Senior Program Manager, East Africa

Position Title: Senior Program Manager, East Africa

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Reports to: East Africa Director

Full time

Our Vision and Mission – WomenLift Health is committed to expanding the power and influence of talented women in global health and catalyzing systemic change to achieve gender equality in leadership. We envision a world where diverse, accomplished leaders collectively transform health outcomes.

Our Work – Established in 2019, we work to advance equality in health leadership through a range of actions at the individual, institutional, and societal levels. This includes a “Leadership Journey,” which focuses on giving mid-career women the tools, along with peer, mentor, and coach support, to successfully use their voice, expertise, and leadership for impact. It includes pushing conversations and partnerships with health institutions, taking steps to prioritize gender equality. It also includes driving a global conversation about the importance of women’s leadership, amplifying the voices of national and global health leaders including at our annual conference, Women Leaders in Global Health.

Our Culture and Values – We are building a diverse, entrepreneurial team of people who bring unique cultural and technical perspectives and experiences. We welcome results-oriented problem-solvers of any nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and disability. We are a growing organization that is committed to building a culture with our partners that values:

• Collaborative leadership that celebrates diverse perspectives and experiences and ensures everyone contributes to their full potential.
• Partnership grounded in humility, respect, empathy, and inclusion.
• Transformative change based upon bold, strategic thinking combined with adaptability and pragmatic action.
• Spirit of learning that ensures we are open, forward-looking, constructive, and committed to growing collectively and individually.
• Achieving impact by improving global health and gender equality.

POSITION SUMMARY

WomenLift Health is seeking a Senior Program Manager to work under the direction of the East Africa Director and in close collaboration with their counterparts in WomenLift training teams based in other countries around the globe. The Senior Program Manager will be responsible for building the scalable platforms and implementing WomenLift Health training modalities, including our “Signature Leadership Journey” for mid-career women leaders in health based in East Africa: Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania & South Sudan. Through facilitated discussions, mentoring, coaching, and hands-on exercises, the 12-month Leadership Journey imparts contextualized tools & frameworks to address the individual, organizational, and societal challenges that women leaders in health face today. The inaugural East Africa Leadership Journey kicked off in May 2022. The East Africa hub will scale up to operate 3 cohorts of 30 women each year by 2025 and up to 5 cohorts a year including a variety of cohort-based training modalities by 2027. The incumbent will also contribute to maintain a vibrant Leadership Journey alumnae network.

Our cohorts and workshop attendees come from diverse health institutions across the public, private, NGO, academic and philanthropic sectors in East Africa. As individuals they also represent diverse demographic and disciplinary backgrounds. The incumbent will contribute to the hub’s strategy to leverage the diverse insight from our women leaders to influence institutional health partners to value and promote women leaders and DEI values.

This position will require both high level strategic thinking and strong program management skills to ensure planning and effective implementation. The incumbent must be a self-starter, self-driven learner, relish co-creating with a team, and demonstrate excellent project management, and oral and written communication skills. They must possess a keen eye for detail, planning, organization and enjoy building and refining implementation processes and systems. The ideal candidate should be able to toggle adeptly between working independently and in a team. The Senior Program Manager must be able to exercise clear judgment when delineating issues that can be managed independently versus those that should be escalated to supervisors. Keen observation, emotional intelligence, astute judgment, and proficient management skills are critical to success in this position.

