Careers at American Ancestors

Who We Are:  

American Ancestors is a national center for family history, heritage & culture based on Newbury Street in Boston and one of the world’s top destinations for family history research, according to USA Today. It is the global brand of New England Historic Genealogical Society, America’s oldest and largest genealogical society, founded in 1845. American Ancestors serves more than 500,000 members and subscribers and millions of online users engaged in family history nationally and around the world through its website AmericanAncestors.org with more than ten billion names in its databases.

With spaces and resources dedicated to advancing family history, including the Brim-DeForest Library, the Family Heritage Experience, the R. Stanton Avery Special Collections, the Brue Family Learning Center, the 10 Million Names Project, and the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center, we also maintain a publishing division that produces original genealogical research, scholarship, and educational materials. We strive to connect with our members and the public in meaningful ways, serving as respected expert genealogists and historians who care deeply about helping people.

The Role:  

Under the direction of the Chief Advancement Officer, the Major Gifts Officer will manage a portfolio of major gift prospects to support the vital work of American Ancestors. Using moves management and prospect tracking strategies, the Major Gifts Officer is responsible for the identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitation, recognition, and stewardship of assigned donors. 

Primary Responsibilities Include:

• Manage a portfolio of 120+ active and discovery prospects and execute cultivation, solicitation and stewardship strategies for each.
• Responsible for the meaningful cultivation and solicitation of capital campaign and annual giving donors, including face-to-face visits, as well as email, telephone, and mail communications. Goal of 10 face-to-face donor visits per month, with an emphasis on cultivating new support.
• Participate in events, programs and activities for donor outreach, cultivation and stewardship
• Manage a “moves management” program in your portfolio with a focus on cultivating, rating, soliciting, and stewarding gifts.
• Document all cultivation and solicitation activities with prospects/donors and employ prospect clearance policies. Maintain accurate and timely records of all activities in donor database.
• Work with the CAO to identify and strategize giving options and to structure gifts that accommodate donor interests and meet institutional needs/opportunities.
• Ensure that gifts are recorded, acknowledged, and recognized in a timely and appropriate manner.
• Collaboration with the team and across other departments will be important to create a strong and continuous portfolio.
• Provide additional assistance to Executive Leadership Team members and members of the Advancement team as requested.

Skills & Qualifications:  

• Minimum of 7+ years of progressively responsible experience in fundraising, with a proven track record of securing individual major gifts at the $100,000 level and higher.
• Experience using a donor database, prospect research and other wealth screening tools to support moves management process.
• Develop compelling proposals and gift strategies, including understanding various giving vehicles and planned giving options.
• Exemplary oral and written communications skills are necessary
• Ability to manage several development activities and strategies simultaneously while maintaining timeframes.
• Must have strong organizational and project management skills, as well as the ability to establish priorities and apply available information and resources to complete assignments on a timely basis.
• Excellent social skills and ability to relate to persons from many different backgrounds.
• Significant administrative work, including travel planning, itinerary building, correspondence, and accurate and timely documentation of all work.
• Experience with using Tessitura highly desirable
• Experience with using Microsoft’s Office 365 suite required
• Interest in genealogy, history or related subject matter is a plus.

Education Level:  

• Bachelor’s degree.   

This exciting opportunity is a full time; exempt position located at our headquarters on Newbury Street in Boston. Some of the outstanding benefits include medical, dental, vision, disability, life insurance, generous paid time off, paid holidays, Employee Assistance Program, tuition reimbursement, FSA, 403(b) Retirement plan, and so much more!

Salary: $109,200

To Apply 

Please send resume and a compelling cover letter to, Michelle Major, Director of Human Resources michelle.major@americanancestors.org

Please include your last name and MGO in the subject line. 

No phone calls please.

American Ancestors seeks a dynamic and creative School Programs Coordinator to inspire the next generation of family historians through engaging onsite student and teacher programs at our national headquarters in Boston. Reporting to the School Programs & Curriculum Director, this position plays a central role in supporting the continued growth of the American Ancestors Youth Education Program.

