The Policy & Strategic Insights (PSI) team is a new team that advises the CSO, CEO and Executive Leadership Team on medium-to-long range issues of corporate strategy to increase foundation coherence, foresight, and impact by: maintaining perspective on key medium-to-long term trends in global economics, demography, society, etc. and their implications for the foundation at the enterprise level; and providing analysis and recommendations on cross-cutting and emergent issues that enable leadership decisions on strategic improvements and potential new areas of strategic focus. The Deputy Director serves as the most senior full-time member of the Policy & Strategic Insights team and as such will play a critical role in defining and delivering the PSI vision and workplan to achieve objectives.
This is both a managing and a doing role. As the lead of a small and nascent team (DD+1FTE), the DD will be a content owner/driver as well as a manager. A critical part of the role is building strong partnerships across the organization, leading Working Groups, overseeing the operation of an internal Policy & Strategy Committee, engaging with external experts, and generally being creative about ways to mobilize capacity and expertise to achieve success for the organization.
A strong partnership with Development Policy & Finance (part of the Global Policy & Advocacy Division) will be critical, and this Deputy Director role will most likely participate in the leadership team of the DPAF team to ensure strong collaboration. Similar collaboration with other parts of the Chief Strategy Office will be key.
- Serve as the focal point for a Foresights function across the organization, understanding key economic, social, demographic, scientific and other trends and communicating their relevance to program teams around the organization
- Lead strategic thinking processes to translate implications of the Foresights function into business-relevant policy positions, options and decisions. This will usually be at the “corporate strategy” level though may also involve working closely (and opportunistically) with individual teams
- Translate v1 strategy of the PSI team in to specific bodies of work and regular deliverables for the team, including but not limited to a pipeline of topics for the Policy and Strategy Committee (PSC), a regular series of intel briefings for leadership, knowledge products, etc.
- Effectively manage a foundation-wide Policy & Strategy Committee, including issue pipeline, analytic process, negotiations, development of final products, rollout and impact
- Manage, mentor and collaborate with colleagues in the CSO, DPAF and around the organization to ensure “macro” topics considered by the PSI and PSC have significant impact for teams on the front lines of the foundation’s work, i.e. do what it takes to make “corporate strategy” real and beneficial to the business
- Stand up a series of PSI products to communicate the analysis, deliberations, and policy positions coming from the work of the PSI and PSC. This will include written products, digital channels, and some retail effort to build a culture of use
- Monitor impact of the above and adapt strategy to maximize contribution of PSI to the foundation’s medium-term goals
- Serve as a partner to DPAF, helping to elevate relevant/cross cutting policy work with strategic and operational teams in Seattle
- Manage and mentor staff, especially effectively managing a small team in support of a large mission
- Proven ability to translate medium-range strategic and scenario planning into meaningful impact in complex organizations
- Proven ability to lead and influence others – at all levels of an organization - with a compelling vision and technical mastery
- Demonstrated excellence in scientific, economic or other technical analysis and writing, especially the application of medium-range trends to business operations
- Skilled manager of people and processes
- Demonstrated ability to work with creativity, entrepreneurialism, efficiency, diplomacy, and flexibility particularly as part of a team
- Demonstrated ability to operate with a learning mindset, coming up to speed quickly on new topics and adapting analytic and communication styles to a variety of audiences
- Experience in C-suite corporate policy development and implementation, preferably in an international business or organization
- Outstanding written and oral communication skills, and experience advocating and communicating with a broad and diverse audience especially at senior executive levels
- Experience in a role requiring collaboration in a complex organization and working with external organizations