Traumatic, Hostile, Overworked, Underappreciated - Avis employé Vice President Voting Rights Lab

WFH, state law and policy, legislative advocacy and partnerships. Full of very high performing and hard working colleagues.

I've had to get used to using Slack a lot. I love the flexibility of working from home, but I'm starting to wish for more face-to-face time with colleagues. VRL is working on creating more opportunities to get together.

Voting Rights Lab is a powerful source of research and resources for the national voting rights movement. It has great connections to grassroots groups (i.e. actual voters) in a number of states, and that's important in this line of work. As a work environment, I believe that those in leadership positions care about their employees and want to see them succeed, although some are definitely better about that than others. Pay and benefits are generally strong, and everyone I know is able to maintain a good work/life balance. In some of the areas with the biggest concerns (operations and HR), strong hires have been made to try and address them, and I definitely see progress being made.

Organizational stability has been hard to come by at times. A lack of organizational direction has led to some missed opportunities and cross-department confusion, and the desire to "do more" has sometimes conflicted with staff capacity and Voting Rights Lab's actual strengths. Otherwise, turnover has been an issue.