Starting Date: ASAP

Contract type: Full-time and open-ended

Salary: if hired in Lund, Sweden – 46,000 SEK/month, if hired in London – 45,227 GBP/year, commensurate with relevant experience and skills

Location: London or Sweden

Are you purpose-led and ready to embark on a journey to shape the future of sustainable cotton? Join us at Better Cotton as Executive Coordinator (Strategy & Projects), supporting the Chief Commercial Officer and 2 to 3 Senior Directors in her team. You will play a critical role in enabling delivery across the CCO’s portfolio by coordinating priorities, tracking key initiatives, and ensuring timely execution of strategic priorities.

Beyond executive support, you will act as a central coordination point for project planning, progress tracking, and follow-up across multiple workstreams, ensuring alignment and accountability. You would join a global team at the world’s largest cotton sustainability initiative. Through our network of field-level partners, we have trained nearly 3 million farmers in 23 countries in more sustainable agricultural practices.

This job is perfect for someone who is highly organised, great at planning, with strong attention to detail, and who would thrive in a fast-paced enabling role. The role combines traditional executive coordination responsibilities with structured project and delivery support across a complex global portfolio.

The Challenge

As an organisation we have ambitious goals: reducing GHG emissions from cotton production by half, cutting synthetic pesticide use, improving soil health, improving farm income and supporting women’s empowerment among farmers and farm workers. A quarter of the world’s cotton is now grown under the Better Cotton Standard. We have united the industry’s stakeholders behind our efforts, from ginners and spinners to brand owners, civil society organisations and governments. Everyone who cares about cotton and its sustainable future can now be part of something better.

About this Role

As Executive Coordinator, you will be responsible for assisting the CCO and Senior Directors to deliver at pace for the organisation. A successful Executive Coordinator will support the CCO in organising her diary, travel and meetings, whilst also keeping track of workplan deliverables and reporting requirements from her direct reports. You will also support Senior Directors with travel, meetings and expense management, based on needs.

The position is based in the Governance, Planning and Strategy team, and the role will be in contact with almost everyone across the organisation.

You will help the CCO to plan ahead and ensure she is well prepared for critical meetings. You will liaise on her behalf with internal and external stakeholders to help allocate time efficiently. In this role you will prioritise tasks effectively, manage deadlines, and allocate appropriate time to various responsibilities. You will be self-disciplined and able to work independently, balancing multiple tasks simultaneously while ensuring all duties are completed on schedule.

Together with the GPS team, you will support delivery of virtual and in-person meetings of the organisation’s management bodies, including the Senior Management Forum, Leadership Team and the Executive Group.

You will maintain a strong attention to detail, reviewing documents, data and communications to ensure accuracy and consistency.

The CCO and Senior Directors are based across the UK and Switzerland, and their teams span multiple regions globally. You will be comfortable working across time zones and cultures, with a communication style that is inclusive and adaptable. While collaborating broadly across the organisation, you will ensure dedicated focus on supporting the CCO.

Responsibilities

1. Calendars: Diary management and meeting coordination
2. Email and inbox management: Flagging important emails, managing correspondence, and following up directly where appropriate
3. Travel: Planning and booking travel arrangements, preparing travel packs and briefings, drafting Travel ToR, coordinating Back-To-Office Reports, and managing expense reporting and approvals
4. Project coordination and delivery oversight:
   Support planning and execution of key strategic initiatives led by the CCO and Senior Directors
   Develop and maintain project trackers, timelines and milestone plans
   Monitor progress against deliverables and proactively flag risks, delays or dependencies
   Coordinate inputs across teams and ensure clear ownership and accountability
   Prepare status updates, dashboards and reporting materials for leadership
   Support prioritisation of initiatives in line with organisational goals
5. Meeting preparation and facilitation:
   Ensure meetings are outcome-driven, with clear objectives, agendas and documented actions
   Track and follow up on action items to ensure completion and accountability
   Support decision-making by synthesising inputs and highlighting trade-offs or risks
6. Work planning and delivery management:
   Support the CCO in translating strategic priorities into structured workplans with clear milestones and deliverables
   Track execution across teams, ensuring deadlines are met and outputs are aligned with expectations
   Implement and maintain lightweight project management processes such as trackers, reporting cadences and follow-ups
   Ensure visibility of progress and bottlenecks across the CCO portfolio
7. Governance and reporting:
   Support coordination of internal processes including Leadership Team activities
   Consolidate inputs and prepare progress reports, summaries and briefing materials
   Ensure consistency and quality in reporting across teams
8. Managing core internal management processes:
   Support planning of performance review cycles, annual workplan reporting, and policy and process review cycles
9. File Management:
   Organise, store and retrieve digital and physical documents in collaboration with the CCO and COO, ensuring accessibility of key information
10. Internal and external communications:
    Ensure stakeholders are informed and engaged, fostering transparency and collaboration, and ensuring teams are not delayed due to lack of feedback from senior leadership

Profile

Highly organised and methodical, great at planning, enjoys a fast-paced environment, and is a quick learner. The ideal candidate will have at least 3 years of relevant work experience and be values driven.