This includes supporting the implementation of our Family History Curriculum, the Young Family Historians Essay Contest, and virtual and onsite field trips. This position will also assist with the planning, facilitating, and supporting our teacher professional development program. Our programs align with local and national social studies standards and inquiry-based instructional practices for students in grades 4-12.

The Youth Education Program at American Ancestors is grounded in the belief that genealogy should be accessible to all students, regardless of their background or family configuration. Our programs empower students to think like historians to better understand themselves, their communities, and the broader human experience. This is an in-person position at our Boston office.

Some of our outstanding benefits include medical, dental, vision, very generous paid time off, paid holidays, employee assistance program, retirement 403b, and much more! 
 

Key Responsibilities:

• Research, develop, pilot, facilitate, and evaluate onsite and virtual programs and field trips for students in grades 4–12, including school groups, Scout troops, home school students, and after-school programs
• Assist in planning, facilitating, and evaluating professional development workshops for formal and informal educators
• Facilitate hands-on, inquiry-based educational experiences that help students develop research, historical thinking, and primary source analysis skills for understanding history, identity, culture, and community
• Differentiate instruction for students with varying grade levels, developmental stages, learning needs, cultural backgrounds, and prior knowledge
• Assist in developing materials, activities, case studies, and educational resources aligned with local, state, and national standards
• Coordinate program logistics, communicate with teachers and staff, track attendance, and maintain reporting for grants and program records
• Facilitate behind-the-scenes experiences that introduce teachers and students to archives, collections, historical research methods, and genealogical inquiry
• Supervise volunteers and interns as needed, and maintain a working relationship with American Ancestors genealogists and archivists 
• Support ongoing program improvement and quality control through formal and informal evaluation
• Order, inventory, maintain, and store program supplies for student and teacher programs
• Attend state and national conferences
• Maintain working knowledge of best practices in social studies education and informal learning practices
• Maintain a working knowledge of trends in education and ways American Ancestors can support teachers and schools
• Collaborate with Marketing to promote youth education opportunities and recruit participants
• Participate in departmental meetings, cross-functional programs, and special events as needed
• Other duties as assigned

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in education, history, museum education, public history, social studies, or a related field required
• 3–5 years of experience working with upper elementary, middle school, and high school students in formal and informal educational settings
• Experience developing and facilitating programs in a variety of educational settings including schools, museums, libraries, archives, or cultural institutions required
• Licensed teacher and formal classroom experience preferred
• Experience planning and facilitating professional development workshops for educators preferred
• Experience working with diverse student populations and creating inclusive learning environments
• Understanding of best practices in social studies education
• Strong classroom facilitation and public speaking skills
• Excellent verbal, written, organizational, and project management skills
• Ability to manage multiple projects and deadlines simultaneously
• Comfortable working collaboratively in a team-based environment
• Creative, flexible, and enthusiastic approach to youth education
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office and Google Drive required

How to Apply: 

Please submit a cover letter and resume to Michelle Major, Director of Human Resources michelle.major@americanancestors.org Please include your last name and School Programs Coordinator in the subject line of your email.

No phone calls please 

Salary: $35.00 per Hour; 35 hours per week 

Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center at American Ancestors

The Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center (JHC) at American Ancestors seeks an experienced and strategic professional to serve as Executive Director. The JHC is a premier history center dedicated to preserving, illuminating, and sharing the history of Jewish families, institutions, and communities in New England while connecting that history to the broader American Jewish experience. Through its extensive archives, educational programs and resources, public events, and support of scholarship, the JHC engages historians, genealogists, students, and the general public in the study and understanding of Jewish history and heritage.

About the Role

Reporting to the CEO of American Ancestors, the Executive Director provides the strategic, operational, and public leadership for the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center. S/he/They serve as the JHC’s chief ambassador, fundraiser, and organizational leader, guiding its continued growth, visibility, and impact.

