LTE Senior Program Officer, Women’s Livelihoods Development (WLD)

• This is a one-year limited term employment position with salary and foundation-provided benefits. No foundation-sponsored relocation support will be offered. Resume review will begin immediately.

Application Deadline: Friday, March 18th

Division Summary

In 2020, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced the creation of a new division, Gender Equality, driven by our determination to accelerate progress for women and girls globally. The past two years have seen an unprecedented confluence of energy on this issue, and we have a greater understanding than ever before on the centrality of gender to all development outcomes embodied in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Built to capitalize on the belief that we are at a pivotal point in history for gender equality, the new division signals the foundation’s intent to fully enhance our voice and our co-chair’s commitment to accelerate impact.

Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) team

The strategy is anchored around improving Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) through interventions aimed at improving women’s ability to earn and control income. The team has two sub-teams, one focusing on Women’s Livelihoods Development (WLD) and the other on Data and Evidence (D&E) generation. Our WLD program work is grounded in testing and learning by doing and then scaling interventions that help women to generate and control an income. The levers we are exploring in our strategy include access to productive resources, access to markets and addressing restrictive social norms. We actively seek platforms that can help scale our work, whether through women’s collectives, digital marketplaces, government policies or value chains. We are keenly interested in the role digital technology, public infrastructure and new business models can play in advancing the cause of women’s economic empowerment in ways that were previously not possible.

The D&E pillar includes: a) evidence generation on “what works” to inform internal and external partnerships on evidence-based programming and policymaking for women’s livelihoods in South Asia and East Africa; and b) strengthening the global data architecture to address pervasive measurement and data gaps in gender-related SDGs and other key economic indicators, in partnership with country statistical systems and global institutions and organizations.

Position Summary

As a Senior Program Officer (SPO), you will play a substantial technical role in the foundation’s evolving work on Women’s Livelihoods Development. You will support field-based work currently underway in Nigeria and Uganda and help with strategic mapping and entry into new markets like Kenya and Pakistan. In delivering this work, you will work closely with colleagues in the India Country Office and Africa Regional Office, as well as colleagues in partner strategy teams like Financial Services for the Poor (FSP) and Agricultural Development (AgDev). Given the newness of the Gender Equality division, you should have comfort working with ambiguity and in a start-up mode.

What You Will Do!

• Manage a portfolio of existing WLD investments with global and in-country partners. Investments will support both R&D and country scaling related to access to finance, access to digital tools, reducing unpaid care work and training. They will also look at digital, analogue and hybrid marketplaces where women can earn income. And you will embed thinking about how prevailing social norms interfere with achieving outcomes for women and help design around them.
• Review letters of inquiry and grant proposals and collaborate with colleagues to provide clear, concise, and insightful written analyses and recommendations for funding within the areas of WLD and Women’s Economic Empowerment more generally. Be a thought partner with grantees on the design of new partnerships, building out initial ideas into strong partnerships.
• Help ensure that investments achieve their outcomes, making course corrections and adjustments as needed to ensure success. Work with partners to develop frameworks for collecting results against the division’s results framework. Ensure that results and knowledge generated on projects are adequately recorded in the foundation’s tracking systems and synthesized into wider lessons learned.
• Working in partnership with the D&E team, you will look for ways to embed learning and action-oriented evidence generation into your portfolio. You will creatively capture and share insights, innovations and lessons learned from our partners and help drive the creation of global public goods (e.g. reports, briefs, decks) that benefit the GE division, other teams in the foundation and external partners.

This position reports to the Deputy Director – Women’s Livelihoods Development, Women’s Economic Empowerment.

Who You Are

• Technical expertise and experience designing and delivering field-based programming in the areas of livelihoods, financial inclusion, access to markets, agri and rural development. Experience with gender equality and women’s economic empowerment a strong plus.
• Experience working hands-on with partners on the ground in low and middle-income (LMIC)countries to implement change.
• Ability to work on complex challenges and collectively build solutions working across partners from a diverse set of subject areas and geographies, bridging a wide range of expertise.
• Excellent written, facilitation and oral communications skills to produce and share evidence-based materials and recommendations clearly and quickly.
• Ability to build bridges among and trust with many different partners, including internally at the foundation and diverse external partners (community leaders, governments, multilaterals, private sector, etc.).
• Proven ability to multi-task and resolve unstructured problems with little oversight, creativity, high energy, and a positive demeanour.
• Ability and willingness to travel up to 35% both domestically and internationally.
• Dedication to the foundation’s core values, mission and programs with an approach that is consistent with the foundation’s guiding principles while holding oneself to the highest ethical standards.

Education and Experience

• Master’s or other advanced degree in a related field (e.g., development economics, finance, public policy, business, gender studies) with a minimum of 10+ years of relevant experience, ideally with on the ground experience in Africa and/or South Asia.
• Applicants for this role will only be considered if they are able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.
• This is a one-year limited term employment position with salary and foundation-provided benefits. No foundation-sponsored relocation support will be offered.
• The foundation requires all employees based in the United States of America to provide proof of full vaccination against COVID-19, subject to applicable laws.

Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Depending upon your work location, we may require proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 and any recommended booster doses. All employees based in the United States are to provide proof of full vaccination upon hire and any recommended boosters, subject to applicable laws.

Accommodations

If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request to [email protected] .

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We’re committed to creating a workplace where employees thrive both personally and professionally. We also believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve—in race, gender, age, cultures and beliefs—and we support this diversity through all of our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.

Posted Today Full time B016951

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, Washington, the foundation is led by CEO Mark Suzman, under the direction of co-chairs Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates and the board of trustees.

Senior Program Officer, Regulation | 2 Locations

Senior Program Officer, Women in Leadership (SPO, WIL) | Seattle, WA

Senior Program Officer, Gender Data and Evidence | Seattle, WA

Senior Program Officer, Emergency Response | Seattle, WA

Senior Program Officer, Research & Development (Nutrition) | Seattle, WA