Almost two years ago – after spending the summer professionally and personally recalibrating – I landed at EF Education First, where I took a role with Cultural Care Au Pair as the Vice President of Marketing.

At the time, most of my friends and peers had the same reaction to this move. A furrowed brow, cocked head, and the question “What? Why would you want to go work for an au pair company?”

Which was a reasonable reaction, given that I had just come out of starting Heart – a business that was pretty much the polar opposite of Cultural Care Au Pair in nearly every way.

On paper, this was not a sexy or obvious move for me. And to those close to me, it just didn’t make a lot of sense.

But what I told them, was this…

The Biggest Opportunities (as a marketer or a creative person) come not from going the expected route – working for established brands, already making beautiful things, where your job is to not screw up the existing work.

The biggest Opportunities exist within those companies where there is this perfect combination of need, desire, ambition, and the runway to make something happen.

I didn’t want to inherit a beautiful machine. I wanted to create one.

And this role – hell, this whole company – met that desire head on.

In fact, as I found out AFTER I formally joined EF, this is an ethos (almost to the word) that is core to the company as a whole.

One of the ways we evaluate a company is by looking at the work they have done in the past. If that sucks, we naturally discount that company as a place of opportunity. And usually that’s a safe bet.

The irony of this approach however, is that such companies are often the ones that most need it.

And I can tell you that this isn’t just some recruiting bluster. This is real. This is what we believe. This is who we are.

To that end, we’re working on building a team that no one expects us to build. We’re pulling people from startups, from agencies, from brands, and we’re giving them real opportunities to create real things and effect real change in real people’s lives.

As Joel again puts it:

[those who join us] will be the originators of that transformation. The founding architects of work that future creatives around the world will someday look up to—wishing they too could have had such opportunities.

I tell people during interviews, that there are two kinds of people in this world. People who want to kick down doors, and people who want to walk through doors that have already been kicked down.

We’re looking for some door-kicker-downers. Join us?

Here are some current openings:

• Junior Developer (Boston)
  

• Director of Technology (Boston)
  

• Senior Front End Developer (Boston)
  

• UX/UI Designer (Boston)
  

And there are lots more roles here

If you’re interested in any of the above positions, reach out to me directly, and I can get you in front of the right people.