The Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) is a global alliance to enable the digital ecosystem to deliver greater scale, efficiency, and social impact as it creates more inclusive digital economies in emerging markets. Working with partners, DIAL generates evidence of what works through a series of demonstration projects, distils insights and tools to promote scale-up and replication, and provides mechanisms to encourage knowledge sharing, collaboration, and co-investment throughout the ecosystem.
DIAL is funded through a collaboration among the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and hosted within the UN Foundation in Washington, D.C.
The Program Manager plays an important role in fostering sound project management by supporting DIAL’s portfolio of programmatic activities. The Program Manager acts as a business thought partner with Portfolio facilitators and both Program and Project Leads to support DIAL’s work by developing and maintaining annual budgets and workplans. The Program Manager’s responsibilities include managing the project lifecycle so key projects are delivered on time within budget and within scope. S/he facilitates coordination among Portfolios and other units such as Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning, and Communications. S/he oversees all business operations related aspects of his or her portfolio. S/he manages deadlines, assigns responsibilities and/or delegates as necessary and monitors and summarizes the progress of the project portfolio against organizational targets on a routine basis.
Program Management and Coordination
- Supports designated technical team(s) to design, define and execute on programs and projects
- Participates in conversations with stakeholders to ensure feasibility and collaboration
- Facilitates the development and review of workplans and budgets in line with project scope and objectives, involving all relevant stakeholders
- Coordinates RFPs, RFAs and procurements and documents process for audit files
- Facilitates opportunities to collaborate with other teams within DIAL and departments across the UN Foundation
- Tracks project milestones and deliverables to ensure project meets targets and board commitments, documents issues and risks, escalates to technical partners or leadership, and facilitates mitigation conversations
- Monitors vendor/partner contractual obligations to ensure timely delivery of deliverables and serves as liaison for invoices and payments and compliance with rules and regulations
- Measures project performance using industry-standard tools and best practices to validate progress against short and long-term goals
- Facilitates regular teamwide status update meetings to share progress against objectives and provides input into quarterly and annual donor and board reports
Resource Management
- Tracks time, budget and staff resource allocations and adjustments to ensure all projects are delivered on-time, within scope and within budget; escalates variance with calm and clarity
- Supports delegation of project tasks and activities based on staff members’ individual strengths, skill sets and experience
Contracting
- Maintain working knowledge of the UNF agreement process (for both contracts and grants), and when to utilize the proper templates accordingly.
- Draft and review agreements and maintaining an understanding of all agreement terms and applicable flow-downs, consulting with UNF’s finance/contracts team as needed.
- Attending training sessions provided by UNF’s contracts team to maintain and keep up to date with UNF’s current policies and procedures
- Maintain a strong knowledge of UNF’s Salesforce database to be able to process and track agreements, extract information and prepare reports.
Partnerships
- Works with Director, Program Operations to identify areas of collaboration among Portfolios, Programs, Projects, and Departments
- Works with Sr. Manager, Partnerships to support the planning and costing of new business proposals
- Works closely with other Program Management staff to ensure cohesive, consistent level of support across all Programs and Project; backstops teammates as necessary
- Performs other related duties as assigned
- 4-6 years of relevant experience with the management of government and multi-lateral contracts; DFID, GIZ or USAID; preferred; 8+ years of program management preferred
- Demonstrated success at collaborative problem-solving and flexibility to create a roadmap of the “what” “why” of the program management process
- Demonstrated expertise in project management as shown through managing multiple complex projects simultaneously; certification in Project Management for Development (PMD Pro) or similar preferred
- Exceptional time-management, organizational, analytical, and problem-solving skills
- Excellent team work/management including internal and written communication skills; ability to maintain stabilizing presence when confronted with conflicting demands
- Supports decisions making in matrix management
- Proven budgeting skills, optimizing cost allocations across donors and managing burn rates: experience costing and supporting proposals
- Experience working across functions as part of large organization; international work experience preferred.
- Experience sourcing vendors, negotiating contract terms and modifying grant and contract agreements
- Demonstrated proficiency in Office 365 tools including Excel, PPT, MS Project Online and CRM applications e.g. Salesforce.
- Demonstrated interest in the technology-for-development sector strongly preferred
- Fluency in spoken and written English required; knowledge of other languages preferred
- Bachelor’s degree or higher in relevant major/concentration.
- Ascribe to DIAL’s values of Commitment, Collaboration, Empowerment, Courage and Thoughtful Action
For full-time, benefit-eligible employees, UNF offers an excellent range of benefits, including:
A choice of two health plans through United Healthcare (PPO or HDHP with HSA),
- dental insurance,
- vision discounts,
- flexible spending accounts,
- 403b retirement savings plan with a generous matching contribution,
- group term and supplemental life insurance,
- short-term disability,
- long-term disability,
- health club discounts,
- commuter benefits, and
- employee assistance program.
Additionally, all benefit-eligible employees have 12 paid holidays, 20 vacation days, 10 sick days, 3 personal days, and 8 weeks of parental leave.