Program head- West Africa

Medic Overview

Medic is a global nonprofit with a mission to advance equitable healthcare and strengthen community health systems by building, innovating, applying and scaling open-source, low-cost digital health tools in collaboration with communities, governments, implementers and ecosystem partners. Medic’s work is grounded in social justice and equity across two connected ecosystems–health and technology. We envision a more just world in which health workers are supported as they provide care for their neighbors, universal health coverage is a reality, and health is a secured human right.

Medic serves as the technical steward and core contributor of the Community Health Toolkit (CHT), a leading open-source, global good for digital health and advanced community health systems. We drive increases in coverage, quality, and speed of care in the hardest-to-reach communities, improvements in health workforce performance, and greater data-driven decision-making among health system leadership. Digital health apps built using the CHT currently support over 41,000 health workers in 16 countries across Africa and Asia. To date, health workers using CHT apps have conducted over 80 million health care activities.

Medic’s global team of 90+ teammates are our biggest strength. We live our organizational values of Humanity, Solidarity, Openness, Creativity and Initiative in everything we do. As a pioneer in human centered design, we adopt a human-centered philosophy to everything we do–from building an open-source product to supporting our team. Our innovation, learning and data use efforts shape the evidence base for digital health, inform evidence-based CHT improvements and features, help strengthen CHW performance, and build links within community health systems.

Medic’s Programs Team has overall responsibility for our work with in-country partners across four hubs–Dakar (Senegal), Nairobi (Kenya), Kathmandu (Nepal) and Kampala (Uganda) and comprises Delivery (program and project management, partnerships and relationship management), Program Monitoring, Application Services, and Service Design teams.

Role Summary

Medic is seeking a highly motivated Program Head – West Africa, to lead our team that accompanies community health implementers and Ministries of Health (currently Mali and Niger) in the region and provides them with world-class digital tools. This is a full-time role located in Dakar, Senegal and reports to Medic’s Chief Programs Officer. The Program Head has overall responsibility and oversight for Medic’s strategy in West Africa, including program management, donor & partner relationship management, compliance & operational oversight, and adherence to best practices across Medic. They will also work closely with senior leadership across the Programs team, including other regional Program Heads, Program Monitoring teams, Service Design and Application Services Managers within the Programs function. The position will require approximately 35% of travel, including regional and international travel.

Key Responsibilities

Nurture Medic’s Organizational Culture

• Embody and champion our values: humanity, creativity, initiative, solidarity and openness

Strategy

• Contribute to organizational strategy as a member of the leadership team, and the lead for strategy and fundraising in West Africa.
• Translate Medic’s organizational strategy into operational plans for the West Africa Programs team, and lead on implementation.
• Set annual goals, and build and manage the team’s annual budget.
• Meet revenue generation goals – including contract revenue and philanthropic giving – in support of work in the region, including development and assessment of new business opportunities.

West Africa Programs Team Leadership

Oversee the West Africa Delivery team, which is responsible for creating strategic expansion roadmaps in priority countries, including development of partnerships with Ministries of Health and CHT technical partners. The Program Head will promote operational excellence & skill-building in project management and software delivery for Medic’s work in the region. Responsibilities include:

• Align, plan and manage impact, scope, tech requirements, resources, and schedules for multiple projects with all internal & external stakeholders aligned with the country/regional strategy.
• Ensure high-quality and timely programmatic reporting of outputs, outcomes and impact from the Delivery team.
• Delegate and allocate responsibilities efficiently to manage projects to meet deliverables within timelines and budget.
• Provide coordination and direction to teams on effective and quality execution of delivery.
• Ensure that inputs for fundraising and external relations are of high quality and provided to teammates overseeing fundraising at Medic in a timely manner
• Work with the Internal Operations team on project budgets approvals and quarterly expenditure forecasts, and coordinate on project financials including service time and fees.
• Onboard new Program/Relationship Managers to deployment frameworks and processes, provide technical training to team members when required and serve as a technical mentor to team members.
• Promote agile principles, and lead and partner with teammates to create an environment for executing high quality work.
• Encourage and model active participation in CHT community building activities, including engagement in the CHT Forum.

Team Building and Mentorship

• Mentor and directly supervise the West Africa Delivery team
• Create a culture of high-performance, accountability, and cross-cultural inclusivity
• Act as a champion for team motivation and wellbeing, including by supporting recruitment, retention, recognition and career growth.
• Ensure processes are in place and ensure teams follow the correct procedures, policies and documentation requirements across project phases.
• Identify strengths and weaknesses of team members and make changes as required.
• Encourage team interaction, boost employee motivation and appreciate team contribution.
• Match project tasks with opportunities for personal development so that employee potential is maximized.
• Guide the team through the delivery process and review the completed work effectively.
• Provide a great working atmosphere to project teams and ensure objectives are met within timelines.