The Executive Director oversees all aspects of the Center's operations, including strategic planning, fundraising, financial management, public and educational programming, external partnerships, communications, and staff leadership. Working closely with an Advisory Board, staff, and colleagues across American Ancestors, the Executive Director builds meaningful relationships with donors, scholars, educators, community leaders, and partner organizations to advance the Center's mission and ensure its long-term sustainability.

This is an exciting opportunity for a leader who believes that history is a powerful tool for understanding—and that learning about Jewish community and family history enables people to discover their place within a larger American Jewish story, strengthening identity and community. The successful candidate will combine strategic thinking with hands-on leadership, cultivate philanthropy and partnerships, lead with warmth and conviction, and guide a respected institution through its next chapter of growth.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership

• In partnership with key internal and external stakeholders, develop and implement a compelling strategic vision for the Jewish Heritage Center that advances its mission, strengthens its long-term sustainability, and increases its visibility and impact.
• Identify opportunities for innovation, collaboration, and growth while ensuring the JHC remains responsive to the needs of the communities it serves.
• Establish priorities, measure outcomes, and lead organizational planning in partnership with American Ancestors leadership and the JHC Advisory Board.

Organizational Leadership and Operations

• Lead, mentor, and inspire a talented staff, fostering a collaborative, mission-driven culture grounded in excellence, dedication, and mutual respect.
• Oversee the Center's daily operations, ensuring effective management of personnel, budgets, projects, and organizational resources.
• Develop and manage the JHC’s annual operating budget.
• Ensure that programs, initiatives, and organizational practices reflect the highest standards of professionalism and quality.

Fundraising and External Relations

• Serve as the Center's chief representative and principal relationship builder with donors, foundations, partner organizations, and community stakeholders.
• Articulate a compelling case for investment in the JHC’s mission, and partner with American Ancestors development staff to cultivate, solicit, and steward philanthropic support from individuals and institutions.
• Represent the organization at fundraising and community events.
• Build and strengthen strategic partnerships that expand the JHC’s reach, enhance programming, and create new opportunities for collaboration.

Board and Institutional Collaboration

• Partner effectively with the Advisory Council, supporting its engagement in strategic planning, fundraising, and community advocacy.
• Collaborate closely with colleagues across American Ancestors to advance shared organizational goals and integrate the Center's work into broader institutional initiatives.
• Represent the Center with professionalism, diplomacy, and integrity, building consensus across diverse constituencies and perspectives.

Collections, Scholarship, and Mission

• Champion the preservation, accessibility, and responsible stewardship of the Center's archival collections.
• Support scholarship, historical research, and educational initiatives that illuminate the richness and diversity of Jewish life in New England and beyond.
• Foster meaningful connections between historical collections and contemporary audiences, so that the JHC’s work is both rigorous and broadly accessible.

Public Engagement and Communications

• Serve as the primary public spokesperson for the Jewish Heritage Center, communicating its mission and impact through public speaking, writing, programming, and community outreach.
• Guide the development of communications that inspire broad public engagement and demonstrate the relevance of Jewish history to contemporary audiences.
• Ensure the continued growth of educational initiatives, public programs, exhibitions, digital resources, and scholarly activities that advance the Center's mission and expand its reach.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree; graduate degree in related discipline.
• Experience in non­profit governance or operations or equivalent business experience; working knowledge of non-profit fiscal management; and experience working with a board or advisory council.
• Demonstrated success in working with other cultural-organization and Jewish-community leaders, performing outreach, and developing partnerships.
• Expertise in areas of Jewish cultural or local history.
• Experience or strong interest in Jewish genealogy.
• Knowledge of Jewish traditions, holidays, and observance; and a history of community involvement.
• Strong leadership skills.
• Demonstrated success in grant applications and fundraising.
• Demonstrated ability in public speaking.
• Excellent interpersonal communication skills.

This exciting opportunity is a full time; exempt position located at our headquarters on Newbury Street in Boston. Some of the outstanding benefits include medical, dental, vision, disability, life insurance, generous paid time off, paid holidays, Employee Assistance Program, tuition reimbursement, FSA, 403(b) Retirement plan, and so much more!

