Director - Consulting & Research at Pula

• Pula is seeking an experienced consulting director to build our insights into smallholder farmers. She/he must have a love for building partnerships across commercial and public sector, profits and nonprofits, probing into data, solving challenging problems, and structuring complex processes, while also being comfortable building a cutting-edge ag-tech startup.
• She/he is expected to independently lead consulting engagements that leverage our trove of existing relationships, products, data and leverage the potential of new technologies, including remote sensing, with the goal of delivering tangible new consulting revenue and long term new commercial opportunities. Tasks will range from liaising with new research and corporate and philanthropic clients, to working with management and tech teams to ensure smooth delivery of research and insights, to visiting the field to understand the on-the-ground perspective, to synthesizing learnings from the business and clients, to contributing to the creation of new value-additive products for farmers, agribusiness, insurers, governments, mobile operators and their agent networks.
• The Director- consulting & research will report to the President & Co-Founder, and work in close collaboration with the partnerships, product, commercial, actuarial and operations teams.

A detailed job description for the position is as follows:

• Independently lead consulting engagements with our clients that include governments, private sector companies and development agencies. Manage the whole consulting cycle from identifying new opportunities, working with the commercial team to pitching for opportunities, developing proposals and managing a small team of analysts to deliver on the project. The nature of projects 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.
• Lead 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 with a small team to deliver on the contracted deliverables. You will lead discrete data analysis 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.
• Lead the team on identifying new commercial opportunities in new and existing markets, supporting market sizing for feasibility studies in new countries and ensuring that our commercial team has a steady supply opportunities.
• Lead 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 can demonstrate to have originated and delivered on consulting work from development agencies and/or institutional donors for a value of at least $500,000 over the course of your career.
• You have experience working with Development Agencies at all levels and navigating institutional structures both in private foundations and either bilateral or multilateral agencies.
• Partnerships, Business Development or Consulting experience in the area of Climate and Disaster Risk Finance, Food Security, Financial Inclusion or related is a significant advantage.
• Networks, Experience and knowledge in the Climate Finance 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.

We value soft skills as much, or often even more as the above mentioned hard skills. The right profile fit for the role is therefore described below, with weights indicating relative importance.
Relationships: 30%

• Can build relationships with stakeholders rapidly and can expand into new networks quickly. Having deep rooted existing networks and relationships is a plus. Passionate about building and maintaining relationships.

Resilient & Intense: 20%

• Can navigate deal complexity and will not give up until the deal is signed. Tenacious. A self starter. Recovers quickly from tough situations. Eager to build new partnerships, 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: 10%

• Adaptable: Is eager to learn and grow in their skills and ability. Is resourceful to close any skills and knowledge gap. Openly receives and shares feedback. A consummate learner.

Gravitas yet Street Smart 20%

• Charming. Has a confident, comfortable presence. Can sit across from the UN Secretary General, Bill Gates or the Minister of Agriculture of Kenya and hold their own and pitch without assistance. Can understand and map the stakeholders in a new partnership, identify and test champions, structure the partnership, problem solve and find another way when a proposed partnership gets stuck.

Communication: 10%

• 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 to progress a partnership.