The Senior Officer, Strategy, Planning and Management is responsible for supporting the strategic and operational aspects of an integrated program area including oversight of strategic planning, annual planning and budgeting, ongoing pipeline and portfolio management, and business analysis and the coordination of portfolio across the team.
This role provides support for strategic planning, 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 portfolio development and ongoing strategic alignment and outcomes design of the investment portfolio.
Areas of Responsibility:
- Provides critical support to Strategy Support team and embedded Deputy Director(s) in translating strategy goals into coherent portfolio level theory of action and investment plans, working with program officers.
- Accountable for guiding 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.
- Expertly facilitate process definition and improvement efforts in support of staff productivity. Works with program staff to identify process gaps and inefficiencies that impedes effectiveness. This role promotes efficiency and productivity on the team by providing leadership and support in process development and improvement, implementation and improvement of tools and tools, analysis and reporting and change management.
- Ensure smooth implementation of operational initiatives through rigorous assessment, planning and execution of project management and change management strategies.
- Facilitate the processes involved to define success metrics for strategy/portfolio level grants including design of tools to track progress and learning in strategy execution.
- Design and manage special projects in support of team operations as defined by program leadership.
- Conduct ongoing research, provide background data and information and prepare analytic models in support of program teams.
This role is responsible for high quality interactions and clear and consistent communications with grantees and partners in the field.
Educational Background:
BA/Master’s/MBA degree with 10+ years of experience
Skills/Experience:
- Strong portfolio and people/team management skills.
- Demonstrated complex project management skills and a successful track record of leading or managing multiple projects simultaneously. Includes measuring project results, and creating dashboards / scorecards, including project definition, planning / scoping the work, establishing governance and stakeholders, organizing and tracking financial and business operations in support of team priorities, organizing work meaningfully, designing appropriate solutions, implementing the solutions, managing change, communicating, and monitoring for ultimate impact/effectiveness.
- Program management of complex strategy development, execution planning and business process redesign projects.
- Ability to act independently to determine methods and procedures on assignments.
- Technically proficient and creative; Successful in both collaboration and as an independent thinker.
- 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.
- Highly adaptable and able to perform in ambiguous situations.
- Ability to prioritize, focus and achieve results in a fast paced and complex environment.
- Ability to work in a fluid environment with ongoing reorganization; Ability to work in a matrixed environment and partner with colleagues to achieve objectives.
- Ability to develop and monitor budgets and understand the overall Team impact.
- Financial acumen plus budget development, financial analysis and operational management skills.
- Experience/expertise in process and meeting facilitation.
- Strong consultative and advisory skills. Demonstrated excellence in influence and leadership, ability to build trust, is a team leader and player who motivates and educates other team members and understands the value of interpersonal relationship building.
- Change management: Able to identify shifts in mindsets, operating assumptions and behaviors that are necessary to implement change and in defining and implementing a change management plan to drive the shifts
- Strong initiative and ability to self-manage. Understands communication channels and escalates appropriately
- Ability to prepare appropriate analysis — identifying issues, forming hypotheses, synthesizing conclusions, and helping to implement the change
- Experience creating analytical models/tools and ability to communicate results to inform sound strategic and tactical decisions.
- Excellent written and verbal communications skills with the ability to effectively synthesize information to reach a diverse audience.
- Proficiency using MSWord, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint and related software.
- Work on complex problems. Analysis of situation or data requires an in-depth evaluation of various factors. Exercise independent judgment within broadly defined practices and policies in selecting methods, techniques and evaluation criteria for obtaining results. Decisions may require deep analysis and consideration of strategic, financial, and organizational interactions.
- This role is frequently acting in the role of a representative or advocate. As such, the ability to confidently and reliably exercise sound judgment on behalf of his/her constituents is critically important. This role is expected to assess needs, solution options, and issues and risks / costs and benefits inherent in the options. Based on that assessment, the individual in this role is expected either to present a recommendation for review and approval by stakeholders or, in some cases, to make a decision on behalf of stakeholders.
- This role must often conduct analysis and gather requirements associated with a tool or system output needed by the business and think broadly and from a customer perspective, in order to ensure that the tool or output ultimately meets the needs of the customer. In the capacity s/he will likely also need to make decisions regarding prioritization of (potentially competing) customer needs and concerns.
Additional Information:
As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.
Job Function:
Organization Info
Listing Stats
Post Date:
Nov 25 2017
Active Until:
Dec 25 2017
Hiring Organization:
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
industry:
Nonprofit