This recruitment is for 1 full-time (100% FTE) position and will report to the East Africa and Health Integration Director. This position is open to candidates from Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.  This position requires travel 2-3 times a year.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Work closely with the Senior Facilitator and Senior Program Coordinator to build the contextualized systems and processes for successfully implementing the annual East Africa based Leadership Journeys at-scale (currently 1 cohort per year, to be scaled to 3 cohorts per year by 2025 and up to 5 per year by 2027). This includes:
  • Overseeing implementation of concurrent Leadership Journeys from start to finish with a constant eye to scaling, improving, and documenting all operational systems and processes to ensure a seamless and meaningful experience for the cohort members, mentors, coaches, facilitators, and leadership project reviewers.
  • Managing relationships with and leading process for information dissemination to critical Journey stakeholders, including cohort members, facilitators, mentors, coaches, guest speakers and experts
  • Liaising with content partners such as the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) to implement PowerUp Workshops and day-long or week-long training modalities for institutions to meet the evolving needs of our expanding target audience in East Africa
  • Forging win-win relationships with CCL and other partners to expand our pool of local facilitators, mentors, and coaches for sustainable scaling
  • Serving as the primary person of contact for the cohort members. Hold weekly office hours to address cohort members concerns and determine when to escalate issues to the East Africa and Health Integration Director
  • Overseeing operational elements of application and selection process for each Leadership Journey cohort, including promotion, intake, initial screening, and review by a Selection Committee
  • Refining and managing systems to track, support, evaluate, and find synergies between cohort members’ leadership projects
  • Leading maintenance and operational evolution of the cohort’s online learning platform - TechChange
  • Working closely with the Senior Program Coordinator to manage the logistics and event planning for 2 in-person residencies per cohort during the program – an initial 3-day leadership Immersion event and a closing 2-day “Leadership Lift-Off” event. These in-person events will be held in East Africa locations that may require travel.
• Informing contextualization of the East Africa Leadership Journey and other training modalities, working closely with the East Africa and Health Integration Director, Senior Facilitator, Senior Program Coordinator, East Africa teammates and partners, and cross-country functional teams involved in WomenLift Health’s Leadership Development work
  • Informing the continued contextualization of the core curricula of the Leadership Journey, and its delivery, ensuring its relevance to diverse mid-career women leaders representing different demographics, disciplines, health sectors, and countries in East Africa. The content for the annual Leadership Journey has already been developed by WomenLift Health team and partners but it continues to evolve to meet the needs of the women leaders
  • Contribute to creating systems and processes for periodically surveying mid-career women in health in East Africa to assess the needs and priority leadership focus for women leaders in different health sectors and disciplines in their cultural and institutional context
• Contribute to the WomenLift Alumnae network operational design and logistical implementation
• Contribute to the development of East Africa’s institutional influence strategy including engaging with public, private, NGO, Academic and philanthropic health institutions and institutional leaders represented by the cohort members. Contribute to the creation of Leadership Journey-related content, including materials to be shared with global technical partners, contractors, donors, and the Global Advisory Board
• Assist WomenLift Health communications and design personnel with development of East Africa Leadership Journey related materials such as presentations, invitations, brochures, website collateral, social media assets, etc.
• Support program monitoring, evaluating, and learning efforts by contributing to defining, reviewing, and helping to track core metrics of the Leadership Journey, which includes the application process, virtual learning activities, in- person residencies, leadership projects, mentoring sessions, coaching sessions, peer engagement, and alumnae network
• Support the global operations team in tracking budget expenditures, and reviewing contracts and agreements related to the East Africa Leadership Journey
• Meet with the Leadership Journey teams of other regions to exchange learnings and best practices; contribute to facilitating the global community of WomenLift alumnae and partners

EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE (REQUIRED):

• Master’s degree (related field preferred)
• 8+ years of project management experience, preferably in implementing human-centered training or capacity building programs
• Minimum 5 years of experience in Senior Program Management roles in public health, development, or gender- equality domain.
• Demonstrated track record of independently adapting and establishing processes, systems, and tools to implement capacity building programs

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES (REQUIRED):

• Interpersonal Skills: Proven ability to collaborate and co-create within teams and with clients and external stakeholders
• Alignment with WomenLift values and ability to exercise cultural competency and work respectfully with a diverse team across varied cultures, geographies, and time zones
• Excellent spoken and written communication skills in English
• Advanced computer skills and demonstrated experience in using MS office suite including spreadsheets, web- based applications such as email, social media, videoconferencing, program and task management applications, and ease in learning new programs
• Depth of experience, maturity, confidence, ability to learn and adapt, and give and receive feedback, befitting a Senior Program Manager
• Demonstrated success in following through and successfully completing multiple concurrent projects in a timely manner
• Experience in working with diverse stakeholders from different sectors, cultures, religions, and disciplines
• Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail
• Ability to prioritize, multi-task, and delegate
• Ability to take initiative and ownership of projects
• Ability to exercise sound judgment routinely and independently with minimal supervision
• IT savvy and familiar with or able to quickly learn new technological platforms such as SlideRoom, Miro boards, Zoom and more
• Project management certification

How to Apply

To apply, submit resume and cover letter through Jobsoid link.  Please also include 3 professional references and desired annual salary in Kenyan Shilling.

Hiring Statement

WomenLift Health is a project of New Venture Fund (NVF), a 501(c)(3) public charity that incubates new and innovative public-interest projects and grant-making programs. NVF is committed to attracting, developing and retaining exceptional people, and to creating a work environment that is dynamic, rewarding and enables each of us to realize our potential. NVF’s work environment is safe and open to all employees and partners, respecting the full spectrum of race, color, religious creed, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, political affiliation, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, and all other classifications protected by law in the locality and/or state in which you are working.

WomenLift Health intends to hire the selected candidate via BDO Kenya, our PEO (Professional Employer Organization) partner in Kenya.  Candidate must live and be authorized to work in Kenya.