Vice President of Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning (MERL)

The expected salary range for this position is $210,000.00 - $262,500.00. Employees in specific high cost of labor locations in the United States (such as San Francisco, CA and Seattle, WA) may qualify for a geographic differential. Compassion International is not responsible for third parties who omit this information when copying and re-posting job openings.

As the Vice President of the Global Program Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning (MERL) function, you will lead a team of leaders to assess, understand, and enhance the effectiveness of Compassion's programs by optimizing the collection, analysis and communication of high-quality data. You will ensure that our commitments toward programmatic activities and interventions and the outputs and impact of those activities and interventions are sound and effective across Compassion's global operations. Through a cross-functional leadership team, you will champion the implementation of quantitative and qualitative data into corporate learning and evidence-informed decision-making through effective knowledge management and learning. You also will provide full talent management of professional staff establishing goals and objectives, managing performance, including motivation, job-related instruction, annual reviews, and coaching/corrective action where necessary. In addition, you will ensure the completion of function responsibilities, calling on available resources to achieve global function objectives, and working within the approved budget.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a remote, work from home position that can be based in the US or one of Compassion’s 29 countries. To see a list of those countries, click here: https://www.compassion.com/where-we-work.htm.

Applications and resumes must be submitted in English.

What will you do?

• Maintain a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Is a consistent witness for Jesus Christ, maintain a courteous, Christ-like attitude in dealing with people within and outside of Compassion, and faithfully uphold Compassion’s ministry in prayer.

• Act as an advocate to raise the awareness of the needs of children. Understands Christ’s mandate to protect children. Commit to and prioritize child protection considerations in all decision-making, tasks and activities across the ministry. Abide by all behavioral expectations in Compassion’s Statement of Commitment to Child Protection and Code of Conduct. Report any concerns of abuse, neglect or exploitation of children through Compassion’s internal reporting process and appropriately support responses to incidents if they occur.

• Uphold and engage in Compassion’s core Cultural Behaviors.

• Provide leadership and development to direct reports. Work with staff to foster an environment of professional growth in alignment with Compassion’s strategies and objectives. Consult with peer management and senior leaders to successfully align departmental resources and priorities across Compassion.

• Compile or prepares and administer the annual budget and departmental expenses, ensuring accountability for on-time completion of deliverables based on department objectives, SLAs, and other Compassion standards.

• Select staff and establish goals and objectives. Manage and develop staff by overseeing performance reviews, coaching, and giving corrective action when necessary. Support continuous learning and development that enhances individual performance and organizational capability.

• Provide high-level strategic direction and oversight to Global Program to champion evidence-informed holistic child development while driving the organization to greater expertise through the acquisition of high-quality data to measure program inputs, outputs, outcomes impact, and research.

• Engage with senior leaders and executives across the ministry to align strategies and ensure organizational commitment to MERL principles, standards, and framework and its application to program improvement.

• Provide high-level leadership and direction to program operations on a global scale, including core processes serving the needs of national offices, Program Analytics and Program Effectiveness Research teams, and other departments.

• Play a pivotal role among leaders and executives in promoting a mindset of deep understanding and championing rigor in the gathering, analysis, and application of all forms of data.

• Working through subordinate directors and managers, provide strategic direction in the development and implementation of dashboards to track critical program dimensions and performance that enables the National Offices to see meaningful improvements or declines in performance.

• Stay current with industry trends and programmatic advances impacting this function on a global scale.

What do you bring?

• Master’s degree in international development, child development, international relations, research or other relevant field preferred.

• 15 years’ experience leading teams in a complex, matrix environment in international development, international relief, poverty alleviation or other related industry preferred.

• Technical expertise in monitoring & evaluation, research (qualitative and quantitative), and learning.

• Very strong leadership and management competencies including the ability to bring people from diverse backgrounds along with a stated vision and strategy, and capacity to collaborate and communicate effectively with Compassion's leadership, technical peers, and colleagues.

• Fluency in reading, writing, and speaking English is required; proficiency in Spanish or French is a plus.

• Travel - must be able to travel up to 35% of normal schedule including international travel. Travelers must follow the vaccination rule of each country they travel to. Some countries require the health record to be uploaded to their system to receive a QR code to present when arriving in immigration.

*Equivalent education, training and/or certification may be substituted for experience and education shown above.

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