The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world's largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 40 countries and 29 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you're a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.
We aim to make our programs a model for the highest global standards and to cultivate lasting change not just for our clients but for all people affected by humanitarian crises. To achieve that vision, the IRCโs Technical Excellence (TE) group, located within the Crisis Response, Recovery and Development (CRRD) Department, provides technical assistance to IRCโs country program staff and shares what we learn to influence policy and practice globally.
IRCโs Technical Excellence team is comprised of five sector teams or โUnitsโ which have deep expertise in their respective fields: Education, Economic Wellbeing, Governance, Health, and Violence Prevention and Response, as well as teams which provide measurement and finance/grant management support. Technical teams are also matrixed with a team that focuses on the quality and content of cross-sectoral programming in emergency responses.
IRCโs Technical Excellence teams offer five core services to IRC country programs and the wider organization:
**1. Program Design:**We support country and regional teams to design state of the art programming, incorporating the best available evidence, cost data, and expertise of what has worked elsewhere, together with the knowledge that country teams, partner organizations and our clients bring to the table.
**2. Quality Assurance:**We partner with our measurement teams to design and drive the use of indicators to measure progress towards outcomes. We partner with regional and country teams to review program delivery progress and help address implementation challenges and adapt interventions to changed circumstances.
**3. Business Development:**We partner within and outside the IRC to design winning bids and identify winning consortia; we deploy technical expertise in public events and private meetings to position IRC as a partner of choice.
**4. Research & Learning:**We partner with our research lab to design cutting edge research to fill evidence gaps, and with country teams to learn from implementation such that we continuously improve our future design and delivery.
**5. External Influence:**We showcase the IRCโs programs, technical insights and learning in order to influence and improve the humanitarian sectorโs policy and practice.
Technical Excellence is currently going through a change process called \"Regional and Technical Alignment.\" We are doing this to ensure that the impact of our programs and the influence of our ideas create meaningful change for people affected by crisis. This next phase of IRC's commitment to program quality will more deliberately resource and link global thought leadership with practice on the ground. Updated Technical Unit structures will have new roles with clearer mandates. The Regional Lead is a new leadership role introduced by this change process.
The Economy Recovery and Development Unit at the IRC
The Economy Recovery and Development (ERD) Unit is one of IRCโs five Technical Units alongside Health, Education, Violence Prevention and Response, and Governance. Technical Units provide support to our country programs in the design, delivery, quality assurance and continuous learning for programs advancing the outcomes areas the IRC supports and driving thought leadership around those areas of work.
The ERD TU is a dynamic team of more than 30 professionals responsible for supporting the development, implementation, and monitoring of client-centered economic wellbeing (EWB) programs. These include, but not limited to, cash and voucher assistance (CVA), agricultural & climate-resilient livelihoods, financial inclusion, and employment (including self-employment/enterprise development) promotion across emergency, recovery and resilience programming contexts. The TUโs technical assistance to this wide variety of programs ensures quality and use of evidence-based practices; promotes innovation, diversity, equity, and inclusion; and drives data-based management and decision making, to achieve positive change in peopleโs lives.
Job Overview
Economic Recovery and Development (ERD) East Africa Regional Lead provides coherence and direction to the provision of technical support for Cash & Markets; Resilient Food Systems; and Economic Inclusion programming in East Africa. As a member of both the regional team and the technical unit senior management team, the ERD East Africa Regional Lead has accountability for technical quality and responsibility for assuring the advice from Technical Advisors is taken into appropriate action by the country office.
