Pact
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Apply by: July 20, 2010
Title: Associate Vice President, Africa
Department: Program
Supervisor: Vice President, Program Delivery
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Effective Date:
HR Use Only: Exempt/Non-Exempt: Exempt
EEO Job Class: Professional Salary Level: Level II
Pact values and supports a diverse work environment.
Position Summary: The Associate Vice President, Africa (AVP Africa) will serve on Pact’s executive team, report to the Vice President, Program Delivery and oversee critical aspects of Pact’s Africa portfolio. Working with Country Directors and senior staff in Africa, the AVP Africa will lead and manage the Africa regional development agenda for Pact (through the six platform areas) and oversee that Pact’s operations in Africa are relevant and effective within the framework of Pact’s emerging global strategic framework and the articulation of Pact’s Africa-specific strategic frameworks. The AVP Africa will lead a team of technical and support persons to ensure excellence in design, management, quality and development of country and cross regional programs. S/he will prioritize and respond to formal country program requests and proactively ensure the Africa programs are achieving agreed values, standards and approaches to the extent of resources and capacity available. The AVP Africa will regularly brief headquarters and promote positive linkages between headquarters and country programs.
Core Values: Pact employees embrace the following core values as representatives of the institution:
• all people have a right to participate in decisions affecting their lives
• gender equity is mandatory for social transformation
• resources are allocated in a transparent manner, guided by accountability to our clients and Pact’s role as steward of resources intended for the poor
• diversity in background, gender and age strengthen our capacity to be wise managers of public and private funds
• teamwork and collaboration shape our day-to-day working relationships
• innovation and risk taking to achieve impact and broad scaleable results drive strategic priorities
• gathering and sharing information are primary roles for all employees
• staff growth and advancement are a priority, including training and professional skills building to increase knowledge and competence and to stay abreast of new developments, especially in technology
• a healthy balance between work and life outside of work must be maintained for work satisfaction and fulfillment
Specific Duties and Responsibilities:
Leadership and Direction of Pact Africa Programs
The AVP Africa is responsible and accountable for maintaining a more effective and efficient management of Pact’s programs. This includes direct supervision of Country Directors and senior and local staff based in Nairobi; technical quality oversight of Pact’s programs; responsiveness to country program requests and proactively ensuring Pact’s Africa programs are achieving agreed values, standards and approaches to the extent of resources and capacity made available.
Regional Leadership and Management
• Provide leadership to establish Africa regional priorities and manage the regional development agenda for Pact (through the six platform areas).
• Oversee that Pact’s operations in Africa are relevant and effective within the framework of Pact’s emerging global strategic framework and the articulation of Pact’s Africa-specific strategic frameworks.
• Provide supervision, problem solving support and technical assistance to all Africa based Country Directors, Chiefs of Party of regional programs, and regional based senior and local staff. This includes conducting annual performance reviews for all staff under his/her direct supervision.
• Encourage the cultivation and promotion of African staff. With the Country Directors and Chiefs of Party, develop strategies that enable African staff to gain skills and capabilities to enhance their performance and ability to take on additional responsibilities and move into more senior positions.
• Maximize strategic coordination, synergy and learning among Pact’s country programs in Africa by hosting regional meetings with specific learning agendas led by technical experts.
• Ensure adequate communication with and between country management staff through Africa regional meetings (virtually and by traveling to country offices).
• Identify and deploy pro-active and strategic support to country programs. This will include working with country program staff to map out strategies, develop program cohesion, resolve crises, and develop cross regional programs.
• Identify with country teams, key management and technical priorities for Africa country programs, recommend courses of action to either fill gaps or address problems accordingly and track implementation of such action.
• Collaborate on HQ programs leadership on country performance reviews and provide critical feedback to country management teams on how program approaches, management and standards can be strengthened and improved.
• Ensure country programs implement Pact’s global policies and procedures.
• Act as key member, and at times as the lead member, of the incident management team on security situations that develop regionally.
Program Excellence – Oversight and Quality Assurance
• Promote regional activities to strengthen Pact’s program, grant making, monitoring, evaluation and learning, and operations performance.
• Support Pact’s platform growth across technical cross cutting components in all programmatic and global strategic priorities.
• Support initiatives in documenting methodologies and results that can inform the wider Pact community (such as evaluation documents, consultant reports, workshop reports, etc.).
• Oversee the regular review of relevant reports, evaluations and other internal and external resources (including the tacit knowledge of individuals) as necessary to utilize Pact expertise and experiences for improving program implementation.
• Coordinate with headquarters in establishing and strengthening the Pact brand through application of brand identity and contributing to efforts to communicate Pact’s values, approaches and global impact.
• With the Country Directors and/or Chiefs of Party, identify lessons learned, success stories, and successful tools and circulate them throughout the organization.
