This is an interim backfill role to cover for an employee who will be out on parental leave. The duration of the assignment is targeted for 18 months starting in May 2019. However, the start and end dates may change.
The GFAS team is seeking a creative, results-driven Senior Program Manager with a relentless drive to make things better. This is a limited term (12-18-month) role to backfill an employee on leave. We are looking for an individual with strong people skills and extensive experience in operations optimization, continuous improvement, and project management. You have the vision and courage to pursue big ideas, and you encourage smart experimentation to solve complex business issues. You drive a culture of innovation, simplification, and continuous improvement through best practice sharing, advocacy, and hands-on leadership.
To be successful in this role, you:
- Challenge the status quo and constantly seek innovative, simple solutions
- Persuade, inspire, and motivate others
- Understand the value of and are practiced in interpersonal relationship building
- Inspire others to embrace change
- Lead groups to reconcile multiple competing viewpoints
- Are flexible and able to quickly adapt to changing priorities
- Treat colleagues with respect, offer trust and transparency, and create an environment where people feel they can bring their authentic selves to work
Program Management & Capacity Planning
- Assesses staffing capacity and capabilities needed to support strategic projects.
- Monitors staff deployment and workload across the team; works with staff and their managers to resolve capacity constraints.
- Provides extended leadership team with information and recommendations to make data-driven project decisions.
- Collaborates with foundation leaders on program prioritization.
- Acts as a thought partner and leads planning and execution of program-specific and operational projects.
PMO Leadership
- Collaborates with PMO staff to continuously improve consistent methodologies, skills, tools, and governance for managing projects. This role is not a people manager.
- Works with leaders and stakeholders to uphold expectations for project sponsorship and governance.
- Manages a portfolio of projects that the GFAS team is involved in. Examples include setting up subsidiary entities, outsourcing transactional work to a third party, implementing reporting tools, documenting processes, etc.
Project Management
- Manages cross-functional teams to drive efficient, high quality, and timely execution and delivery of projects.
- Compares actual performance with planned performance, analyzes variances, assesses trends to effect process improvements, evaluates possible alternatives, and implements appropriate corrective action if needed.
- Ensures executive sponsorship in support of projects.
- Acts as project manager on large cross functional projects.
- Represents the GFAS team in cross functional prioritization efforts.
Team-wide Skill Development
- Draws from the disciplines of project management, Lean/Six Sigma, and Agile to build the capabilities and capacity of team members to effectively execute projects.
- Delivers Lean/Six Sigma training and mentors peers on related tools.
- Experience managing large projects across a diverse set of skillsets and teams
- Experience applying a range of project management methodologies (Lean, Agile)
- Experience translating strategic objectives into programs and projects
- Process design experience
- Experience shaping and executing change management strategies customized for distinct stakeholder groups
- Familiarity with technical systems, data mining, and data analysis
- Minimum 8+ years of experience in program management, project management, and process improvement
- Experience managing vendor engagements, including selection, negotiation, and measurement, a plus
- Lean/Six Sigma certification (green belt or higher) with demonstrated results a plus
- Familiarity with Accounting principles a plus