Blog:

Things we’re thinking, saying, doing

Curious Shapes is a consultancy working at the intersection of democracy, digital rights, and international civil society. We’re building a cross-regional incubator for activists, artists, technologists, and civic entrepreneurs who believe democracy can be more responsive, more creative, and more worth fighting for and connecting them across borders so they can learn from each other and build together. The program runs peer learning networks, an intensive fellowship, and a project incubation fund across Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

We're growing the team and the network. Right now we're looking for:

Paid Roles

Join the network

Join The Updraft — an open call for organizers, creatives, technologists, and civic entrepreneurs doing this work. Membership is open, and paid roles and opportunities grow from here.
Nominate someone for the Global Democracy Innovators Council, a select group helping shape the program.

Openings

Global Programs Manager

We're looking for a program manager who can manage a lot of moving parts, work in an organized and systematic way, communicate clearly across very different cultural and political contexts, and who will bring genuine care for the communities we're working with and excitement to all aspects of the program.

The Role

The program manager is a key operations role. The program has strong strategic leadership and a network of engaged contributors, but it runs on logistics, documentation, and the thousand small coordination decisions that hold a complex program together. This is the person who makes sure nothing falls through the cracks and takes pride in meticulously tracking timelines and documenting project outcomes. This is not a purely administrative role. The PM will be genuinely embedded in the work, have real relationships with participants and contributors across the program, and care about what the program is trying to do. We're also looking for someone who understands that this role isn't about executing a fixed plan — a lot of what makes this program work depends on someone who can track and make sense of what's happening across a complex, fast-moving set of activities and feed that back into how decisions get made. Rigor and adaptability are both requirements. There is room to grow as things develop.

Responsibilities

Program delivery support

Coordinating outreach and recruitment for programs, curriculum logistics, mentor scheduling, project milestone tracking through the incubation phase, and support for a multi-day in-person convening bringing together 50+ participants from across target regions.

Logistics and coordination

Managing scheduling, platform setup, and participant communications across multiple time zones and languages. This includes scheduling group calls across timezones, sharing agendas and relevant information, coordinating with guest speakers, arranging for translation when necessary, recording and documenting meeting outcomes, and making sure sessions happen without friction.

Participant tracking and compliance

Maintaining recruitment pipelines, participant records, and the documentation required for grants compliance and sanctions vetting.

Financial administration

Supporting fund disbursement to program participants and consultants, collecting payment information, working closely with the Finance Officer on payments, and tracking expenditures against budget. Experience navigating international transfers or working with organizations in multiple countries is useful.

Communications, reporting and documentation

Systematically collecting program information across activities including participant data, session outputs, project updates, emerging case studies and coordinating with the communications lead and research lead to make sure that material flows into newsletters, grant reports, and the program's flagship research.

What We're Looking For

5-7 years of experience managing complex global programs and communities
Strong communication skills and comfort working across time zones, cultures, and in multilingual environments; You need to be good at communicating clearly when things are complicated.
Strong organizational instincts without rigidity as this program requires flexibility and judgment, not just process-following.
Familiarity with the kinds of contexts we work in: activists operating under surveillance, movements in countries with internet shutdowns, creatives facing censorship and repression.
Experience with grants administration or financial tracking, including familiarity with international disbursement and compliance requirements
Solid project management fundamentals such as timeline-building and workstream tracking and a genuine interest in the tools that make that easier. If you have opinions about project management software, we want to hear them.
Comfort with technology and curiosity about how it shapes the contexts we work in is useful. Experience with digital security tools, civic tech, or creative skills are a genuine bonus; we're a small team that values people who make things.
Professional-level English proficiency; Additional language skills relevant to our target regions (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Swahili, Amharic, Burmese) a plus
Ability to overlap working hours with both Eastern Africa Time (EAT) and Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), Availability for occasional calls outside standard hours to accommodate participants in Asia (SGT/UTC+8) is expected.
We're a team of curious, unconventional people and we value that in others. We’re looking for someone who brings genuine curiosity, a sense of humor, and interesting perspectives/skills/experience to the work.

Working With Us

Curious Shapes is a small, values-driven team. We work hard on things we think matter, and we try to build an environment where people can do their best work without burning out and while having fun.

This role is structured as a consultancy, currently at roughly 80% time (4 work days a week), with the possibility of growing as the program does. We care about the work, not hours logged, so we are very flexible with the right candidate about the schedule. We also build in and encourage space each year for a personal project, creative pursuit, or learning goal, because we think people do better work when they have room for that. We also want to provide access to workshops, training, and professional development opportunities relevant to the democracy, digital rights, and civil society space, as well as learning that happens through the program itself such as exposure to the amazing creatives, social entrepreneurs and activists involved in our networks.

We welcome applications from candidates in all countries; please note that legal constraints may apply in certain jurisdictions.

About Curious Shapes:

Curious Shapes is a strategy, research, and communications consultancy working at the intersection of democracy, digital rights, and international civil society. We work with activists, movements, and organizations that are doing serious work in difficult political environments, helping them think strategically, communicate effectively, and connect with others doing similar work across borders.

