Associate - Consulting at Pula

What you'll be doing

• Support consulting engagements with our clients that include governments, private sector companies and development agencies. Be involved in the whole consulting cycle from identifying new opportunities, working with the various internal Pula teams (Commercial, Insurance, Innovations, Field Operations) to pitch for opportunities, develop proposals and manage small teams put together for specific consulting assignments. The nature of projects that you support can be diverse ranging from advising governments on strategies for increasing agriculture insurance penetration to developing an agri-lending and insurance product for a regional bank to delivering capacity development programs for regulators and policymakers.
• Create new content and insights as part of our consulting and research projects partnering with our philanthropic and consulting partners that include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Shell Foundation, MasterCard Foundation, KPMG, Bayer Foundation amongst others, working as part of a lean team to deliver on the contracted deliverables. You will be expected to deliver n discrete data analyses and research initiatives that help Pula better understand customer behavior as identified by these 3rd parties, for example: estimating impact of gender on insurance uptake in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia.
• You will be expected to develop content for Pula’s external communication and messaging through editorials, newsletters and webinars, publicizing the research work as well as wider work the company, coordinating with different departments in the business.

What you need to have to be successful

The hard skills:

• You have the analytical skills and the structured thinking to close action-oriented research and consulting projects as per committed timelines under the leadership of the team’s management.
• At least 1-2 years of experience in management consulting is strongly preferred.
• You have past experiences in client service, working with development agencies and/or institutional donors.
• Strategy & research experience in the area of Climate and Disaster Risk Finance, Food Security, Financial Inclusion, Agriculture or related is a significant advantage.
• Networks, experience and knowledge in the Climate Finance, Agriculture and Carbon Credit Industry will place you at an advantage.
•  You are fully comfortable with Google Drive applications such as Google Sheets, Google Docs etc.

The soft skills:

• Resilient & Analytical: 40%
  Can navigate through lots of literature and data sets and stakeholders to get the right information needed for consulting assignments and will not give up. Preferably a tenacious
  self-starter who enjoys being given ownership of initiatives. Recovers quickly from tough situations. Eager to analytically advance the agric insurance landscape, has a point to prove and looks to prove that point at Pula. Builds their profile and therefore reputation around Pula and the Pula products. They do not want to fail and therefore will do what it takes for Pula to succeed.
• Coachable: 30%
  Is eager to learn, and grow in their skills and ability, and can adapt to the situation. Is resourceful to close any skills and knowledge gap. Openly receives and shares feedback. A consummate learner.
• Communication: 20%
  Can clearly and analytically articulate arguments in reports and emails. Can confidently convert information internally and externally adjusting quickly between written and verbal
  communication as situations call for it. Follows through on action points from conversations and can succinctly summarize the progress required for various engagements.
• Relationships: 10%
  Can build trust-worthy relationships with internal teams and with external stakeholders rapidly. Can follow up on leads from the Consulting Director and also expand into new
  networks quickly and by themselves. Passionate about building and maintaining relationships.

What Pula will bring to the table

• Growth potential: With an untapped market of 1.5 billion smallholders worldwide, on track to doubling the number of farmers insured in 2021 and Pula’s global leadership in Agriculture Insurance, the Commercial Director has a tremendous upside growth potential.
• Market Leader: Not only is the opportunity massive, but Pula is by far the market leader in it’s category with 5.3m farmers insured as at the end of 2021.
• Solid: Pula has been funded by leading venture capital investors (Omidyar Network, ACCION, MercyCorps) and global philanthropic institutions (MasterCard Foundation, CGAP/World Bank as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Pula closed a  $6m series A funding in December 2020 in the right in middle of the pandemic a clear testimony of the opportunity that Pula is going after.
• Respected: Winner of the Singapore FinTech Festival 2019, Winner of The InsureTech of the Award, Africa. Featured on TED talks, The New York Times, The Economist.
• Impact and creation: This is a high-impact role, reporting to the CEO and Co-Founder, that offers a unique opportunity to bring the company to the next level, whilst developing new strategies, approaches and ideas.
• Leadership: The founders & CEO foster a culture of transparency, respect, high performance, pragmatism, execution and personal development.
• Purpose: It is rare to find a professional opportunity that offers accelerated professional development and a life purpose. Pula is going through a second phase of accelerated growth that will naturally provide professional development, whilst contributing to the financial stability of small farmers in the emerging markets.
• Remuneration: Competitive base salary accordingly with seniority and experience, commission on closed sales and an employee share option plan that offers an attractive equity upside.