The ERD East Africa Regional Lead will lead a highly effective, strategic ERD regional team to ensure the East Africa Region has high quality, sound technical support needed to deliver on global program goals and effectively serve our clients. The role will serve as a functional leader, advisor, and a thought partner to both TU leadership and regional leadership, with a particular focus on leading the operationalization of the Economic Wellbeing strategy in East Africa, multi-sector and sub-sector program integration, mainstreaming of Gender Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion across programming, evidence-based design, business development, and quality assurance for high-impact and scale strategic projects. The ERD East Africa Regional Lead will coordinate across individuals and projects, ensuring clear priorities are set and communicated, and navigating the challenges inherent in being an advisory function. They will be excellent people managers, with great team building/animation skills, able to help technical staff succeed and grow in their careers. The ERD East Africa Regional Lead will invest deeply in understanding the context and dynamics of the country and regional teams and the challenges they face. They will ensure coherent ways of working within and across the regional technical team, as well as within the wider ERD TU, to align high quality technical support with the operational realities of the country offices. The Regional Lead will champion technical external representation in regional fora for promoting learning, advocacy and showcasing IRC's programming as well as engage with regional colleagues on donor facing engagement. By doing so, the Regional Lead will ensure high quality programming across the Cash & Markets; Resilient Food Systems; and Economic Inclusion practice areas in East Africa, high quality coordination and partnership with regional teams, effective team performance, and efficiency and impact of technical excellence service offering to the East Africa region and country programs. In East Africa, ERD programming operates in all IRCโs EA countries (Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan) with at least 3 technical advisors working across the 3 practice areas.
Major Responsibilities
Functional Leadership, Coordination and Implementation Support:
โข Provide technical leadership across the region, including by contextualizing the Economic Wellbeing at the regional level in partnership with Technical Advisors, DRD, + Deputy Director of Programs (DDP) and in line with Country Program Strategic Action Plans
โข Promote programming coherence and strategic direction of the ERD programming portfolio including identifying opportunities for intra and cross-sectoral integration
โข Closely coordinate with Global Practice Leads and HQ functions to facilitate translation of global standards to the region and of country-generated innovation and learning to global practice
โข Support regional Technical Advisors to address implementation bottlenecks and critical quality concerns in the regionโs programming portfolio, in partnership with the Deputy Regional Director (DRD)
โข Increase quality of technical collaboration across the region by fostering cross-regional dialogue with other regional technical teams
โข Provide technical oversight of regional strategic projects in collaboration with the Global Practice Leads as appropriate and/or budgeted, escalating quality assurance challenges as needed
โข Foster relationships with a wide range of both internal and external stakeholders to make strategic connections and identify opportunities
โข Provide stop-gap direct implementation support as/if appropriate and budgeted on CP-grants
Staff management, learning, and development
โข Lead and line manage a high performing team of ERD Technical Advisors to design and support ERD programming across the region, and generate evidence and learning for local and global strategies
โข Accountable for ensuring TAs maintain core knowledge and expertise and apply global best practices to their work across health sub-sectors
โข Work closely with Regional and CRRD HQ People & Culture colleagues to devise strategies of attracting, onboarding, developing, and nurturing diverse regional technical staff at the Advisor and Coordinator levels, and ensuring an inclusive work environment. In collaboration with the DRD, Regional and CRRD HQ P&C, and Global Practice Leads, plan and implement professional development for staff ensuring targeted learning.
Program Design and Business Development
โข Provide technical leadership and oversight to region-led (multi-country) business development, as well as particularly large single-country opportunities, together with the Technical Advisors, Global Practice Leads and others as relevant.
โข Support and promote technical and programmatic innovation in the region, based on technically-sound and contextually-grounded creativity and/or insights
โข Collaborate with other technical area Regional Leads and Technical Advisors to promote regional uptake of solutions that are proven to increase scale and deepen impact, with close attention to where integrated programming would multiply efficacy and efficiency
โข Work with DRD, Director of Awards Management and DDPs for country programs to understand the regionโs donors for the ERD sectors, the donorsโ priorities in the region, and the regional funding priorities of Country Programs for the Economic Wellbeing Outcomes
โข Support regional donor engagement to deepen donor understanding of IRCโs work the region, strategically foster and develop new donor relationships in close coordination with the regional team, and support the development of regional business development opportunities
โข Support the development and growth of strategic partnerships with mission-aligned organizations at the regional level who share commitments towards scale and impact and have complementary areas of expertise for collaboration towards delivering better outcomes for clients
โข Accountable for coordinating across expert staff to better integrate cross-cutting issues into ERD programs (e.g., gender equality, diversity and inclusion, climate adaptation, etc.).
