World Wildlife Fund (WWF), one of the world’s leading conservation organization, seeks an Implementation Manager, Food and Freshwater. As part of the food and freshwater team, this leader will support bilateral corporate and multi-stakeholder engagement to advance high impact initiatives and drive food and water stewardship approaches in priority areas; advises corporate partners on how to strengthen food and water stewardship by creating engagement strategies, milestone plans and developing toolkits, templates and modeling for corporate implementations.
This candidate will also foster wider uptake of implementation of stewardship strategies by influencing platforms and works collaboratively through the WWF network, US office and external partners to drive toward conservation outcomes.
Manage Complex Corporate Engagement Projects and Initiatives
- Develop priority sector and company relationships, as well as proposals that demonstrate an ability to align WWF conservation priorities with company food and freshwater needs.
- Work directly with project personnel, corporate partners, grantees, donors, and consultants, and others to facilitate coordination, communication, and regular reporting. Manage the budgets of assigned contracts and cooperative agreements, ensuring that data is accurate and timely. Reviews the status of projects, identifies problems and formulates recommendations for corrective action as appropriate. Follows up on deliverables and other requirements.
- Prepare and/or finalize scopes of work, budgets, and administrative information for contracts and ensure compliance with corporate partners and/or donor requirements.
Create, present and implement solutions
- Lead a team of SMEs to develop tools, decks and templates to present to the private sector, corporate and associations.
- Influence pertinent institutions, non-governmental organizations, and governments in support of corporate collective action and water stewardship change in priority business sectors.
- Stay abreast and manage international and corporate policies and decisions that may affect WWF-US’ conservation goals.
- Collaborate with team SMEs, Private Sector Engagement Team, among others, to maintain mastery of existing and emerging sustainability and supply chain analyses for use with priority sectors and bi-lateral partnerships
Strategic Communications
- Communicate the nature and results of the team work to interested institutions, donors, corporate partner organizations, and the general public.
- Represent the Food and Freshwater Team and WWF with internal and external audiences.
- Develop program-specific communication materials and works closely with Freshwater
- Communications Sr. Director to push out to strategic audiences via appropriate channels.
- Facilitate conservation links to key water stewardship issues including standards, WASH, SDGs, other human development issues, CSR and policy.
- Performs other duties as assigned
- Position requires 8-10 years of experience in any or some combination of the following: corporate responsibility, environmental sustainability, business consulting and environmental reporting, as well as an understanding of international conservation initiatives.
- Successful track record of Project Implementation or PMP Certification.
- Must have strong project management skills, and the ability to work on initiatives with multiple and competing priorities.
- Knowledge of food and beverage industry and/or water stewardship tools and frameworks is preferred.
- Experience in cross-sectoral collaboration, facilitation of partnerships or coalitions is a plus.
- Experience in water conservation, sustainable agriculture, or ag-water nexus issues is preferred.
- Must have good communication, influential leadership and networking skills, diplomacy and flexibility.
- Must be able to travel internationally and within the US (approximately 25%).
- Excellent project management capabilities are essential.
- Strong analytic skills; quantitative skills required.
- Good interpersonal skills, including experience working in international developing country contexts.