As Deputy Director, Strategy, Planning and Management (DDSPM), you will be responsible for leading the strategic, financial, and operational aspects of the MNCH program area, bringing to bear senior business, investment, and management expertise on portfolio, initiative, and investment-level decision-making. You will lead annual planning and reporting cycle processes for the team, including providing framing and analysis on issues and investments central to strategy and execution, ongoing pipeline and portfolio management, business analysis, the identification and implementation of improvements to team policies and procedures and the coordination of business strategies across the foundation. You will play a critical role in ensuring strong collaboration with other teams within the Global Development, Global Health and Global Policy and Advocacy divisions to improve maternal, newborn and child health.
Strategy and Investment Definition
- Work with Director and program staff to define and clearly articulate program strategy and investment priorities and ensure that these are supported by team and initiative structures.
- Ensure strategies and prioritization of support for specific program and functional teams is aligned and additive wherever possible.
- Partner with Deputy Directors to develop sub-initiative strategies.
- Lead or co-lead complex strategic projects that are often cross-functional and cross-foundation in nature.
Strategy Implementation and Operations
- Identify success metrics for overall strategy and portfolio. Develop processes/instruments to ensure alignment of activities with strategy results.
- Lead the annual strategy review process and articulation of strategic priorities. Develop the process to ensure that strategy review materials effectively portray and support the continuation or adjustment of the strategy.
- Provide feedback and advisory support on development/management of major grants.
- Develop and manage budgets and forecasts. Partner with Finance on the development and maintenance of Division's grant, Direct Charitable Expenses (DCE) and contracts pipeline.
- Advise team on business-related decisions. Lead effort to improve Grantee/Partner Engagement. This includes developing and implementing process improvements and other efforts.
Business Team Guidance
- Guide, recruit, develop and train the business team (Program Manager and Program Coordinators) who support the activities needed to plan, implement and achieve the strategic plan.
- Ensure effective employee onboarding, communicate performance expectations, create goal alignment, integrate project and change management, give and seek feedback, provide coaching, measure progress and hold people accountable, support employee development, and recognize achievement and lessons learned.
Trusted Advisor to Director and critical member of MNCH leadership team (MNCH-LT)
- Act as “sounding board” and thought partner to Director on a broad set of topics impacting the overall management of the team (e.g., program and partner strategy, HR and team fulfillment, management issues, addressing broader Foundation requests, relationships with other teams, etc.) and of the team (e.g., communications, collaboration, morale)
- Co-lead MNCH leadership team to encourage the team forward, prioritize team activities, ensure LT is a high-functioning team, guides efforts to improve culture and MNCH-wide team performance.
- Lead, support and role model our ‘culture of impact’ work on the MNCH team and across the organization
Cross-foundation Continuous Improvement
- Contribute to design of processes, policies, and organization to improve efficiency and impact of foundation activities
- Attend division leadership team meetings on a quarterly basis
- Cultivate innovation and support simplification of processes across the foundation
We are looking for people who enjoy the opportunity of working on complex problems and collaboratively creating solutions that have the potential for transformational change in the lives of people around the world. The DDSPM must be a creative, passionate professional who has an outstanding portfolio of accomplishments in roles of increasing responsibility and leadership. You must be prepared to work across a diverse set of disciplines, bridging a wide range of expertise all the while being an excellent team player, with a demonstrated ability to work with flexibility, efficiency, and diplomacy in a fast-paced, challenging environment.
We seek a senior professional with a minimum of 10+ years’ experience in international business strategy, business development and/or general management including experienced with negotiations with collaborators; likely experience will have been gained within top tier management/strategy consulting firms, general management or in-house strategy professionals from large, international organizations. You will have deep knowledge of strategy development and implementation and the design of performance management system(s) of goals, targets and monitoring processes.
Additional skills/experience should include:
- Demonstrated strength in systems thinking, structured problem solving and strategic business planning, with the ability to synthesize disparate information and critically analyze any situation.
- Experienced people manager and coach with demonstrated ability to manage teams to effectively achieve clear, yet complex goals and objectives.
- Skilled in group problem solving and collaboration to resolve problems with complex concepts in a dynamic setting.
- Adept at project management, including critical path thinking, detail orientation, setting priorities and planning.
- Excellent communicator, always seeking information pertinent to the issues being dealt with in the program, on the team, and/or across the foundation.
- Experience in working effectively with decision makers as it pertains to strategy development and operations.
- Deep technical and financial knowledge, including the ability to use or create complex financial models and effectively communicate data and results to inform sound strategic and tactical decisions.
- Knowledge of strategy development and implementation, design of performance management systems of goals, targets and monitoring process.
- Experience developing, evaluating, managing, and monitoring business plans, budgets and financial reports. Ability to navigate operational issues; including legal, IT, finance and human resources
- Ability to work well with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders to incorporate new information and facilitate decision making within and for the team.
- Experience working in developing countries highly preferred.
- A sense of humor.
- Demonstrated passion for the foundation’s values with a commitment to deliver results against the Foundation’s mission.