Chief Of Staff at Asante Africa Foundation

Job Description:

Asante Financial Services Groups is looking for a Chief of Staff as we scale our MSME and Consumer businesses across the continent towards realizing our vision of becoming the Leading Provider of HighImpact Digital Financial services in Sub-Saharan Africa.

As we grow our customer base, enter new geographies, onboard new corporate channel partners, expand our business lines and roll out new products at a very rapid pace, we are looking to bring onboard a world-class Chief of Staff who will work directly with our CEO. As part of the leadership team, the Chief of Staff will be actively driving the company’s most critical projects, strategic initiatives, and operational rhythm of the business, while supporting the organization to scale.

The Chief of Staff will support the CEO in formulating and communicating strategy, developing, and maintaining operating rhythm, planning, and executing on organizational design, and representing the company to investors, clients, and other stakeholders. This is a highly visible position in the nexus of operations for a high-growth, innovative company managed by an experienced entrepreneur and executive.

You’ll be expected to operate at the highest level on a constantly changing set of issues, understand the intricacies of a growing company in a regulated industry, hold your own with intelligent and opinionated staffers and do so while constantly learning new skills and topics. Success in this role means sidestepping the usual career ladder and getting a front-row seat to the art and craft of company building.

You will support our CEO and Executive Team to drive critical cross-functional initiatives by assuming day-to-day project leadership and enabling cross-departmental collaboration.

You will help the departments scale by establishing clear organization structures, establishing objectives and KPIs, and implementing robust processes. You will ensure interim leadership in certain areas of the business and identify future leaders. The CoS will provide clear updates to the CEO and Executive team on progress, blockers, and risks.

This is a great opportunity for a strong people leader with great influencing skills at a wider business level. The ideal candidate would have demonstrated strong stakeholder engagement skills when engaging with other business units as this position will work closely with Operations, Engineering, Customer Services, Risk Management, Finance, and In-country teams across the whole business.

The ideal candidate will be proactive, flexible, practical, delivery-focused with excellent stakeholder management and communication skills. She/he will have a keen eye for detail, passionate and resilient and will have a toolbox of tools and frameworks that have been tried and tested in previous workplaces to allow our business to gain trust and instil sustainability. This position will require a candidate that is able to lift out of the day-to-day operational requirements of the team and focus on future strategic planning and initiatives.

A laser focus on Delivery, Excellence, and Outcomes!

At Asante, you’ll become part of a new movement in Africa’s Financial Services Industry with the

singular purpose of Advancing the Financial Independence and Well Being of Africans. Our offerings and propositions help our customers Realise their Potentials.

The Role:

1. You have extensive project management experience leading key company-wide initiative such as setting up new businesses, building new departments, digital transformations, launching new products and geographies
2. You have experience of working with senior executives and the ability to make a good business case and convince people to help you execute.
3. You have excellent written and oral communication skills - experience building relationships across departments and resolve conflicts.
4. You have very strong problem solving and analytical skills: proven ability to break problems down into components and propose elegant solutions.

Responsibilities

1. Provide tactical support to ensure the smooth operations of the firm which will include putting together presentations for key strategic meetings and forums with internal stakeholders, Board members, and Investors as well as minute-taking and driving the completion of agreed action items.
2. Lead ‘CEO and EXCO control’ over the execution of plan: goals, KPIs, governance
3. Take an active part in and/or drive individual financial analysis, seeing through financial statements and forecasts.
4. Prepare and facilitate key meetings – EXCO and Board levels.
5. Ensure the maximum impact of involvement in initiatives/calls/meetings (e.g. board meetings, EXCO meetings, SteerCos) by setting priorities, preparing agendas, aligning on key takeaways, and ensuring follow-up.
6. Provide content support in developing CEO and EXCO thinking (ad-hoc analysis, pro-active insight generation).
7. Lead and operate the central PMO for all strategic projects.
8. Create deep business insights, strategies, and tactics based on analysis of group-wide opportunities and best practices. Support analysis in connection to potential new opportunities.
9. Work on strategy formulation deployment in a manner that builds understanding and creates ownership.
10. Proactive identification of developing issues.
11. Drafting CEO communications and presentation materials.
12. Coordinate teams and working groups cross-functionally to ensure the timely completion of decks and the dissemination of information to move operations forward.
13. Drive and coordinate strategic initiatives cross-functionally.
14. Structure and inform executive decision-making, including producing ad-hoc analyses and quantitative models to support key decisions.
15. Act as a gatekeeper by being a productive central interface with internal and external stakeholders, making sure the priorities of the CEO are always in the right place at the right time.

Skills and experience.

1. Top-tier educational background with good results at master’s degree/PhD. level, within the areas of Management, Economics/Finance, Commercial Business, or IT/Tech Engineering.
2. Top performing consultant from one of the leading strategy consulting firms.
3. 3-5 years of cumulative post-university professional experience working with strategy consulting with an international scope.
4. Solid experience working with multiple stakeholders on a senior management level as well as PE funds.
5. Solid experience in driving financial analysis and support in analyzing e.g., financial statements and forecasts, as well as M&A business cases.
6. Experience in driving strategic initiatives in growth/transformation set-ups by setting direction
7. and steering stakeholders.
8. Experience with working in multi-national and multicultural environments.
9. Fast learner, avid reader on multiple topics with emphasis on start-ups, digital finance, and business literature.
10. Excellent communicator both orally and in writing. A talent for creating some of the greatest slide decks and business models (with forecasts) is compulsory.
11. Entrepreneurial and proactive. Actual experience in starting or running a small operation (e.g., a student body) is a plus.
12. Strong problem-solving capabilities, both in ideation and execution.
13. Highly analytical and rigorous, demonstrably able to take a problem apart in real-time.