpness, strong communication, and field fluency. Specifically, people who can:

  • Apply behavioral frameworks to real-world problems in clear, actionable ways

  • Lead research in unpredictable, low-resource contexts with composure and agility

  • Diagnose root causes and craft strategic recommendations that land

  • Turn messy insights into crisp, persuasive narratives clients can rally around

  • Manage and build trust with clients as true partners

  • Work independently and collaboratively across time zones

  • Adapt quickly, lead calmly under stress, and foster team resilience

We especially want to hear from those who have played roles like:

  • Communications strategist or insights lead in mission-driven orgs

  • Narrative strategist or messaging lead in social campaigns

  • Behavioral or UX researcher with in-field experience

  • Co-founder of a startup that achieved product-market fit

In this round we’re especially eager to meet people with proven strength in field-based research, behavioral diagnosis and strategy, or storytelling — even if your title has never said “design.”

This Role Won’t be a Fit If... 🚩

  • Your behavioral experience is mostly academic or theoretical, rather than practical

  • You're looking for an entry-level or mid-level position

  • You cannot name several different teams that you’d be happy for us to call and ask about how you’ve collaborated and added value

  • Adventure isn’t in your DNA

  • You’d be very uncomfortable in settings with limited infrastructure or resources during 2-3 research trips per year (e.g. spending a few nights in a village or urban slum without running water, electricity, or a toilet, while dealing with mosquitoes and the risk of stomach bugs)

  • You avoid feedback or find open, candid discussion uncomfortable

  • You prefer writing reports over shaping persuasive strategy and storytelling

  • You take significant pride in being a perfectionist or workaholic

  • This section rubs you the wrong way

Please DO Apply If… ✅

  • Practical behavior change (however you call it) is your craft, and it has been for many years, approaching or exceeding a decade or more. You enjoy and practice all aspects (research, strategy, design), and you always start with the audience

  • If you’ve worked as a consultant, you’ve built authentic and lasting relationships with your clients

  • You’d like to join a small remote team doing hard things, and to participate in its growth

  • You thrive in small tight-knit groups, and would help tighten the knitting

  • You’re a generalist, even if you’re very good at certain things

  • There is no work you consider beneath you

  • You’re always seeking wisdom

  • You consider feedback a gift, even when it is hard to give or receive

  • You enjoy working in the field, and as a leader you’re calm, grounded, and able to adapt when things go sideways

  • While you’re more of a leader than a follower, you’re certainly able to follow as well

  • You’re an avid reader and would be excited to join Appleseed’s Book Club

How to Apply

We run a transparent hiring process designed to ensure mutual fit and show you what it’s like to work with us. Feel free to suggest other steps, and we’d also welcome your feedback on the candidate experience:

  1. Questionnaire to help us understand your experience and goals

  2. Interview (45 min) to explore your behavior change expertise and mutual interestmutual interest

  3. Simulations: 1. Conduct, synthesize, and report on an interview with a volunteer; 2. Provide feedback for a mock client

  4. Conversations & Reference checks to answer questions, ensure a great fit, and come to terms

We know this process will require time and energy investment from both sides, but we think it behooves us to do so to seriously explore a fit. Appleseed is building an inner circle of trusted collaborators. If successful, you may expect this one-time exploration of fit to translate into years of fruitful collaboration!

Ready to apply? Click 'Apply' and complete the questionnaire.

Thanks for your interest — we look forward to meeting you!

Benefits

Compensation

  • If you join the Core Team after a successful initial engagement revealing mutual fit and interest:

    • starting annual salary will range between USD $87,000 - $122,000. Clear growth path to earning over $152,000.

    • 178 Total Annual Work Days (vs. global averages of 225-244 work days)

      • 4 day workweek: we treat Thursdays as weekend days

      • 30 additional PTO days for vacation/sick/holiday

    • paid international travel to conduct meaningful fieldwork + annual team retreat and conferences

    • annual stipends for workspace upgrades, professional development, and healthcare if needed.

  • Initial project fee in the range of USD $16,000 - 20,000 (negotiable), which includes all applicable taxes. This fee does not include travel expenses, which Appleseed will cover.