Please send resume and a compelling cover letter to, Michelle Major, Director of Human Resources michelle.major@americanancestors.org.  
Please include your last name and Executive Director in the subject of your email.

No phone calls please.

Grade 28          $ 130,000- $136,500
 
 

The Role

American Ancestors is seeking a Digital Engagement & Conversion Manager to help build and manage the digital user pathway—the experience that begins when someone first encounters American Ancestors through a partner, campaign, search, social channel, or other source and continues through becoming a member, paid user, donor, or engaged supporter. 

This role sits at the intersection of digital marketing, audience engagement, content, and conversion. The Manager will translate strategy into hands-on execution across the web, email, social media, and paid media, creating clear and compelling pathways that move new audiences from awareness to action and deepen engagement over time. 

The first year will be highly implementation-focused: building landing pages, forms, email nurture workflows, audience segments, campaign content, paid media programs, and measurement systems that establish a repeatable digital acquisition and conversion engine. 

This position reports to the Chief Business Development & Marketing Officer and collaborates day to day with the Social Media Coordinator; the web, content, and advancement teams; partner marketing and communications teams; and outside vendors. The role has no direct reports. 

Responsibilities 

Web and conversion 

• Maintain the user pathway on AmericanAncestors.org: the homepage entry point, campaign landing pages, and the supporting content pages behind them. 
• Write and brief the wireframes, copy, and CTA placement for each page, working with our web team and designers. 
• Build lead capture forms 
• Keep the pages current as campaigns run and the content library grows. 
• Test and refine conversion paths where visitors drop off, rather than waiting until a campaign ends to find out. 

Email and lifecycle 

• Build and run the nurture workflows in HubSpot 
• Segment partner-sourced contacts by interest, persona, and engagement 
• Use smart content to personalize messaging by audience. 
• Run timely campaign sends to our existing marketing contacts and re-engagement series between campaigns. 
• Roll contacts from the end of the nurture sequence into ongoing engagement so no one goes idle. 
  Social and content 
• Build the content queue ahead of each campaign: short vertical clips, behind-the-scenes segments, research assets, and teasers, publish-ready before launch. 
• Coordinate the posting schedule with our Social Media Coordinator across our channels and, where co-promotion terms allow, partner channels. 
• Share time-sensitive posting with the Social Media Coordinator during peak moments and respond to comments across partner and owned posts. 
• Repurpose campaign clips to YouTube so the library keeps working between campaigns. 
  Paid media 
• Run Google Ads across both the nonprofit Ad Grant and our paid account to hold branded search during periods of peak interest. 
• Build and manage Meta and Google retargeting to landing page visitors who did not convert and to leads who have gone quiet. 
• Put paid promotion behind the organic posts that are already working. 

Measurement 

• Set up tracking so the performance of each channel and campaign can be measured. 
• Run a weekly funnel review during each campaign: impressions, visitors, sign-ups, then members and donors. 
• Report revenue contribution by segment, compare results campaign over campaign, and feed those findings into the next cycle's plan and the annual budget. 

What We Are Looking For 

Required 

• Four or more years in digital marketing with direct ownership of a conversion funnel, including landing pages, email, and paid media. 
• Hands-on HubSpot experience building email workflows, forms, lists, and segmentation. 
• Demonstrated ability to build campaign infrastructure from scratch and ship it on a fixed date. 
• Working knowledge of Google Ads, Meta ads, and retargeting, plus GA4 or comparable analytics. 
• Strong copywriting skills, clear and warm. The role drafts landing page copy, email subject lines, ad copy, and social captions directly, and gives feedback on drafts from colleagues. 
• Comfort reporting on what the numbers actually show, including when a channel is not working. 
• Discretion with partnership details that are not yet public. 

Preferred 

• Experience with a media or content partnership, or with campaigns tied to an external launch calendar. 
• Nonprofit background across membership, donor, or subscription models. 
• Familiarity with the Google Ad Grant. 
• Bachelor's degree in marketing, communications, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. 
• Interest in genealogy, family history, or history. A genealogy background is not required, but genuine interest in the subject is. 

