Program Director – REAPER II

Summary

Save the Children is seeking a highly qualified Program Director for the anticipated USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS) Evidence Aggregation for Programmatic Approaches 2 (REAPER 2) Activity. They will lead the REAPER 2 program, focusing on broad evidence aggregation and synthesis activities for existing evidence aggregation work and the identification and application of innovative tools to improve the speed and quality of evidence review. These activities will inform creation of knowledge products and learning opportunities.

What You’ll Be Doing

The Program Director will lead the REAPER 2 activity, providing strategic, technical, and management vision, oversight and guidance. They will be responsible for strategic direction, overall performance monitoring, and thought leadership. The Program Director will oversee all program activities, ensuring the quality and timeliness of deliverables.

Management (30%)

• The Program Director will lead the REAPER 2 activity, providing strategic, technical thought leadership and management vision, oversight, and guidance.

• Develop and execute overall program strategy to achieve goals.

• Experience in designing, managing, leading, and coordinating food security and resilience research and program evaluations.

• Oversight of all program activities, ensuring quality and timeliness of deliverables.

• Manage adaptively in complex and dynamic environments.

• Develop, monitor and refine strategies and implementation plans for the review, aggregation, and dissemination of evidence.

Technical Leadership (30%)

• Provide strategic direction, technical assistance, and thought leadership related to data analysis, uptake, and learning.

• Coordinate evidence generation and promote collective knowledge management and learning in support of RFS policy priorities and program strategies.

• Explore means of improving the speed and quality of evidence review, and optimizing the use of evidence products generated by USAID and others

• Apply technical expertise in agriculture, food security, nutrition, resilience, and related fields to support program goals.

• Provide technical guidance on evidence generation approaches

Stakeholder Engagement (30%)

• Serve as the primary point of contact, develop and manage clear channels of communication with RFS and all activity stakeholders.
• Collaborate with RFS, other USAID operating units, learning initiatives, and platforms to advance the use of evidence to drive measurement and impact in resilience activities.
• Interact directly and on a regular basis with USAID to coordinate program direction and ensure strategic alignment, collaborative learning, and adaptation.
• Engage with USAID counterparts and research partners engaged in resilience learning and impact evaluation to identify and create synergies for coordinated learning.

Supervisory Responsibilities (10%)

• Train, develop, coach, lead, and supervise staff, clearly communicating organization, division and department priorities, and how their work contributes to our mission, ensuring that the working environment continually fosters diversity, inclusion, and belonging – supporting Save the Children values

Required Qualifications

• Minimum of a bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience

• At least ten (10) years of experience in management, particularly in managing research efforts, such as evaluations and large-scale, mixed-method surveys;

• At least 5 years of experience in designing, managing, leading, and coordinating food security and resilience programs and evaluations.

• Demonstrated experience in providing strategic direction, technical assistance and thought leadership related to resilience to a wide variety of stakeholders

• Experience in building collaborative relationships with key stakeholders, fostering engagement and learning across USAID Bureaus and learning mechanisms and serves as a main point of contact for the portfolio and maintain regular communication with donors and partners to ensure transparency and efficiency of plans, reports and actions.

• Technical expertise in agriculture, food security, nutrition, resilience, or related fields in the context of international development;

• Familiarity with a range of evidence generation approaches and their associated levels of rigor, including evidence gap maps, systematic evidence review and synthesis, and dissemination formats to facilitate knowledge utilization;

• Experience with program evaluation designs and methods (experimental and quasi-experimental impact evaluations, non-experimental designs, qualitative methods, etc.)

• Professional proficiency in MS Office suite

• Professional proficiency in spoken and written English

• Demonstrated ability to communicate and collaborate effectively with individuals and teams at all levels, both internally and externally

• Demonstrated commitment to fostering and maintaining and environment of diversity, inclusion, and belonging.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree or PhD in international development, resilience, evaluation, statistics or other related fields

• Experience with USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security

• Experience working on large USAID contracts

• Experience working for an international NGO and/or other global development firm

Compensation

Save the Children is offering the following salary ranges for this position, dependent on candidate location:

• Geo 1- NY Metro, DC, and other locations with labor costs significantly above national average: Up to $184,000/ year

• Geo 2-Locations around the US National Labor Cost Average: Up to $167,000/ year

• Geo 3-Locations significantly below the US National Labor Cost Average: Up to $150,000/year

Actual base salary may vary based upon, but not limited to, relevant experience, base salary of internal peers, business sector, and geographic location.

Why you should join the Save the Children Team…

Save the Children US offers outstanding benefits that include health, dental, vision and life insurances, pet insurance, short-term and long-term disability coverage, an Employee Assistance Program, 403(b), generous vacation, personal sick leave, family leave, parental/adoption leave, commuter benefits, dress for your day, and much more.

Click here to learn more about how Save the Children US will invest in YOU!

About Save the Children

No matter your role when you join Save the Children, each and every day you will challenge yourself to devote your skills, talent and expertise to changing the world for kids. It’s an ambitious goal, and a meaningful one no matter how you see yourself professionally: an accountant, a writer, a data analyst, a teacher, a driver, a designer, or any one of the hundreds of dozens of roles we’re looking to fill every day.

You see, Save the Children believes every child deserves a future. In the United States and around the world, we give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. We do whatever it takes for children – every day and in times of crisis – transforming their lives and the future we share.

Our work for children and their families requires that we commit—at every opportunity—to work together to identify and dismantle persistent systemic and structural racism, inequality, and any other forms of discrimination in this country and beyond. As an anti-racist organization, Save the Children will not tolerate discrimination in any form—in our employment practices, amongst our staff, in our leadership or toward the people we serve. We stand in solidarity with all people to fight for equal rights, justice, inclusion, and belonging.

We provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, ancestry, sexual orientation, national origin, age, handicap, disability, marital status, or status as a veteran. Save the Children complies with all applicable laws.

Save the Children is committed to conducting its programs and operations in a manner that is safe for the children it serves and helping protect the children with whom we are in contact. All Save the Children representatives are explicitly prohibited from engaging in any activity that may result in any kind of child abuse. In addition, it is Save the Children’s policy to create and proactively maintain an environment that aims to prevent and deter any actions and omissions, whether deliberate or inadvertent, that place children at the risk of any kind of child abuse. All our representatives are expected to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with this commitment and obligation.

Save the Children is committed to minimizing safety and security risks for our valued employees, ensuring all are given training, support and information to reduce their risk exposure while maximizing the impact of our programs for children and families. Our shared duty, both agency and individual, is to seek and maintain safe working conditions for all.