The Foundation
We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.
The Team
The Gender Equality division (GE) is focused on accelerating the trajectory that many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are already on when it comes to reaching the Sustainable Development Goals that disproportionately affect women and girls — such as ending poverty and improving health. Women and girls are not a monolith: A woman’s experience and the barriers she faces are different depending on factors like where she lives, how old she is, and how much money her family has — alongside other factors including her race, caste, and education level. For some, the primary barrier is access to basic health services or the ability to make choices about their bodies and futures. For others, it is a lack of leadership opportunity or the ability to control and invest money as they choose.
We seek to address these compounding barriers through deep partnership with our grantees. As a philanthropy, our role is to listen to and learn from these experts. We take risks in new areas, prove concepts, and bring these ideas to governments, partner organizations, and private sector companies to scale. And we build off our existing strengths as a foundation in areas like global health, digital tools, and data.
Note: This is a 3-year limited term engagement. Full benefits, including relocation assistance, will be provided.
Application deadline: Sunday, November 24 (11:59 PM PDT)
Team Context
The GE Gender Impact Accelerators team has launched a Digital Connectivity initiative with a central mission: accelerate gender equality through sustained closure of the gender digital divide. Launched in 2022, the Gender Equality division’s Digital Connectivity learning agenda (GEDC) focuses on investments in gender-intentional digital products, tools and partnerships, action-oriented research and advocacy, in order to answer a central question: how might we best advance meaningful digital connectivity that improves the lives and livelihoods of women and girls in the geographies and contexts where we work?
Multiple foundation teams are working on the development and deployment of digital tools and services with a desire to advance their sector-specific outcomes. There is growing recognition of the importance of digital access in enabling sectoral outcomes for women and girls and persistent gender digital divides in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa despite cost and coverage improvements. The GE division launched the GEDC learning agenda as an effort to expand data, evidence, and experimentation to address barriers to meaningful digital connectivity of women and girls, such as affordability, accessibility, literacy, relevance of content, safety and security, and norms.
Your Role
Working closely with GE leadership and directly with the Deputy Director, Digital Connectivity, we are looking for a Senior Program Officer to join our uniquely positioned, dynamic team to help drive forward the implementation of the GEDC learning agenda. Your role will focus on building and steering strategic partnerships with public, private and non-profit organizations to galvanize and organize the sector around developing evidence about what high impact programming will accelerate meaningful digital connectivity of women and girls. Specifically, you will implement a catalytic partnerships strategy that will result in the design and execution of a portfolio of investments (grants and contracts) that will result in high-leverage partnerships to accelerate learning and evidence-based funding and innovation across sectors and geographies. In this role you will also lead and grow a dynamic cross-foundation community of practice that motivates cross-foundation collaboration and ideation on opportunities for meaningful connectivity to accelerate program strategies across health and non-health teams. You will provide project briefings and updates to foundation leadership and represent the foundation in meetings with internal and external partners, as well as at conferences and workshops. You will also contribute to activities related to portfolio management, launch, execution, and enablement of an effective portfolio.
Create and actively manage a collaboration-forward portfolio of investments, drawing insights and learnings to inform both the team’s strategy and to promote evidence-informed decision-making in and across the public, private and non-profit sectors.
Lead and grow a creative, generative cross-foundation community of practice that aims to energize and coalesce around evidence and high impact pathways to accelerate women’s digital connectivity across the Foundation, including co-creating complex, multi-team investments.
Establish and maintain relationships with internal colleagues and partners on high impact opportunities to integrate learning agenda questions and digital connectivity innovations into programmatic investments, strategies, and partnerships.
Capture and synthesize findings from partnerships to evaluate progress against the digital connectivity learning agenda, and communicate data, insights, and strategic analysis regularly to leadership, the team, partners, and stakeholders, including the creation of global public goods (e.g. reports, briefs, decks) that benefit the GE division, other Foundation teams, and external stakeholders and policymakers.
Manage interdependencies, communicate program requirements, track progress, make decisions, identify, and mitigate risks.
Partner deeply across the GEDC strategy, planning and management team and the research and measurement team to ensure strong interconnections and operational tightness within a small, interdependent team.
Represent the foundation, the GE division, and the Digital Connectivity team in public events, meetings, and others across a variety of audiences.
Support the implementation of creative solutions to guide inclusive processes (e.g., crafting and facilitating matrixed conversation, handling conflict, encouraging alignment).
We are looking for a team member who enjoys working on complex problems and has a passion for influencing, inspiring, and collaborating with people using data and evidence to transform the lives of people around the world. You have deep knowledge about at least one topic related to the gender digital divide (e.g., digital literacy, access and affordability of connectivity, digital applications to support health or economic outcomes, the intersection of gender and technology) and a strong network across sectors.
You have built strategic partnerships internally in your organization and externally with big tech, government institutions, and/or influential private and public sector organizations that have led to meaningful impact and you have the ability to influence, negotiate, and shape partnerships to transform lives and livelihoods of women and girls in an action-oriented, evidence-driven way.
You are a sophisticated relationship manager, able to know when and how to support and influence partners. You have demonstrated an ability to navigate matrixed organizations, see opportunity in ambiguity, and communicate effectively with tact. You are prepared to work across a diverse set of subject areas, bridging a wide range of expertise, all while being a great teammate, with an ability to work with flexibility, efficiently, and with diplomacy in an exciting, challenging environment.
Excellent strategic partnership, community building, and relationship management skills and judgment. Ability to see and define connections across different stakeholders, internally and externally, and parlay those into demonstrably catalytic collaborations.
Field-based or delivery experience understanding the practical challenges of implementing digital products, tools, and platform interventions in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa particularly with the private sector or multilateral institutions.
A commitment to and orientation towards a diversity, equity, and inclusion mentality and application, including adept cross-cultural communication and relationship development skills.
Travel requirement: 30% domestic and international travel
Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.
The salary range for this role is $166,300 to $249,500 USD. We recognize high-wage market differences in Seattle and Washington D.C., where our offices are located. The range for this role in these locations is $181,200 to $271,800 USD. As a mission-driven organization, we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission. New hire salaries are typically between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidate’s job-related skills, experience, and expertise, as evaluated during the interview process.
Hiring Requirements
As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.
Candidate Accommodations
If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.
Inclusion Statement
We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.
All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.
