Innovation Hub Program Navigator - Military veterans preferred

Position Details

Position Summary

Portland State University is on the frontline of developing new ideas, technologies and programming that focus on addressing the major issues of the 21st century. Propel PSU believes entrepreneurship and commercialization increase the impact of innovative ideas. That’s why we partner with students, faculty members and client companies—to provide the wrap-around = resources and support that grow ideas into positive impacts that transform Portland and beyond.

Portland State University facilitates and hosts the Metro Region Innovation Hub (the Hub), which launched in Summer 2024. Funded by Business Oregon and other community partners, the Hub serves the tri-county Metro area and provides regional entrepreneurs from all sectors, backgrounds, and business stages with accessible paths to all existing regional resources in networking, coaching, education, and capital access in order to foster and grow innovation-based businesses. An invisible driver of success for many entrepreneurial ecosystems is local connectors who know what resources are available and the criteria for accessing them, and who regularly talk to entrepreneurs and provide intros to access those resources. For many communities, however, there are too few of those people, disparities in who can access those people (e.g. in terms of race and gender), and the labor for people who take on those roles is often informal and uncompensated. The Hub directly invests in that driver with a closely coordinated team of visible and knowledgeable Navigators that any entrepreneur can easily and equitably access.

The Hub Navigators will fill this role for the Hub. Navigators will, at a high level, acquire and maintain relationships with and knowledge of regional ecosystem resources and providers, meet and assess the needs of individuals and small companies in the region, refer or case-manage those entrepreneurs to regional resources and providers, and follow up with these engagements to ensure and “map” out what is most effective. They will also drive resource deployment in other Hub programs by uncovering emergent needs among entrepreneurs in the region. Navigators should be familiar with the Hub’s service priorities for both innovation-based, traded sector businesses and for equity and accessibility for communities who may not have known about or taken advantage of regional resources. Navigators should have excellent cross-cultural communication competence.

Navigators serve as leaders and experts for the Hub programs, managing unique and challenging issues that have significant impact on the Hub and the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem. They may lead other employees and students in executing these programs. Their work will be guided by overall objectives but may have minimal day to day supervision, and they will need to make decisions with a high level of professional judgment based on loose guidelines. Keeping a current inventory of ecosystem resources and guiding people and small companies through them requires complex and specialized knowledge and execution, and each task and engagement may be diverse and unpredictable. The ability to flexibly and creatively adapt technical know-how to novel situations is a must. They will help set Hub objectives and related milestones in collaboration with the Hub director and oversight board. Successful navigators will be highly organized and milestone-driven, but also natural connectors and able to easily translate between “entrepreneurship”, “business”, and “normal” ways of addressing innovative and business ideas.

In accordance with the AAUP collective bargaining agreement this position is open only to current PSU AAUP academic professionals. Article 17 Section 11 refers.

Contributes to a culture of environmental stewardship, practices resource conservation, and actively works toward achieving long-term sustainability goals.

Salary is dependent on several factors, and new employees will typically start around the Q1 level to allow for later growth within the salary band. PSU has a structured process for determining starting compensation, taking into account years of related experience, applicable skills, knowledge and abilities, market parity, and internal equity.

The approved starting salary range for this position is between $63,816 and $80,000.

An excellent benefits package includes 95% premium paid healthcare; a generous retirement and vacation package; and reduced tuition rates for employee, spouse or dependent at any of the Oregon University System schools.

Please visit our total compensation calculator to see the full value of our benefits package.

Search Details