Essential

• Great at planning and highly organised
• Enjoys administrative and coordination tasks
• Strong project management and coordination skills, including planning, tracking deliverables, managing timelines and coordinating stakeholders across multiple workstreams
• Ability to manage concurrent projects with competing priorities
• Comfortable using project tracking tools
• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to anticipate risks and propose solutions
• Experience supporting or delivering projects in a fast-paced, international or matrixed organisation
• Meticulous and thorough
• Fast learner, able to synthesise and understand complex information quickly
• Excellent written and verbal communicator with a professional and personable style
• Proactive and capable, with a solutions-oriented mindset
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced environment
• Pragmatic
• Proficient in Microsoft Office suite and remote collaboration tools
• Fluent in English

Desirable

• Great at research
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively across different teams, time zones, and contexts
• Proficiency in other languages used in Better Cotton (French, Portuguese, Hindi, Urdu, Turkish to name a few)

What we offer

- Hybrid working – One day per week in the office.

- The opportunity to work from anywhere in the world for up to one month per year

- Flexible working, with core hours from 10 am to 4 pm local time

- Continuous learning and development

- Pension scheme

- 25 days paid annual leave, plus 8-9 Bank Holidays and a further 3 days off over Christmas

- Enhanced parental benefits

- A warm, positive working environment where everyone is valued

- The opportunity to make your mark and make a difference.

Working arrangements

The position is full-time (40 hours per week) and will be based either in London, or Sweden. Better Cotton offers flexible working, with core hours being 10 am – 4 pm.  The position will require limited travel to other BCI offices and other locations, to support key meetings.

Apply now

Send us your CV (2 pages maximum) and a brief cover letter (1-page maximum) via this link. 

In your cover letter, please include an explanation of why your experience is specifically relevant to this role at Better Cotton. We want to see your personal style – what makes you tick and why you think your next opportunity is here with us.

Our hiring process

Initial Screening:

Applicant screening is a crucial step in our recruitment process. This stage may involve a brief phone interview or video call to evaluate your suitability for the position. During this screening, we review resumes and cover letters, and may conduct initial background checks to narrow down the pool of applicant. Internal candidates are encouraged to inform their line manager about their application to promote transparency and help facilitate a smooth transition if selected.

Interviews:

If you successfully pass the initial screening, you will be invited for interviews. The interview process at Better Cotton may include one or more rounds of interviews with various stakeholders, such as the hiring manager, team members, and potentially senior management. As an internal candidate, you may have discussions regarding your current responsibilities and how they will transition to the new position.

Assessment and Testing: 

Depending on the role, you might be required to complete assessments, technical tests, or skills evaluations to gauge your competency and suitability for the position. Internal candidates may have the option to demonstrate their existing skills through current job performance or past project outcomes.

Reference Checks: 

Once you progress further in the process, reference checks are conducted to validate your work history, skills, and qualifications, and for some roles, your education and criminal history. Internal candidates may be asked for references from current or previous supervisors within Better Cotton to provide insights into their performance and capabilities.

Offer stage:

After completing interviews, assessments, and reference checks, the hiring team evaluates your performance and fit for the role. If you are selected and your references are relevant and satisfactory, you will receive a formal job offer letter outlining the terms of employment, compensation, benefits, and any other relevant details. For internal candidates, the offer process may include a discussion about how your transition to the new role will be managed and any support needed for a smooth handover.

About Better Cotton

Better Cotton is a global not-for-profit organisation supporting the production of more equitable and sustainable cotton at farm level. We exist to catalyse the cotton farming community with partners, governments and others to continuously drive positive impact by setting standards and facilitating the supply and demand of more sustainable cotton from farm to brand. In just 15 years we have aligned more than a fifth of the world’s cotton with our standard and helped farmers and farming communities thrive. Join us in building a better, more sustainable future for cotton worldwide.

About our Values

The post holder will be expected to operate in line with our workplace values which are:  

• Trustworthy (including honest, transparent, credible) 
• As having Integrity (including responsible, authentic) 
• Positive (including problem-solving, pragmatic) 
• Engaging (including adaptable, inclusive, holistic) 
• Daring (including courageous, innovative, game-changing)  

Being you @ Better Cotton

Better Cotton is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer with a strong commitment to good practice and transparency in the management of natural, human, and financial resources.

We have a zero-tolerance approach to any attitudes or behaviours that put children or adults at risk of harm. Safeguarding incidents are acts of serious misconduct and are grounds for disciplinary action, up to and including, dismissal and referral to relevant authorities for criminal prosecution. Therefore, all offers of employment are subject to satisfactory references and appropriate screening checks.