We are an all-women team with deep experience in restrictive contexts across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and beyond. Our work spans commissioned research and strategy, communications, and program design and management. We believe the most durable democratic change comes from movements and communities, and that our job is to support and amplify that work.

Curious Shapes operates as:

A consultancy doing commissioned research, strategy, and communications for organizations working on democracy, digital rights, and civic space
A program incubator that designs and runs initiatives connecting civil society across regions
A research and documentation hub producing accessible analysis for practitioners and funders
A convener, building communities of practice around shared challenges in the democracy and internet freedom space

Our Approach

Curious Shapes approaches this work empirically and without a predetermined playbook. We are interested in what actually strengthens democratic resilience and what builds durable organizations, sustains movements through repression, and connects people across borders in ways that produce real solidarity rather than performative exchange. We bring that same orientation to program design: we test things, document what works and what doesn't, and try to build programming that learns from itself.

How to Apply

Fill out our application form here. The application deadline is Aug 20, but we're recruiting on a rolling basis so we encourage applicants to apply before the deadline.

Please submit all application materials in English. We will try to accommodate extension requests made before the deadline and up to seven days beyond it. We are generally not able to accommodate requests made on or after the deadline, or requests for more than seven days, in order to be fair to all applicants.

For questions, email jobs@curiousshapes.org

Research Lead, The Updraft (Part-time consultancy)

This project is built on the premise that the creativity and energy needed to push back against authoritarianism already exists, in the organizers, artists, technologists, and civic entrepreneurs doing remarkable work around the world. Our job is to find them, resource them, and connect them.

The Updraft is a cross-regional democracy incubator that runs peer learning networks, a fellowship, project incubation, and an annual summit. We're hiring three regional facilitators, one each for Africa, Asia, and Latin America & the Caribbean, to be the human connective tissue of the network in their region.

This role is for someone already embedded in movement, organizing, or civil society work who wants to bring that experience and their relationships to building something across borders. You are not managing from the outside. You know these communities because you're part of them.

What you'll be doing

Documenting stories of impact and change from across the network, through interviews, observation, and conversation with participants
Collecting feedback and insight in real time, so the program can adapt as it goes
Working with the team to develop meaningful ways to track impact
Interviewing participants doing extraordinary work in difficult contexts and documenting their successes and challenges
Working closely with the regional facilitators, communications lead, and wider team so learning flows through the whole program
Helping shape the annual summit and participating in it as a documenter and contributor
Leading the program's flagship final report, along with case studies and shorter pieces along the way

What we're looking for

Experience in qualitative research, documentation, journalism, or a mix, ideally in democracy, human rights, civil society, or adjacent fields
Strong writing that a non-specialist would want to read, not just a report that sits on a shelf (or in a pdf)
Skill and sensitivity interviewing people in politically sensitive or high-risk contexts
Comfort designing lightweight, honest ways to capture impact for work that resists easy measurement
Curiosity and genuine interest in the people and movements you'll be documenting
Creativity and range, whether that's multimedia, storytelling, data, or something we haven't thought of
Professional-level English; other languages relevant to our regions a strong plus (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Swahili, Amharic, Burmese)

Working with us

Curious Shapes is a small, values-driven team that takes the work seriously and ourselves less so. This is a part-time contract role with flexible scheduling, though it requires some overlap with the wider network across time zones. Compensation is based on prior relevant experience and cost of living. We welcome applicants from all countries; legal constraints may apply in certain jurisdictions.

Fill out the application form here, and for questions email jobs@curiousshapes.org.

Join The Updraft

The creativity and energy needed to push back against authoritarianism already exists, in the organizers, artists, technologists, and civic entrepreneurs doing remarkable work around the world. The Updraft is where they find each other.

We're a global network for people defending and reinventing democracy across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, who know this moment calls for more creativity, more experimentation, and deeper connection across borders. We run peer learning, a fellowship, project incubation, and an annual summit. Underneath all of it is a community of people doing genuinely exciting work who want to find their counterparts elsewhere.

We're opening the doors. If you're building, organizing, making, or thinking hard about how democracy survives and gets more interesting where you are, we want to know you. Joining is an open invitation, not a job application. Some involvement is paid and some is collaborative, and as the program grows, we build opportunities and paid roles around the people we meet here. We can't promise everyone a role, but this is where we look first.

The form takes about five minutes.

For questions, email info@curiousshapes.org

Nominate someone for the Global Democracy Innovators Council

The Global Democracy Innovators Council is a small group of remarkable people helping shape The Updraft: organizers, creatives, technologists, and entrepreneurs from around the world doing the kind of democracy work this program exists to support. Council members guide the program, lend their expertise and networks, and represent The Updraft publicly. It's a real commitment, and a paid one.

We do most of our recruitment directly, but we don't want to miss the people we haven't met yet. If someone comes to mind, tell us about them. You can nominate someone else or put yourself forward.

Nomination form here.