Director of Policy, Advocacy and Communications

Int'l Alert

This is an exciting senior leadership opportunity to head up policy, advocacy and communications for International Alert, the peacebuilding organisation focused on solving the root causes of conflict.

​Reporting to the Executive Director and as part of Alert’s Executive Team, you will lead the organisation’s work to build peace and make change happen through influencing policy and practice. You will shape and define Alert’s policy and advocacy priorities; advocate to senior policymakers on strategic issues; represent the organisation and grow our institutional relationships of influence.

You will oversee the organisation’s external communications, including strategy, media, and digital engagement, and brand promotion. You will also work with our Peacebuilding Advisory Unit to shape global policy discussions through research, evidence from our programmes, and amplifying peacebuilders’ voices.

Whether you are representing Alert to Ministers or the media, accompanying our country directors to make national change happen, or engineering the ambitious interventions and moments needed to forge long-term peace, you will get to work flexibly across a broad portfolio of issues and geographies. As a member of Alert’s global Executive Team, you will play a key role in the overall leadership of a successful, growing organisation.

We are looking for a candidate with a talent for developing and delivering insightful messaging and with a strong understanding of how change happens and how to shape policy decisions around the world. You will have a proven track record of winning change and of strategic communications, across multiple platforms. Our ideal candidate will be a brilliant political communicator and a strategic thinker, with great ambition and focus.

Role duties and responsibilities:

Set and lead overall strategic direction for Alert’s influencing agenda

  • Develop and deliver Alert’s influencing strategy and approach with key peacebuilding policymakers and policy-shapers, across all platforms and communication modalities, in line with the organisation’s ambitions to grow its impact, influence and income;
  • Manage the PAU (11 staff) and Advocacy and Communications teams (5 staff), ensuring a joined-up approach to Alert’s advocacy, communications, policy and practice advisory functions.

Lead Alert’s policy advocacy and representation

  • Revitalise Alert’s thematic policy portfolio, helping Alert contribute to the discourse on its core areas of expertise, including gender and peacebuilding, climate and natural resources, conflict sensitivity and peaceful economies;
  • Lead Alert’s engagement on selected policy processes and initiatives, including engagement in major international reviews, conferences;
  • Work with the PAU team to generate funding opportunities with a view to increasing more predictable multi-year funding for policy development and advocacy;
  • Act as a spokesperson for the organisation – in person and via external communications channels including social media and blogs etc. – and grow relationships with key policymakers and policy-shapers, including multilateral institutions;
  • Review all major external policy publications for quality and coherence with organisational positions and brand.

Provide strategic leadership to Alert’s external communications

  • In collaboration with the Communications Manager, drive the development of a communications strategy that establishes Alert as a well-known and trusted organisation for peacebuilding policy and programming, commentary and analysis, and that enhances Alert’s brand identity, digital and media engagement and events co-ordination management capability;
  • Ensure that Alert’s communications sustain a change-based approach that is linked to programming and policy objectives, fundraising and organisational influencing priorities;
  • Ensure that all Alert’s external communications and messaging products are of high quality.

Country support and cross-organisational collaboration

  • Ensure that PAU and Alert’s advocacy and communications functions are deeply interconnected with the work of country teams and that advocacy and communications is embedded in core institutional processes such as proposals and designs, country strategies and annual planning;
  • Lead efforts to build country team advocacy capacity and collaborate to establish national-level advocacy priorities;
  • Oversee the PAU internal technical expertise function and provide strategic direction on cross-organisational programming (e.g. allocation of core grants, research projects, etc.);
  • As needed, provide direct advisory support to country teams related to policy engagement and strategy setting, and oversee others in the team to do the same.

Contribute to Alert’s global leadership and management

  • Serve as a member of Alert’s global Executive Team and contribute to the organisation’s decision making at strategic and operational levels;
  • Serve as a key member of the organisation’s Crisis Management Group, coordinating all crisis communications;
  • Represent International Alert’s policy, advocacy and communications work to the Board of Trustees.

Please note that these are just some of the requirements for this role. For the full job description, please click here.

How to apply

Please follow this link to apply.

While International Alert will endeavour to contact all candidates within a reasonable time, this may not always be possible due to limited resources. Therefore, if you have not heard from us within four weeks of the closing date, you can assume that your application has, on this occasion, been unsuccessful.

International Alert prides itself on being an Equal Opportunity employer and particularly welcomes applications from underrepresented people including women, Global South, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, people with disabilities, and other historically marginalised people.

 


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