Global Head - Financial Inclusion at Blue Ventures

Responsibilities

• Provide oversight and leadership for the development and delivery of technical support, guidance, training and mentoring to partners and Blue Ventures’ practitioners focused on the delivery of financial inclusion initiatives to support community-based fisheries management of coastal tropical fisheries
• Leading a “training and tools” approach by creating training materials, user friendly tools and freely available resources that build skills to enable partners to deliver participatory, community based financial inclusion approaches
• Working closely with the Data Science team to embed digital data collection as a central tenet for successful community-based financial inclusion with all our partners
• Building connections among partners across different geographies, with a particular focus on ensuring information, lessons learned, and best practices are identifie and proactively shared
• In close collaboration with the Technical Knowledge team, country teams and regional partners (e.g. NGOs, universities and government agencies), supporting partners to assess and fill their own capacity gaps by providing training programmes and technical guidance to improve their knowledge and practical skills and incorporate approaches and tools into their programming
• Ongoing development of Blue Ventures’ best practice principles for financial inclusion and its links to (through internal and external consultative processes) and ensuring training and tools are freely available and accessible to all
• Ensuring technical rigour on knowledge products, reports and other external documents relating to financial inclusion and ensuring adaptation and evolution of strategies and approaches where needed
• Championing the documentation and sharing of financial inclusion learning internally and externally, to elevate the importance of community-based management as a critical path to safeguard livelihoods and protect coastal ecosystems.
• Championing Blue Ventures’ mission at relevant events and identifying opportunities for partners and colleagues to do so as well
• Cultivating a dynamic and supportive network within the financial inclusion sector Contributing to Blue Ventures’ organisational development by representing financial inclusion work and progress with partners and donors

Skills and experience

Required

• A postgraduate-level qualification or equivalent experience in a relevant natural resource management, conservation, social science, or economics discipline, especially political economics, development studies, or development finance
• Strong understanding and at least five years of practical experience implementing pro-poor finance (microcredit, fintech, cash transfers and/or savings and loans programs) to support small holders and/or producers, ideally in fisheries
• Substantive experience co-designing financial inclusion models with multiple partners for small-holders and/or producers, ideally in fisheries
• Previous field support to SMEs to develop organisational financial management capacity and access to financial services through a “learning by doing” or other participatory approaches
• Excellent research, analytical and technical writing skills
• Highly organised with an eye for detail
• Ability to take initiative and solve problems quickly
• Excellent skills in communication of complex information to a diverse range of stakeholders
• Ability to work well as part of a multicultural team demonstrating empathy, adaptability and diplomacy skills
• Fluency in written and spoken English
• Excellent knowledge of MS Office, Google Apps, and social media tools (Facebook,
• Twitter, Instagram and Google plus)
• Willingness to travel and spend time in remote and challenging environments for an extended period