Advisor, Strategy and Special Initiatives, GPA

Position description

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

Global Policy & Advocacy is the political, economic and partnerships division of the Gates Foundation and is a division that works with all of the foundation’s programmatic areas. The mission of the Global Policy & Advocacy (GPA) division is to understand and shape the public policy debates affecting the foundation’s work, build support for its major program and policy objectives, and develop partnerships and alliances that can advance the foundation’s objectives nationally and globally. Because the foundation’s resources alone are not enough to solve the challenges ahead, GPA also supports advocacy efforts to engage public, private and philanthropic partners in our shared program goals. We work in close partnership with grantees, our colleagues in the Global Health, Global Development, Global Growth & Opportunity, U.S. and Gender Equality programs and Foundation Communications to build the environment in which all people have the opportunity to lead healthy and productive lives.

Application Deadline: Friday, August 23, 2024

Your Role

Based in the GPA Office of the President, the Advisor, Strategy and Special Initiatives role serves as a key partner to the GPA President by advising on the medium-term vision for the division; supporting the scoping, launch and assessment of new initiatives arising from the strategic direction; and providing counsel to ensure resources are allocated and adjusted across the division to improve collective impact.

The Advisor, Strategy and Special Initiatives role will play a range of roles from providing evidence-based advice to decision support to organizational fixer. This role reports directly to the GPA President though success will come from building effective relationships with internal partners in division leadership as well as across the Office of the President and key business partners. This role also works in close partnership with the Chief of Staff.  While this role does not have direct management responsibility the role will benefit from support via dotted line resources and will need to build strong partnerships with members of the Office of the President. 

What You’ll Do

• Develop, advise on and implement GPA-wide strategy projects as directed by the President. Provide oversight and advice to ensure projects aimed at answering key strategic issues are analytically grounded, account appropriately for the division’s comparative advantage and resources, and have the appropriate stakeholder input.  Ensure translation of new foundation-wide priorities into the design and setting of strategies and organization.

• Provide advice and support to ensure successful translation of strategy development into organizational implementation. Be able to see and complete the multi-step process required to go from white board idea to clear accountability and resources for execution. Understand stakeholder perspectives with empathy and a problem solving lens. Establish effective relationships with key partners both within GPA and across the organization, especially Directors and DDs, to ensure pivotal initiatives are operationalized successfully and troubleshooting happens effectively. Ensure feedback loop to President on strategy matters is operating with trust and efficiency.

• Special initiatives. Lead projects and implementation of initiatives that are sponsored by the President and initiatives that the division undertakes on behalf of the CEO and ELT. This will include engaging with GPA and organization-wide stakeholders while demonstrating empathetic understanding and effectively navigating stakeholder perspectives.

• Oversee and lead the strategy and measurement of the President’s Reserve, a $20+ million annual fund, to support grantmaking opportunities aligned with GPA’s goals.

• Conduct and/or oversee analysis, reviews, and provide advice on cross-divisional strategy matters to the GPA President as requested. Deliver advice, analysis and perspectives for decision support via memos, presentations, and quantitative reports.

• Build effective partnerships to be a valued member of the Office of the President team e.g. by contributing to learning and evaluation methodologies that enable the division to improve the performance of our existing strategies; partnering on culture and engagement initiatives; supporting President communication and engagement efforts.

Your Experience

• An advanced degree with 15+ years of experience or equivalent combination.

• Deep experience in strategy consulting and/or executive leadership advising, ideally in the foreign policy area or an area relevant to GPA’s business.

• Deep experience in structured problem solving, data analysis and interpretation.

• Deep experience in decision support via effective analysis, written, verbal and presentation skills.

• Deep experience in maneuvering through organizational interests to successfully land complex projects. This includes building strong relationships with senior decision makers, handling conflicting opinions fairly, and navigating to a decision with either consensus or agreement. 

• Intellectual quickness, curiosity, rigor, and resourcefulness. Demonstrated excellent judgment and calm under stressful conditions.

• Experience working in a highly matrixed environment.

• Ability to travel 30% of time as needed.

• Ability to work in the office as needs dictate.

*Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.

Application instructions

Please be sure to indicate you saw this position on globalvacancies.org