Bento: Community Marketing Manager

Bento is on a mission to eliminate food insecurity to ensure that lack of consistent access to nutritious food is no longer a barrier to one's health, happiness or pursuit of purposeful life. Over half of all adults in the US have a nutrition related chronic disease, such as diabetes, hypertension or heart disease, disproportionately impacting low income community members. Despite the best intentions of food banks, government food assistance programs and legacy disease management programs, these solutions, while necessary, have not been sufficient to eliminate this problem, which has only gotten worse, not better. As a venture-backed startup, Bento is taking a new approach. 

Bento provides members with stigma-free access to convenient and nutritious food that has been curated by a team of Bento registered dietitians and sourced from trusted restaurants and grocery stores in and around our member's community. This not only closes our member’s food insecurity gap and improves their overall quality of life, but also generates the trust and consistency needed for Bento to connect and engage them with the critical healthcare resources needed to improve their health outcomes. 

Recently approved by Medicaid as a medically tailored nutrition provider, Bento is rapidly expanding access to millions of eligible at-risk community members through partnerships with state and county medicaid plans.

About The Role

The Community Marketing Manager is a mission critical role that will implement, manage and refine the Bento community marketing playbook. They will have a direct impact on the acceleration and growth of Bento’s impact in the community and on people’s lives by expanding and nurturing the network of Bento community partners that serve as member referral pathways in Central California.

The primary objective of this role is to grow the Bento member base by ensuring that each community organization that serves eligible Bento members sees Bento as a mission critical partner and tool in their toolkit to improve the food security and overall health of their community members/patients. 

This role will serve as the primary point of contact for Bento community organization referral partners. You will be responsible for identifying, establishing and nurturing strong relationships with organizations in the communities where Bento operates.

The Community Marketing Manager will be based remotely in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara or Kern County with the ability to travel frequently to all three counties.

Responsibilities include:

• Establish a network of high quality B2B referral channels
• Identify, grow and nurture the network of Bento member referral partners needed to achieve member enrollment goals in Central California. Partners may include, but are not limited to: food banks / food pantries; community organizations (eg. YMCAs, Boys & Girls Club); school districts / community college; FQHCs, healthcare providers; county / state sponsored agencies (e.g. resource centers, navigation centers) 
• Identify, contact and qualify community partner leads through outbound calling, email and social media (eg. linkedin), presence at community events and more
• Utilize CRM tools and processes needed to effectively manage a pipeline of community partners from unqualified lead to partner 
• Manages relationships to increase value of priority partners 
• Establish a best-in-class partner management practice that drives effective ongoing communication and collaboration with Bento community partners
• Establish partner success roadmaps and contingency plans with each partner 
• Ongoing monitoring and evaluation of each partner based on referral capacity potential and performance
• Collaborative problem solving with prioritized partners to further unlock Bento member referral growth opportunities 
• Nurture relationships with community partners to be able to grow and expand Bento’s capabilities and opportunities 
• Serve as a community based contact and resource for our highest value relationships with our health care plan partners, and regularly call on them and collaborate on community partnerships
• Identify opportunities for improved communication and data sharing with partner organizations that drive additional value and collaborate with Bento teams for product/processes implementation
• Team leadership and management
• Over time, build a team of community engagement specialists in each of the target geographies 
• Establish and communicate weekly, monthly and quarterly reporting against community partnership KPIs
• Collaborate with Bento team leads (Product, Marketing, Member Ops) to provide real-time market insights and feedback to support ongoing iteration of the Bento service offering and overall value proposition

About the ideal candidate:

• Field Marketing, Partnerships or Sales: 3-5+ years experience in a Field Marketing, Partnership or Sales role where you were directly responsible for communicating a value proposition to customers and partners
• Relationships: A+ relationship & partnership skills, you have the ability to create deep meaningful relationships both in person + remotely with key partners
• Presentations: Polished external presentation, training and client-facing skills
• Communication: Excellent communication ability - over email, zoom and in person
• Builder: comfortable rolling up your sleeves and working in the community and also comfortable presenting to community leaders
• Team Leader: Demonstrated ability to attract, recruit, develop, retain and inspire talent
• Learning: Loves to learn - able to dive into the world of healthcare, food-is-medicine, nonprofits organizations and Medicaid agencies
• Strategic: Must be able to employ a collaborative partnership and design process to help our team integrate with their team’s workflows, which may require prioritizing multiple “asks” and priorities, and help design operationally effective systems to ensure a successful partner relationship 

Non-Negotionables:

• You are open-minded and team-oriented 
• You are results-oriented and aren’t afraid to step out of your comfort zone to achieve desired results
• You are passionate about using food to engage low income community members to improve their health and overall quality of life
• You have a knowledge of or a passion for solving complex social issues in the healthcare space
• You are comfortable working with remote first / distributed teams
• Your need to support your teammates outweighs the need to feed your own ego
• Gets executed excited about the fast pace of early stage startups 
• Hunger to learn and improve 

Research shows that while men apply to jobs when they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other marginalized folks tend only to apply when they check every box. If you have what it takes but don't necessarily meet every single point on the job description, please still get in touch. We'd love to chat and see if you could be a great fit.

Bento provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We deeply understand the value of bringing together a team with different perspectives, educational backgrounds, and life experiences. We encourage people from underrepresented backgrounds to apply.