Finance Director - Freshlife at Sanergy

About the role

Fresh Life is seeking to hire a Finance Director to lead the Finance and Business Risk Management teams. The Finance team is responsible for providing accurate and reliable financial reports to our internal and external stakeholders and providing financial analysis reports and tools to support planning and decision-making in the organization. The Business Risk Management team is responsible for managing legal, operational and overall business risks within the organization.

Duties and Responsibilities

1. Financial analysis
   1. Collaborate with peer leaders to set our US non-profit’s & Fresh Life's organizational objectives providing forward looking financial analysis and insights.
   2. On a monthly basis, analyze financial performance in order to deliver data driven quantitative and qualitative insights to drive informed decision making and constant improvements
   3. Lead cross-team projects that bring structure and analysis to highly complex and ambiguous business objectives, thereby improving outcomes on those projects and improving the relevant teams' subsequent pragmatic innovation.
   4. Deliver insightful analysis and clear presentation of the financial strategy to the Board of Directors
   5. Use quantitative methods to lead cross-organizational analyses and projects related to improved financial performance
   6. Support financial analysis, modeling, and budgeting across all teams on an as needed basis
2. Budgeting
   1. Own the organization budgeting process by collaborating with peer leaders to produce ambitious but realistic financial targets aligned with the strategy and operational plans. 
   2. Own the execution of the budget and financial model by accurate financial forecasting, tracking, and coaching of managers on the same
   3. Oversee adoption of quality analysis and problem solving by ensuring all budget plans are well thought out and justified
   4. Provide guidance to all Fresh Life teams on budgeting and impact of their operations advising on creating or enhancing revenue generation and cost optimization opportunities that improve performance against those teams' and the organization's targets
3. Planning
   1. Collaborate with peer leaders to set organizational objectives for USNP and FLI related to reducing cost/person/year through reducing cost and supporting increased revenue generation
   2. In collaboration with peer leaders, develop and deploy processes and tools to support structured data driven decision making to improve financial performance
   3. Use quantitative methods to build insightful models to structure and analyze data, identify potential opportunities and threats and determine value of information and methods to test the key assumptions in the model
   4. Own all models that forecast financial performance in the next 1 year and beyond. Lead financial reforecasting as necessary. Own the financial assumptions and models toward our path to 2026 C/P/Y target.
   5. Collaborate with peer senior leaders to drive the strategic planning for Fresh Life for the next 5 years and beyond
   6. Support complex projects related to increasing efficiency and optimizing profitability of existing products/business models
   7. Collaborate with peer senior leaders to set and achieve Fresh Life's annual cost and revenue targets 
   8. Collaborate with peer senior leaders to set and achieve cost/person/year targets 
   9. Develop the financial strategy for the organization to achieve our business objectives, coaching and inspiring your team and collaborators to implement operationalise the strategy through structured planning
4. Leadership and coaching
   1. Devise and deploy the strategy to achieve the Finance Team and BRM Team goals on financial modeling, analysis, accounting, audits, and business risk management
   2. Develop instructions, policies and procedures to successfully implement and manage all Finance Team and BRM Team goals
   3. Develop and adhere to operational budget to achieve all Finance Team and BRM Team goals
   4. Identify and develop a plan for personnel and any other resources required to achieve the Finance Team and BRM Team goals
   5. Support Finance Team and BRM Team members to adopt structured approaches to identifying and solving problems, leading by example and providing training or coaching as needed to ensure all managers and other relevant team members successfully apply formal problem solving methods
   6. Support Finance Team and BRM Team members to identify and implement corrective actions when problems occur, leading by example and providing training or coaching as needed
   7. Support Finance Team and BRM Team members to develop and implement preventative actions to prevent recurrence of any problems that do occur, leading by example and providing training or coaching as needed
   8. Ensure you and all Finance Team and BRM Team members respect other stakeholders, listen to others' views first, and actively consider and respectfully challenge conflicting views
   9. Build and lead cross-functional project teams to ensure strong collaboration and the identification of the best way forward by leveraging team expertise/existing infrastructure and ensuring alignment with objectives across the organization.
   10. Increase short-term predictability within the Finance Team and BRM Team by coaching others to develop and use operational planning tools to forecast the inputs and tasks needed to achieve the outputs required for the next quarter
   11. Increase medium-term predictability within the Finance Team and BRM Team by coaching others to develop and use the tactical planning tools to forecast the inputs and outputs needed by week and month to achieve the business objectives for the next year
   12. Increase long-term predictability within the Finance Team and BRM Team by developing the strategic planning tools and training others to forecast the objectives needed to achieve the business outcomes for the next 2-4 years
   13. Coach others to persist through major challenges to thoughtfully bring a new idea to fruition, including knowing when to press forward or revise approach, ensuring feedback from those that would be affected, and testing ideas rigorously
   14. Coach others to thoughtfully evaluate others' creativity and ideas, and continually seek out opportunities for positive change
5. Strategic leadership
   1. Collaborate with the Executive Director, Talent Team, and other senior leaders to revise or create tools and processes that support improved structured problem solving
   2. Develop processes and tools to measure, track, analyze and report on financial progress and results across strategic and operational initiatives.
   3. Promote collaboration among teams by troubleshooting reasons for non-collaboration and seeking ways to resolve them
   4. Increase your impact by identifying your influence objective in each collaboration opportunity and use the appropriate style to influence behavior towards achievement of your objective
   5. Build 1:1 relationships with senior leaders across the organization, acting as a thought partner to ensure collaboration across teams and influence decisions that can drive success for the organization's key goals.
   6. Discover and leverage insights, ideas, strategies, and learnings from outside the sanitation sector to solve business objectives, especially applying lessons from innovative businesses and business models to develop new ways of generating sustainable revenue streams
6. Stakeholder engagement
   1. When actual results do not match the plan, collaborate with peer senior leader lead analysis of volatility and uncertainty in Fresh Life, and improve your operational, tactical, and strategic planning to ensure actual results match the plan
   2. Collaborate with peer leaders on the highly complex and ambiguous business objective bringing Fresh Life operations to break even through reduced cost/person/year and increased revenue, and develop structure and order to reduce the complexity and ambiguity in achieving these outcomes
   3. Proactively share relevant partnership opportunities or business improvement ideas with other teams and create a culture of information sharing for your team
   4. Through the Finance team and processes, support the operational teams to identify, prioritize and solve complex business challenges to unlock desired financial outputs, efficiencies and costs
   5.  Develop the strategy and build the relationships with new partners related to Finance Team responsibilities (e.g., financial ERP, audits, AR mgmt); for each partner identify individualized goals, value propositions, and customized service or product delivery
   6. Support Business Development, Government Affairs and operational teams in building relationships with potential funders and government partners
   7. For fundraising and board engagement, support relationship building and information sharing, customized to the partner and situation
   8. Ensure the organization meets customers’ stated and unstated needs now and in the future 
   9. Proactively resolve conflicts between the organization and external partners, with a goal of developing and maintaining partnerships that provide value for both parties over many years

Qualifications

• 6+ years overall experience in high performing operating and investing roles, including the below:

  • 4+ years of experience in corporate finance at a fast-paced environment with demonstrable skills in financial modeling, financial analysis, fundraising, budgeting and funder / investor reporting

  • 2+ years of experience working with a high growth startup or management consulting firm

• Bachelor's degree in a business-related course; MBA is a plus

• Effective people management skills with prior experience of leading teams to achieve set organizational goals

• Experience in project management, monitoring, and evaluation

• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to think outside the box

• Excellent organizational and planning skills

• Excellent communication skills

Job Location

Nairobi