Director of Strategic Initiatives

Responsibilities

You will be anchoring the initiative design and delivery, hiring and mentoring outstanding staff to work on the team, and collaborating with the institutions to improve womens' inclusion initiatives. These aspects of the job are described in more detail below.

Program Design and Delivery:

• In collaboration with the leadership, you will establish a multi-year work plan to achieve the initiatives goals.
• You will serve as the lead on institutional partnerships, and academic & professional body stakeholder relationships to deliver on the objectives of the initiative.
• You will, together with team members, own, refine and implement the work plan that enables accomplishment of the initiatives strategic aims. This will include working with partner institutions through advising and capacity building to encourage the use of rigorous, evidence-based decision- making in their departments, institutionalizing practices to make the engagement effective. Implementation will also require identifying key enablers and barriers in the partner institutions to making progress on the stated goals, and strategizing on how to best work with enablers while addressing the barriers.
• You will work with other members of the leadership team and the steering committee to develop and implement a communications strategy to inform and drive progress on the initiative.
• You will lead the development and implementation of the learning, measurement and evaluation (LME) strategy for the initiative. This will involve setting up strong systems for learning, measurement and evaluation, establishing internal and external feedback loops, and providing inputs into data analysis for internal decision-making and sharing with the leadership team.
• You will work closely with senior leadership team and the Senior HR to hire, manage, and mentor a team drawn from current as well as newly hired staff, to support initiative and related activities.
• You will engage in strategic budget management - work collaboratively with the leadership on long-term financial planning, financial decision- making around resource allocation and prioritisation, and risk management.

Other Strategic and Policy Initiatives:

• You will develop strategic relationships with policymakers of all levels of the government, and other mission-aligned individuals and institutions relevant to the policy-engaged research agenda.
• You will work with policymakers through technical advising and capacity building to encourage the use of rigorous, evidence-based decision-making in their departments, institutionalizing practices to make policy engagements effective.
• You will identify and support new policy-research opportunities that align with the portfolios, as well as identify opportunities to build on successful studies to inform policies at scale.
• You will work closely with senior leadership teams and the Senior HR to assemble, oversee, and mentor a team of policy-focused staff to support our research priorities across India.
• You will represent the research and policy engagements in a variety of written and in-person forums to engage effectively in the research-to-policy space and communicate effectively about the work to stakeholders.

Basic Qualifications

• Masters degree in economics, political science, public policy, international development or a related field. A PhD in any of these areas is desirable, but not a must.
• Relevant experience, including progressively senior management experience overseeing direct reports and directly managing program activities in India and experience working with policymakers.
• Entrepreneurial bent, with a proven ability to get things done in ambiguous or unstructured environments.
• Strong interpersonal and social skills, and willingness to interact with a wide range of individuals including research staff, academics, donors, policy counterparts, etc.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
• Ability to manage multiple tasks, propose solutions, and build consensus for collaboratively developed solutions in a timely manner with minimal supervision.
• Excellent attention to detail.
• Capacity to maintain an organized and structured work style in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to work in a multicultural environment across multiple time zones.
• Willingness to travel to visit project sites and represent our work to external stakeholders on a regular basis. NB: This position will be based in New Delhi, India, with frequent travel throughout the country. Occasional international travel will be required.
• Experience working in India in development economics research and/or policy, including with randomized controlled trials.