Lead, Forest Allies at Rainforest Alliance

Position summary:

The Forest Allies program protects, conserves and restores the world’s most important forests by partnering with forest communities. Forest Allies brings together companies, regional civil society organizations, and forest communities through collective investment in a portfolio of projects with the shared objective of partnering with forest communities to become effective stewards and forest guardian. Claims are a key component of the initiative enabling the ability to elevate the visibility of forest communities through rich, data driven claims and storytelling.

As such, Forest Allies is a key global program within the context of the Rainforest Alliance 2030 Strategy, as it directly supports our impact area of conserving forests and their biodiversity; which puts producers first and seeks to create a continuous improvement journey.

The Lead, Forest Allies, will work to ensure a cohesive, simple, effective and viable Forest Allies program by connecting, providing feedback, and clarifying roles and responsibilities across Rainforest Alliance departments involved in Forest Allies. The Lead, Forest Allies, leads on driving producer centricity for the program. They also ensure there is maximized synergy creation, coordination, and continuous communication between Rainforest Alliance’s global programs. The lead will also be a key spokesperson for the Forest Allies program, both internally and externally.

The Lead will coordinate closely with a multi-disciplinary, international group of specialists and teams across the organization.

Identifying critical cross-departmental and external alliance growth opportunities as well as having the expertise and communication style to positively influence these successful collaborations is key to the success of this role.

Responsibilities: 

• The Rainforest Alliance’s Core Values are Impact, Change, Collaboration, Openness and Trust and as such they form the basis of the behaviours we demonstrate;
• Lead the strategy to ensure that the Forest Allies program supports the organization in achieving its 2030 Strategy, promoting speed, scale and simplification in design, implementation, and impact creation;
• Ensure that Forest Allies has the necessary core elements and is producer centric, which include a clear value proposition, operating model, systems and tools, decision-making procedures, revenue and fundraising model, assurance mechanism, KPIs and reporting processes, claims framework;
• Ensure Forest Allies works in close collaboration with Rainforest Alliance’s other Standards and Frameworks and global programs, so that their contribution to the 2030 strategy is integrated;
• Work closely with departments across the Rainforest Alliance to align and coordinate on Forest Allies’ implementation, e.g., on regional design and implementation, corporate engagement and partnerships; with programmatic specialists, marketing and communication, etc;
• Apply the Portfolio Management Process to analyse and make decisions on specific elements of Forest Allies that will go through a major overhaul as; ensuring due governance of each stage in the process with proper gates so that we are driving our program development through the operating model;
• Represent Rainforest Alliance at key events and in key meetings, presentations, policy forums and roundtables to promote the impact created through Forest Allies;
• Cultivate a culture of positive and proactive collaboration, consult widely and inclusively across the organization, clearly demonstrating taking broad perspectives into consideration, and embed continuous learning and simplification into all aspects of programmatic work; and;
• Other duties, as assigned.

Qualifications: 

• Degree in Forestry, Biology, Social Sciences, or related field; master’s degree preferred;
• At least 10 years of relevant work experience in the tropical community forestry sector;
• At least 5 years of demonstrable experience working with community forest enterprises programs and forestry certification systems;
• Extraordinary commitment, energy, and a positive mindset;
• Knowledge of sustainable development issues and commitment to Rainforest Alliance’s goals of strengthening livelihoods and securing human rights; conserving forests and other high-value ecosystems; restoring production systems and rural landscapes; and mitigating climate change and building climate resilience;
• Sound project management experience;
• Key competencies: Transformational leadership, innovation, adaptability, persuasion, critical and reflective thinking, public speaking, resourcefulness, relationship builder based on trust, empathy and openness, and strong organizational skills to manage multiple priorities in a time sensitive manner;
• Fluency in the language of the country where the position is based, and high quality spoken and written English;
• Ability to travel a minimum of 20% per year, nationally and internationally.