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 August 2019. However, the start and end dates may change.
To accelerate and increase the impact of the foundation’s nutrition strategy, the foundation has launched a new approach of directly engaging with food and beverage companies that have the potential to address the affordability, accessibility and demand for nutritious products. The foundation’s private sector nutrition strategy is two pronged: we will focus on (1) improving the nutritional quality of products already widely consumed by lower-income consumers; and (2) increasing the affordability and appeal of nutritious products for lower-income groups by finding innovative ways to cut costs, such as boosting local production and new retail and distribution models to increase reach.
The Senior Program Officer/Program Officer will report to the Deputy Director, Private Sector Partnership Development for Nutrition.
- Make and manage investments for the private sector partnerships portfolio in service of the strategy’s learning agenda to test new innovations to lower cost and increase access to nutritious products among lower-income consumers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia.
- Engage with leading food & beverage manufacturers, building out pipeline of opportunities to partner with companies to test new innovations to increase affordability of and access to nutritious foods. Support development of potential partnership projects with companies, working closely with company counterparts and other internal and external collaborators.
- Manage working relationships with technical assistance partners supporting company partnerships, covering: consumer intelligence, business model innovation, marketing intelligence, measurement, learning and evaluation, product development, nutrition technical support.
- Identify and manage engagements with independent experts to advise the Private Sector Partnerships team.
- Manage the external communications presence for the Nutrition Private Sector Partnerships program in close collaboration with the foundation’s PAC team and external comms agency. This includes management of social media presence such as LinkedIn and Twitter.
- Review portfolio progress against strategy goals and learning agenda. Prepare analysis and briefing materials for leadership.
- Develop new investment concepts to address knowledge and capability gaps and engage in annual IPP process.
- Facilitate cross-team engagement with internal stakeholders, including other PSTs engaging with the private sector, to collaborate and share information and learnings.
- Strong familiarity with foundation investment tools and processes. Should have experience structuring and managing ER grants and other complex grants and contracts.
- Exceptional communication skills, both verbal and written. Demonstrated ability to navigate with fluency across a range of settings, from traditional development s to business environment contexts.
- Ability to provide thought partnership and strategic insights while simultaneously providing detail-oriented oversight of execution.
- Demonstrated ability to effectively engage with and influence senior-level decision-makers.
- Comfortable with ambiguity and functioning in fast-paced, fluid environment. Strong capabilities to oversee multiple, complex work streams.
- Sense of humor is a must, as is humility and strong commitment to working as part of a close-knit team.
- Ability to travel domestically and internationally ~30% of the time.