Cross-Team Collaboration

• Collaborate closely with other Programs Team functions to deliver high-quality and timely results, including:
  • The App Services team, responsible for building and supporting high-quality CHT applications, as well as building community and capacity of external CHT app developers through technical support, documentation resources and sharing best-practices.
  • The Service Design team practices human-centered design and champions the needs of health workers and health system administrators. Service Designers are responsible for designing high-impact CHT applications for health systems, informing the broader CHT-core roadmap, and building community for CHT App designers.
  • The Program Monitoring team leads monitoring for the organization including creating monitoring frameworks, systems, and best practices for data use.
• Demonstrate joint accountability for achieving high implementation quality across all deployments and collaboratively support shared resource allocation across Programs in support of team goals.
• Collaborate with Medic’s Product and Research teams to foster alignment across teams and roadmaps.
• Ensure that the region’s partner and user needs are represented on our Product Roadmap and that Product and Research initiatives are productively embedded within deployments in the region.

Scalable Systems

• Champion and improve West Africa Program team operational processes and tools for work planning and execution, including designing, building, deploying and supporting impactful apps for partners.
• Support the team in documenting deployment best practices with the broader CHT community, in partnership with our CHT Community team.

Relationship Management

• Develop and manage a partnership development strategy to meet individual countries’ and the region’s strategic goals.
• Provide support and mentoring to program and project managers in ecosystem building, strategy and advocacy with government and other partners.
• Meet and build relationships with implementing partners, technical partners, and government partners within the country/region.
• Manage broader efforts to measure, monitor and improve partner happiness in-country.
• Represent the organization externally as a member of the leadership team with views into the big picture as well as insights and stories regarding the work.
• Build key stakeholder relationships within the digital health ecosystem.
• Seek out aligned speaking engagements and other platforms to increase our thought leadership and external presence.

Key Requirements and Qualifications

Qualifications:

• Mission Alignment: Deeply committed to health equity
• Global Health & Tech Expertise: Deep knowledge of global health and/or technology development and delivery, with ability to quickly identify and fill in knowledge gaps
• Strategic & Innovative Thinking: Ability to develop a vision, creative strategies in challenging environments while fostering innovation.
• Operational Problem Solving: Understand the bigger picture and our place in it, and be able to work backwards from project completion to anticipate challenges and proactively manage and mitigate risks.
• Resilience and flexibility: Adaptable to evolving contexts, unforeseen circumstances, and internal and external constraints.
• Results Orientation: Ability to develop ambitious goals coupled with a track record of leading large teams to successfully plan, meet and exceed targets
• Team Development: Experience recruiting and identifying talent, communicating expectations, managing a diverse team, and growing them professionally
• Cultural Humility: Embraces and values diversity including cultural and personal identities, and demonstrates a commitment to inclusion and self reflection
• Executive Image: Inspires confidence, exudes competence, speaks with authority, garners respect
• Leadership Aptitude: Experience in an organizational leadership role ; leads with integrity, humility and servant leadership
• Ownership: Treats the organization as if one’s own, doing what it takes to get the job done
• Data Driven & Decisive: Ability to analyze and leverage programmatic data to drive improvements, balance trade-offs and make decisions with incomplete information
• Relationship Building: Proven track record of high-level relationship building, deepening, and sustained management
• Effective Communication: Clear, concise and compelling verbal and written communication catered to diverse internal and external audiences
• Emotional Intelligence: Deep listening skills, ability to understand diverse needs and translates this into meaningful action
• Growth mindset: Models self-awareness, knows one’s limits, growth areas and strengths. Seeks out and incorporates feedback, continuously learns and fosters a culture of constant feedback and continuous learning among the team.

Key Requirements:

• Master’s degree in Project management, Computer science, Digital Health or related fields. Project management certification is an added advantage.
• 10+ years of experience leading Digital Health Transformation programs, Technology Program Management, Technology Operations, Digital Products/ Software Development & Deployment or related areas. Understanding of User centered / Human centered designs is desired.
• Strong understanding of the ehealth / mHealth ecosystems in West Africa and experience working with Governments/ Communities on social impact programs.
• Demonstrated ability to manage budgets over USD 500,000.
• Experience in engaging with government stakeholders at all levels – senior officials to frontline health workers.
• Fluency in English and French.
• Must be legally eligible to work in Senegal.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Why Medic?

Purpose & Impact

• Ability to create and see real impact in your work
• Freedom to take initiative and innovate, bonus of an agile, small team
• Work for a globally awarded social enterprise recognized for developing a solution that can create global systems change in the health sector

The Team

• Work with a value and mission driven team that is consistently described as warm, incredibly kind and supportive
• Exposure to a diverse team: over 15 different nationalities
• Opportunities for global travel: all team meet-up + functional team meet-up + field visits

Work/Life & Growth

• Generous leave time: vacation, maternity/paternity, bereavement, & sick days
• Professional development funds & opportunities + 5 days off for prof dev
• Home Office Set up Stipend.
• Flexible, remote schedules