• Coordinate with headquarters leadership on ensuring each Country Director and/or Chief of Party develops and implements a comprehensive security plan.
• Support regional efforts to improve the consistency of management practices and ability to mitigate risks.
• Collaborate with headquarters to conduct periodic finance/personnel/administration country reviews by headquarters staff.
• Support headquarters delivery of regional finance/personnel/administration training.
Member of Pact Executive Team
The AVP Africa participates in the senior management team. Activities include:
• Contribute to setting institutional priorities and policies for Pact via the Executive Team meetings.
• Contribute to setting the overall vision, goals, and direction for Pact’s Africa programs and initiatives.
• Participate in senior level fora including electronic attendance on the first week of every month for the ET meeting and other senior meetings as designated.
• Keep Executive Team members informed of issues and concerns in Africa for consultation and action.
• Responsibility for the management and careful stewardship of Pact Africa’s financial and human resources including development and management of Pact Africa’s annual overhead budget.
• Promote interregional and global learning based on available resources.
• Represent Pact in the global community in policy, advocacy, and general community forums relevant to Pact’s vision and mission.
Regional Representation and New Business Development
• Establish strategic alliances and partnerships with current and potential donors working in the region.
• Establish and maintain working relationships with the regional development community for building/maintaining/expanding a regional Africa program.
• Represent or identify relevant Pact Africa staff to represent Pact at regional conferences.
• Assist country management teams in developing strategic direction for growth working with the new business development team in headquarters.
• Assist country programs to identify and develop new business opportunities within Africa and ensure access to technical assistance in proposal development as needed.
• Assist Africa country management teams to coordinate marketing and promotion of Pact within the Africa region working with the new business development team in headquarters.
• Co-ordinate and pay special attention to the opportunities and challenges associated with the development and strengthening of indigenous organizations affiliated with Pact, as part of a Pact Africa development strategy.
Other
• Perform other duties as assigned.
• Perform all work safely and maintain a safe working environment.
Qualifications:
Leadership skills:
• Demonstrated capability in strategic visioning, planning and agency representation.
• Leadership, values and vision to manage multi-sectoral, complex regional operations in a gender-sensitive as well as culturally, politically and socially diverse setting overseas.
• Excellent team building and interpersonal communications skills including listening, mediating, negotiating, and collaborative problem solving and ability to do this from a distance.
• Ability to conceptualize and articulate development philosophies and methodologies.
• Demonstrated ability to prioritize and realize results.
• Comfort and confidence in public speaking.
• Entrepreneurial zeal.
Management skills:
• Proven track record of success as a country representative, chief of party or program director in managing a complex project in an overseas setting.
• Strategic thinking, planning and evaluating skills.
• Experience in personnel management, supervision and staff evaluation. Ability to approach problems in an unflappable and open-minded way, and provide mediation and conflict resolution support.
• Demonstrated human resources management skills and successful experience in managing and motivating multi-cultural, multi-sectoral teams.
• Demonstrated financial management experience and skills.
• Experience in developing and improving management information systems
• Experience in change management and organizational transformation.
Technical skills:
• Sectoral expertise in two or three of the following areas: democracy and governance, economic livelihoods, peace building, HIV/AIDS, equity and empowerment of vulnerable groups, natural resources management.
• Demonstrated knowledge and commitment to capacity building and civil society strengthening activities in countries in transition.
• Experience in working directly with grassroots organizations, grant making to local NGOs and instituting training programs and service delivery activities.
• Experiences in developing public private partnerships particularly with corporations.
• Excellent writing and computer skills.
• Ability to represent Pact in a wide range of internal and external group settings including public speaking, facilitating meetings, and advocacy activities.
• Fluency in English (written and spoken) required, with a proficiency in French and or Swahili preferred.
Education and Experience Requirements:
• Minimum of 10 years senior level management experience in complex development contracts and areas complementary to development work
• Masters or PhD preferred.
• Experience in Africa – preferably in multiple countries.
• Experience working with a variety of international donor organizations (USAID, DfID, CIDA, SIDA, World Bank, AusAid, etc.) in program management, grants management, liaison relationships or other relevant activities
• Experience in a management position for an organization that has experienced rapid growth.
• Experience managing regional programs or multiple country programs.
• Experience working in at least two of Pact’s six platform areas.
• Significant experience in leading program development and marketing teams.
Supervisor: Yes
Supervises (Name and Title):
Country Directors based in Africa
Apply online at:
http://recruitment.pactworld.org/apply
Disclaimer: This job description summarizes the responsibilities assigned to the position; however it does not contain an all-inclusive list of responsibilities. Periodically, employee(s) will be required to follow any other job-related instructions and to perform any other job-related duties requested by their supervisor. This document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise. Employment at Pact is a voluntary ”at will” relationship.