Project Director

Hiring for this position is contingent upon funding from US DOS.

POSITION TITLE
Project Director

SUPERVISOR
Director of Life Skills Programs

SUPERVISEES
Three Project Managers (based in Mexico, Nigeria, and Palestine); Project Coordinator (location TBD)

LOCATION
Mexico

ABOUT INTERNATIONAL YOUTH FOUNDATION (IYF)
For thirty years, our sole focus has been to help young people succeed. Together with partners around the world, we’ve invested in ensuring that youth develop the leadership, technical, and life skills to earn a livelihood. Whether it’s landing a first job, growing a business, or driving social change, every young person deserves the opportunity to realize his or her full potential. Rooted in the belief of youth as problem-solvers, change-makers, and leaders, our initiatives are catalysts for change. For more information, please consult www.iyfglobal.org.

POSITION SUMMARY
IYF is seeking a Project Director who will provide strategic guidance, leadership, and oversight for an anticipated two-year project in Mexico, Nigeria, and Palestine funded by the US Department of State (DOS). The project aims to elevate a movement of girl-centered climate action, leveraging the power and potential of girls, in all their diversity, to shape equitable policies and actions to combat climate change and related social and environmental issues. This position requires strong project management and coordination skills, technical knowledge, and extensive experience cultivating and establishing partnerships with key stakeholders, including implementing partners and funders.

CORE JOB RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategic:

• Provide overall strategic leadership and management of the project and oversee staff and partners responsible for project delivery.
• In coordination with US DOS and project partners, develop the project’s overarching vision and lead an integrated approach among different components and actors that supports local ownership and sustainable outcomes.

Decision-Making: Make key decisions for effective and efficient delivery of project results and accountability of project resources, in coordination with IYF’s global support departments, Country Directors, and country office teams.

Budgetary: Oversee the project budget and expenditures; make resource allocation decisions that impact the project and relevant IYF offices.

Functional:

• Oversee the development and execution of project work-plans to achieve intended results, meet funder expectations, and comply with award requirements.
• Lead finance, operational, technical, and project staff to ensure fiscal integrity, quality implementation, and timely delivery of project outputs using effective adaptive management techniques. This will include identifying project risks and making appropriate adjustments.

Reporting: Ensure the development and timely submission of written reports, including funder reports and oral presentations on the project. Prepare periodic update reports on project successes, challenges facing the project, and progress toward meeting deliverables.

Learning: Oversee continuous project learning and ensure integration of monitoring and evaluation data into management decision-making. This will include synthesizing and disseminating project results and information to local, regional, and global partners and overseeing the development of thought leadership publications.

Representation (External/Internal)

• Provide leadership in designing and implementing the project’s communication strategy and ensure compliance with funder branding and marking requirements.
• Serve as the primary point of contact with US DOS, maintaining strong relationships with staff and being responsive to their priorities and needs.
• Build and maintain relationships with relevant project partners such as youth-led and youth-serving organizations, government, and the private sector.
• Represent IYF and overall project interests at national, regional and global meetings, workshops, and conferences, and promote the project at the global level.

Supervisory:

Directly supervise project staff in Mexico, Nigeria, and Palestine as assigned, including providing regular professional support and coaching to supervisees, assessing their performance, and recommending areas for improvement to achieve annual objectives and project goals.

Perform other duties as requested.

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

• A degree (advanced degree preferred) in a relevant field such as public policy, political science, environmental science, international development, education, sustainable development, or other social sciences.
• Eight years of experience in managing development projects focused on youth development, capacity strengthening, gender and/or climate action.
• Technical knowledge of gender equality and girls/women’s empowerment, climate change, and/or climate action/advocacy.
• Leadership experience designing, implementing, and managing youth development, climate, gender equity, and other relevant projects funded by US DOS or other US Government agencies strongly preferred.
• Experience developing and delivering effective institutional capacity strengthening services with youth- led and youth-serving organizations strongly preferred.
• Experience cultivating relationships and collaborating with a variety of stakeholders, including young people and high-level government officials, on a local, regional, and global level.
• Strong leadership skills, including demonstrated ability to manage and motivate teams in a global setting and adaptive management experience with the ability to find viable solutions to complicated problems in a flexible, time-sensitive, and creative manner.
• Spoken and written fluency in English required. Fluency in Spanish is strongly preferred.
• Excellent computer skills using MS Office products including Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint.
• Ability to travel up to 30% of the time.
• Ability to support operations outside of normal business hours in Mexico, since this position will oversee programming in different time zones (Nigeria, Palestine, and global programming).
• Experience working with multi-regional programming and programming in Africa and the Middle East is not required, but is an advantage

IYF is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe that diversity and inclusion among our teammates are critical to our success as a global organization, and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool.