Regional Emergency Director – Dakar Senegal

The IRC is present in West Africa since the 1990s and is currently operating in Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. The IRC in West Africa implements programs through the arc of crisis, emergency, humanitarian, and development contexts.

Job Overview

As Regional Emergency Director (RED), you will provide strategic and operational leadership to building emergency response capacity and implementing high-quality responses in the West Africa (WA) Region. In close collaboration with technical and operational counterparts, you will advise and guide decision-making for Country, Regional, and Emergency and Humanitarian Action Unit (EHAU) leadership around where, when, and how IRC will build capacity and respond to emergencies. You will coordinate and lead support to emergency responders at the country level. You will ensure that IRC’s work on emergency capacity strengthening, preparedness, and response meets IRC’s and international standards.

The RED is a senior position within regional and EHAU management teams. In this role, you are responsible for assuring the quality of IRC’s emergency response and preparedness activities within their region. This role’s central component is facilitating collaboration and coordination between country, regional, and EHAU technical and operational counterparts, assuring cohesive and connected support to country programs. The role is also central to coordinating with external actors at the regional level on emergency preparedness and response.

Responsibilities

Response Management (approximately 40%): As the WA Region’s lead focal point for emergency response coordination, you will oversee regional and HQ support for emergency response management led by regional countries. With support from regional and EHAU leadership, you will collaborate with Country Teams to coordinate resources, guide strategy, and provide primary support for emergency responders. Specifically:

• Ensure timely classification and activation of the response coordination mechanism between the Country Team, Region, and EHAU.

• Guide response management decisions, ensuring they are intentionally structured according to the principle of subsidiarity to promote decentralized decision-making sitting with response leadership in-country programs closest to the affected communities.

• Support, guide, and empower response teams to follow IRC emergency protocols and adhere to emergency standards.

• Ensure timely planning and implementation of contextualized emergency responses aligned with IRC standards, policies, and global best practices.

• Promote and support high-quality emergency needs assessments to inform response decisions and strategies.

• Promote decisions and strategy development that are informed by analysis of the humanitarian context.

• Advise on GO/NO GO response decisions, providing guidance, and sign off on response strategies.

• Advise and support on securing funding opportunities, donor compliance, and donor engagement to execute response strategies.

• Coordinate technical, operational, financial, and human resources to support response activities.

• Lead response evaluation, information sharing, and knowledge management around emergency responses to promote learning within and across regions.

• Deploy as needed to lead emergency responses, e.g., for start-ups, large or particularly complex responses, or as a gap fill in ongoing responses.

• Support deployed EHAU Emergency Country Directors and Team Leads, e.g., through sharing contextual knowledge, coordination, information sharing with regional colleagues, facilitation of donor conversations, strategic guidance, security inputs, and support to emergency responses.

• Support Emergency Response Team Lead (ERT) as needed through backstopping and supervision.

• Collaboratively work with country programs and EHAU to ensure smooth management and operational transition to country programs after response.

Emergency Preparedness and Capacity Strengthening (approximately 40% of the time): The RED will lead the coordination and implementation of emergency preparedness and capacity strengthening initiatives. This includes:

• Support the development of an overarching IRC global emergency capacity preparedness and early action framework.

• Using IRC’s global framework, lead the development of a region-specific plan for emergency capacity building.

• Assure the quality implementation of the regional plan by providing direct support and coordinating with technical and operational counterparts within the country, regional, and EHAU teams.

• Lead in measuring and tracking progress against preparedness and capacity goals, information sharing, and knowledge management to promote learning within and across regions.

• Coordinate the provision of mentorship from various functional areas to CPs, including direct deployment to build emergency capacity/readiness as required.

• Support country programs to achieve partnership objectives by strengthening capacity for partners in areas related to emergency preparedness and response.

Strategic Leadership (approximately 20% of the time): In support of regional and organizational priorities, the RED will:

• Serve as the primary focal point in the region to coordinate across relevant technical units, country teams, and partners to drive our efforts to strengthen capacity and competencies and to grow the impact of DRR, disaster preparedness, and resilience programming across the region.

• Assure an effective community of practice and learning across the IRC country teams in the region to provide information, share learning, build on strengths, and support continuous improvement.

• Ensure the IRC remains responsive to emerging humanitarian issues and maintains its position as a leading humanitarian agency, identifying where appropriate sub-regional emergency preparedness / response approaches.

• Oversee the process to identify and monitor the regional humanitarian environment against key indicators and provide regular updates on the regional situation to EHAU, regional and country program leadership.

• Represent the IRC in relevant humanitarian meetings and workshops at the regional level, ensuring collaboration with other humanitarian agencies, the UN, etc., and coordinate information sharing on current and emerging humanitarian methodologies, approaches, techniques, and policies.

• Act as a focal point for emergency-related crisis analysis and sub-regional analyses.

• Collaborate with EHAU and regional/global advocacy colleagues as needed, and specifically in relation to the IRC’s annual Emergency Watchlist.

Key Working Relationships

Position Reports to: The RED will report to the Deputy Regional Director and the Vice President, EHAU, through a management-in-partnership relationship.

The position supervises Emergency Focal Person in Country Programs through Management in Partnership with Country Program counterparts where relevant.

Works closely with Country Program Senior Management Teams, Regional Senior Management Teams and the EHAU Response Management Team. The role collaborates regularly with Award Management, MEAL, Advocacy, Partnership and Technical colleagues within the region.

Job requirements:

• A leader with specific geographic experience in delivering complex humanitarian emergency preparedness and response programs within the West Africa Region.

• A professional with substantial experience in senior (regional) management roles and dynamic levels of responsibility.

• Extensive lived experience and deep understanding of the West Africa regional context.

• Proven operational analysis and management skills, including project management.

• A thorough and critical problem solver who can think analytically, plan strategically, and implement long-term goals while remaining adaptive and flexible to changing circumstances.

• A strong communicator who is committed to open and transparent communication.

• High integrity and ethical standards with excellent interpersonal skills, collegial behavior, high energy, positive and creative leader.

• A consistent record serving as a role model, empowering others to translate vision into results; effective at delegating the appropriate responsibility, accountability, and decision-making authority.

• A receptive and collaborative team leader who adaptively manages and supports direct and indirect reports development.

• High dedication to cultivating and maintaining a positive, safe, and protective workplace of gender equality, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

• Demonstrated ability to work in fast-paced, often insecure, and stressful environments.

• Professional fluency in written and spoken English and French is essential, and local / regional languages are an asset.

• Ability to travel up to 60% of the year.

The IRC strives to build diverse and inclusive teams at all levels who as individuals and as a group, embody our culture statement, creating a working environment characterized by critical reflection, power sharing, debate, and objectivity for us to achieve our aspirations and deliver the best possible services to our clients.

We are committed to closing the gender gap in leadership positions. We offer benefits that provide an enabling environment for women to participate in our workforce including flexible hours (when possible), parental leave, and gender-sensitive security protocols.