This exciting opportunity is a full time; exempt position located at our headquarters on Newbury Street in Boston. Some of the outstanding benefits include medical, dental, vision, disability, life insurance, generous paid time off, paid holidays, Employee Assistance Program, tuition reimbursement, FSA, 403(b) Retirement plan, and so much more!  
 
Please send resume and a compelling cover letter to, Michelle Major, Director of Human Resources michelle.major@americanancestors.org.  
 
Please include your last name and Digital Engagement & Conversion Manager in the subject of your email.  
No phone calls please.  

Grade 22      $78,000- $ 81,000 

Function of the Position:

The Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center (JHC) at American Ancestors is a premier archive and educational center dedicated to collecting, preserving, and illuminating Jewish history and heritage. The JHC’s archival collections specialize in New England Jewish history of both families and organizations, engages researchers in the study of Jewish history, connects individuals and families with their heritage, and informs audiences of all backgrounds about the American Jewish experience.

The JHC has an opening for a part-time Missing Voices Archivist, who will be responsible for processing archival collections that relate to people and communities that are under-represented in the JHC archives. The Missing Voices Archivist will work with the Senior Archivist to determine processing priorities among JHC’s current collections and help identify prospective individual and organizational donors who may have collections relevant to the project. This is a highly collaborative position that works closely with the whole JHC team. The successful candidate will be proactive; be comfortable taking initiative; have experience and interest in archival processing and outreach; have knowledge of the local Jewish community; and, as needed, help with content creation for social media and archival reference questions.

This exciting opportunity is a non-exempt, hourly position located at our beautiful headquarters on Newbury Street in Boston.
 
Among some of the benefits offered to part-time staff are:

• Paid Time off that accrues at 1 hour of earned PTO for every 26 hours worked; accrual of up to 70 hours per year
• Employee Assistance Program- employer funded
• Family Membership in American Ancestors
• Discounts on merchandise
• MBTA pass program (employee-paid, pre-tax)
• Cultural institutions reciprocal admissions

Duties and Responsibilities: 

Collections

• Arranges, rehouses, and describes archival collections. 
• Creates and encodes finding aids.
• In collaboration with the Senior Archivist, makes decisions on project processing priorities and, when appropriate, digitization priorities. 

Outreach

• In partnership with the Senior Archivist, identifies and cultivates relationships with potential collection donors and recommends areas of collection growth and expansion, with an emphasis on under-represented voices.
• Provides reference services to both on-site and remote researchers as needed.
• Identifies new content from project collections to share on JHC social media, in programming, and in educational contexts, as applicable.

Other

• Collaborates with other JHC and American Ancestors staff on projects as required.
• Attends/staffs JHC and American Ancestors events as needed.
•  Contributes, as needed, to the development of grant proposals and budgets.
• Attends weekly JHC staff meetings and other American Ancestors meetings as required.
• As part of a team, actively participates in the strategic advancement of the Jewish Heritage Center.
• Other duties as assigned.

Education level for the position: 

ALA-accredited Master’s degree in Library and Information Science with a concentration in archives or an equivalent accredited degree with formal training in archival theory and practice.

Skill and Qualifications for the position:

• 2+ years of archival work with demonstrated processing experience.
• Working knowledge of professional archival standards, particularly DACS and AAT. 
• Computing and technical skills (Microsoft office, XML, HTML).
• Experience in encoding finding aids.
• Experience with online collection management resources, such as ArchivesSpace.
• Interest in Jewish history and knowledge of and connection to the New England Jewish community.
• Excellent communication and writing skills. 
• Ability to work both independently and as part of a team.

Please send resume and a compelling cover letter to, Michelle Major, Director of Human Resources michelle.major@americanancestors.org. 

Please include your last name and Missing Voices Archivist in the subject of your email.  

No phone calls please.  

Grade 18   $25.00 per hour, 20 hours per week.