The Senior Officer (SO) will work closely with two new and growing teams within the Gates Foundation’s U.S. Program. Along with expertise on domestic poverty and mobility issues, and specific expertise on issues around employment/access to jobs/the future of work, this 18-month, Limited Term Employee (LTE) assignment will support strategic and operational aspects of these two program areas.
U.S. Economic Mobility and Opportunity: This spring, the foundation is launching a new U.S. strategy focused on increasing mobility from poverty over the next decade. This strategy will work closely with the foundation’s existing U.S. priorities in K-12 education, post-secondary education, and the Pacific Northwest to invest in permanent ladders out of poverty. The mobility and opportunity strategy will be focused on generating tools and insights to help a wide array of actors (funders, public sector leaders, practitioners, scholars, business leaders) who are ready, willing, and able to take action to dramatically increase economic mobility in the United States achieve the greatest impact. We will partner with leaders in the field, pilot new approaches, and invest in platforms to help coordination and collaboration among funders, decision-makers, the private sector, scholars, practitioners, and families experiencing poverty. Our strategy is organized around five initiatives:
- Improving Coordination and Leverage: Making it easier for groups tackling the underlying issues of poverty to work together. Increasing Public Understanding: Changing the stories we tell about why people are poor, and what they need to succeed. National Data and Metrics: Gathering evidence to help diagnose barriers to opportunity and develop ways to eliminate or limit them. Local Decision Support: Supporting local decision-makers and helping them access the data and tools they need to pursue strategies to increase mobility from poverty. Low-Mobility Jobs: Helping workers in low-skilled jobs get a chance to move up the economic ladder and support their families.
- P-16 Community Investment Team: The post-secondary completion rate of all students who make it past high school into higher education is alarming but the variation can be as high as 25% for Black and LatinX students. We have a fragmented education system and most students, especially those who are poor, black or brown don’t fare well along this journey. Over the past few years, the foundation’s U.S. Program staff embarked on a collective P-16 learning effort to more deeply understand a student's journey from preschool through completion of a quality credential and in late 2017, USP established four longer-term cross-strategy teams to accelerate this work. One of those teams is the P-16 Community Investment Team which operates as a partnership of USP and Global Policy and Advocacy colleagues.
The P-16 Community Investment Team seeks to define exemplary P-16, determine how the foundation can best impact the P-16 field, and invest in three to five communities across the US. While ultimately about student success, there is a heavy emphasis on learning, as explained by the goals below.
- Increase U.S. Program and external experts’ understanding of what exemplary P-16 work looks like, especially regarding outcomes for students who are Black, Latino, and/or low-income.
- Develop strategies to improve implementation and outcomes of existing, effective P-16 systems in some of our focus states’ communities. Define our contribution.
- In coordination with the other three P-16 teams, implement best practices to begin strengthening strategies’ roles as interdependent pieces of our cross-functional U.S. Program
The Senior Officer will support strategic and operational aspects of these two program areas including oversight of strategic planning, annual planning and budgeting, ongoing pipeline and portfolio management, measurement and evaluation, business analysis and the coordination of business strategies across the two program areas. Allocation of time will be up to 75 percent of the Senior Officer’s time dedicated to U.S. Mobility and 25 percent time dedicated to P-16. The senior officer will provide support for strategy execution, monitoring, and reporting of portfolio of programmatic investments. Focus may be on financial analysis strategy and portfolio level; coordination of programmatic work and processes; or on team investment strategy development and ongoing strategic alignment and outcomes design of the investment portfolio.
- Expertise on domestic poverty and mobility issues. Specific expertise on issues around employment/access to jobs/the future of work would be helpful.
- Lead processes to develop and oversee portfolio strategic planning, investment, financial and operational processes which may include the full investment development process, annual planning, budget management and forecasting. Provides critical support to programs leadership in translating strategy goals into coherent portfolio level theory of action and investment plans.
- Guide program officers to ensure that portfolio investments are strategically aligned, and outcomes are defined that will lead to impact on key strategy goals. May consult with program officers on the early stage development of program investments.
- Monitor grant and contract pipeline to produce accurate forecasts vs. budget reporting and performance against key milestones and outcomes to facilitate management decision-making.
- Consult/strategize with program leadership to maximize impact of investment and financial processes and ensure optimal learning, decision making, and collaboration.
- Expertly facilitate process definition and improvement efforts in support of staff productivity. Work with program staff to identify process gaps and inefficiencies that impede effectiveness. Promote efficiency and productivity on the team by providing leadership and support in process development and improvement, implementation and improvement of tools, analysis, reporting and change management.
Leadership and Culture
- We believe that energized people, working well together, fueled by great leadership in an inclusive environment in which they thrive, will do phenomenal things.
- Expertise on domestic poverty and mobility issues. Specific expertise on issues around employment/access to jobs/the future of work would be helpful.
- Strong portfolio and people/team management skills.
- Demonstrated complex project management skills and a successful track record of leading or managing multiple projects simultaneously.
- Program management of complex strategy development, execution planning and business process redesign projects are essential for this role
- A preference for rigor, purpose driven measurement and cost-effective use of resources.
- Ability to act independently to determine methods and procedures on assignments.
- Ability to create structures and develop frameworks to increase clarity and transparency of decisions, trade-offs and impact on financial and organizational resources.
- Ability to effectively alternate between thinking strategically and executing at high quality.
- Financial acumen plus budget development, financial analysis and operational management skills.
- Comfortable working in a “start-up” environment where day-to-day can vary and flexibility is a valued skill.