Knowledge Management, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning
โข Lift up program learning for sharing across the region and to inform global strategic direction of (relevant) Global Practice Areas
โข Facilitate interpretation and use of sector data in regional learning routines and put in place routines and accountability mechanisms to encourage uptake of data-driven recommendations made by TAs
โข Collaborate with Regional Measurement Advisors to ensure that Regional Technical Advisors support good MEAL practice for ERD programming in East Africa, including the use of high-quality indicators, the use of IRC standard data tools, and the inclusion of MEAL activities in project plans
External Influence and Representation
โข Engage in regional sector coordination groups and bilateral relationships as appropriate, to represent IRC, showcase learning from our client-centered program implementation, and support priority policy and practice shifts
โข Support regions in addressing policy & practice shifts needed to enable program impact and scale
โข In close collaboration and partnership with the DRD, regional Awards Management and Advocacy focal points, ensure effective networking and representation in relation to Cash & Markets; Resilient Food Systems; and Economic Inclusion through mobilizing input from global practice leads.
Key Working Relationships
**โข Position Reports to:**Dual reporting line to Deputy Director, ERD TU and DRD, East Africa
โข Direct Reports:
o 1 Cash & Markets Technical Advisor
o 2 Livelihood Technical Advisors
Key Internal Relationships:
โข ERD Deputy Director
โข Global Practice Leads for Cash & Markets; Resilient Food Systems; and Economic Inclusion
โข ERD Regional Leads and Regional Focal Points across 5 other regions
โข Regional Measurement Advisor
โข Regional Leadership Team, Country Directors, DDPs, CRRD colleagues across multiple roles
โข Regional Advocacy and Comms leads
โข Regional Safety & Security lead
โข East Africa Awards Management Unit team
โข CRRD Senior Management Team and Leadership Group; Regional Leadership Teams
โข Global HQ and AMU focal points
Key External Relationships:
โข Regional Cash, Food Security, and Economic Inclusion coordination clusters, INGOs, donors and policy makers, counterparts in relevant UN agencies.
Desired Experience and Skills
โข Highly seasoned professional with at least 8+ years of progressive technical and management experience leading and managing technical teams
โข Established technical expertise in at least one of the ERD Global Practice Areas relevant to East Africa. Professional and/or lived experience in East Africa context and sound understanding of the region is a huge advantage.
โข Excellent management and leadership skills including coaching, mentoring, and performance management
โข Strong track record of leading multi-location technical programs
โข Strong track record of driving uptake of evidence-based practice
โข Experience managing multiple projects with multi-disciplinary collaborators
โข Demonstrated ability to influence across a wide range of diverse stakeholders internally and externally
โข Strong track record of identifying and converting business development opportunities (when leading and managing the leader)
โข Knowledge and understanding of the respective regional context
โข Ability to work, manage, and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment; outstanding business acumen, critical thinking, problem solving and decision-making skills required
โข Superb inter-personal, written and verbal communication skills with ability to collaborate across countries, cultures, and departments
โข Fluency in English required. Additional regionally spoken language is a huge advantage.
โข Ability to travel regionally and globally up to 35% of the time, occasionally on short notice
**Education:**Mastersโ degree in economics, business management, international development, agriculture or any other relevant fields or an equivalent professional experience of background is required. Sound training on the use of data and research evidence for programmatic decision making and rigorous analytic skills are an advantage.
Compensation:
Posted pay ranges apply to UK-based candidates. Ranges are based on various factors including the labor market, job type, internal equity, and budget. Exact offers are calibrated by work location, individual candidate experience and skills relative to the defined job requirements.
**Standard of Professional Conduct:**The IRC and the IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way โ our Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Accountability, and Equality.
Commitment to Gender, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: The IRC is committed to creating a diverse, inclusive, respectful, and safe work environment where all persons are treated fairly, with dignity and respect. The IRC expressly prohibits and will not tolerate discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or bullying of the IRC persons in any work setting. We aim to increase the representation of women, people that are from country and communities we serve, and people who identify as races and ethnicities that are under-represented in global power structures.