Chief Executive Officer at IDinsight

The Role

• Building on IDinsight’s strengths and impressive results to date, the CEO will engage the Board and IDinsight senior leadership to co-own the next phase of IDinsight’s ambitious strategy and growth plan to achieve social impact at scale and influence how the development sector makes decisions.
• This endeavor demands a leader who can: inspire the broader global development field and its decision-makers to adopt data and evidence-based approaches. They will attract, empower, and mentor internal leaders; guide IDinsight strategy; demonstrate IDinsight’s values in every action; conceptualize and launch large, high-impact new initiatives; and attract financial resources to fund innovative projects and the organization’s scale-up. IDinsight’s senior leadership, including highly independent regional directors will allow the CEO to focus on the most high-leverage strategic and influential initiatives to achieve our mission.

Lead vision and strategy

The CEO will set, execute, and continually refine IDinsight’s strategy

• Set IDinsight’s strategy to achieve its mission and vision; analyze trends within the data and development field and opportunities; communicate organization-wide priorities, shaping the portfolio of work; identify opportunities and lead change when necessary.
• Lead long-term and annual planning processes with senior leadership and the Board.
• Work with senior leadership to establish systems for tracking and reporting on progress against strategic plans; mitigate risks to successful execution.

Create large scale social impact

The CEO will ensure IDinsight is able to maximize its long-term social impact.

• Launch high-impact new initiatives and services to further data- and evidence- driven decision making in global development.
• Advise on and drive performance for the organization’s social impact, technical robustness, financial health, project execution quality, and status of client relations for all projects in IDinsight’s portfolio.

Empower people, drive culture, and champion values

The CEO will empower IDinsight’s exceptional people, model and drive exceptional organizational culture, and champion organizational values.

• Empower IDinsight’s people (a team of 300 individuals from 25+ countries) and help them create a direct link between their work with social impact at scale.
• Model and drive organizational culture to create cohesion amongst distributed teams.
• Champion organizational values so as to attract and retain mission-driven team members.
• Ensure IDinsight is a professional home where team members of diverse backgrounds experience inclusion and equity, and therefore a deep sense of belonging.

Influence actors in global development

• The CEO will expand IDinsight’s influence and reputation to promote evidence-based solutions to development challenges.
• Create and increase IDinsight’s brand recognition as an exemplary organization in terms of impact, innovation, and influence.
• Inspire all of IDinsight’s constituents and position the organization as an influential thought leader.
• Maintain pulse and engage in public discussion (e.g., blogs, social media, conferences, etc.) on newest trends and latest debates in global development and identify appropriate opportunities for IDinsight to contribute to and shape these debates.
• Provide direction for IDinsight’s communications strategy to facilitate internal and external alignment.
• Advocate for evidence-based and innovative approaches to development through conferences, speaking engagements, events, and thought pieces.
• Build and maintain influential relationships with appropriate stakeholders.
• Position IDinsight leadership as trusted advisors (either formally or informally) to “marketmakers” (e.g., decision-makers in governments, large foundations, NGOs and think tanks).
• Build and maintain strategic relationships with influential members of the development community.

Maintain financial health
The CEO will assume ultimate responsibility for maintaining IDinsight’s exceptional financial health, as well as ensuring the business model maximizes social impact.

• In partnership with the Regional Directors and Philanthropic Engagement team, and through significant personal investment, identify, cultivate, develop, secure, and steward high impact donors; ensure that funds are properly and strategically allocated to support IDinsight’s core project work and strategic initiatives.
• Oversee high-level budget setting to maintain the organization’s exceptional financial health and optimal resource allocation for strategy execution.
• Develop and engage board of directors
• The CEO will report to, manage, and develop IDinsight’s Board of Directors; facilitate Board engagement.
• Engage the Board of Directors in its important governance role by openly communicating about the organization’s opportunities, strategic choices, and progress toward goals.
• Recruit committed, strategic Board members who can help IDinsight expand its influence and impact.
• Suggest changes to the Board when appropriate, in light of IDinsight’s strategy.

The Ideal CEO
IDinsight’s next CEO:

• Must be driven to work with global low-income and marginalized communities, ideally with significant personal and/or professional experience in one of the countries where IDinsight does its work.
• Must be passionate about, and with a track record, using cutting edge analytics that help and influence decision-makers (policymakers, funders, NGOs) to make high-impact programs.
• Will have a career background related to “data for development”: research, measurement, evaluation, and/or learning; consulting; and/or global development.
• Will ideally bring a compelling blend of tangible results and experience:
• Identifying, cultivating and securing significant new philanthropic funding.
• Attracting, managing and mentoring a large and talented team.
• Building a cohesive culture across geographies and offices.
• Supporting and overseeing the work of functional leads who enable client-facing teams and organizational growth as well as operational/fiscal discipline, transparency and critical investments in systems.