Regional Program Director at Relief International (RI)

Essential Responsibilities and Duties.

Strategic Leadership

• Work directly with Technical Assistance Department and other initiatives that are focused on improving quality implementation in countries and ensuring that regional priorities and needs are understood and incorporated in the design.
• Articulate a compelling vision for the region and support country programs in setting country strategies.
• Support the management of country level strategic and annual planning, development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
• Connect teams to ideas, partners and resources to drive creative solutions for greater impact.
• Prepare the region to be strategically positioned for new opportunities and prioritize needs to enable region to go for them.
• Work closely with the Regional Director to ensure that the voice of the Region is effectively heard and influence the direction of RI through the participation and contribution of the Region and organization wide activities.
• Promote sharing of learning with others and drawing on learning from across RI and externally and utilizing the results to inform program decisions and enhance institutional knowledge.
• Support the Regional Director and Country Directors in program development, networking with new donors, and developing partnerships with INGOs, LNGOs and other relevant external stakeholders.

Risk Management

• Work closely with country teams on anticipating and mitigating programmatic and organizational risks.
• Assume a leadership role in the roll-out and follow up of compliance and due diligence policies and procedures to country offices in coordination with other regional team members.
• Support the Regional Director to present calculated risks based on evidence-based assumptions to help identify actions and decisions that need to be taken. Develop action plans to move decisions forward, convening stakeholders and leading follow up as needed.

Program Cycle Management

• Contribute robustly to program development process, including revision of proposals to ensure alignment with country and regional strategy, technical input/writing/quality control, and coordination with program and technical staff.
• Oversee the Regional Program Manager and Regional Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Manager in the provision of in-person and remote guidance and support on implementation of sound project cycle management and technical quality standards for all Country Programs.
• Ensure country offices have appropriate backstopping to meet RI’s required tools and processes and ensure the coordination of RI’s program quality and portfolio reporting mechanisms throughout the region.
• Work closely with Regional Awards Manager who is responsible for ensuring compliance of the regional portfolio in accordance with RI and donor policies, including, but not limited to support for timely identification and preparation of no-cost extensions, budget realignments, and program grant modifications.
• Lead on donor communications and serve as key focal point to donors at HQ-level (ie, DC-based for USG, Brussels based for EU, etc), where counterparts for donor country level representation exists.
• The Regional Program Director is expected to take a lead in the Regional Team in all efforts towards accountability; focusing on how we can improve our current program implementation to specifically respond to our beneficiaries and to international standards. In addition, how and what steps we can begin to take to actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our programs.

Other Management Responsibilities

• Assume the role of Regional Director when Regional Director is on leave.
• Supervise and mentor program staff in the regional team, and Program Directors (or equivalent) in country offices.
• Participate in meetings convened by Global Support Office and champion new organization initiatives.
• Participate in key recruitment processes and decisions throughout the region.

Safeguarding

• Uphold and promote RI’s commitment to ensuring the safeguarding and safety of the vulnerable communities we serve.
• Consistent with RI’s safeguarding and protection policies, ensure all people who come into contact with Relief International are as safe as possible.

Equity and Diversity commitment

• Demonstrate sensitivity and understanding of systemic diversity and cultural differences.
• Ensure that gender equity is addressed in our staffing and programming

Experience and Skills required for the role

This position will require a demonstrated ability to achieve results in a demanding and fast paced environment.

• Master’s degree in international studies or equivalent in international development, political or social science management or other relevant field.
• Proven field experience in team management; finance and administration; donor relations; and inter/intra-agency communications in progressively senior roles.
• Significant program operations experience including direct "hands-on" skills in program development strategic planning, program implementation and evaluation.
• Extensive experience in managing both development and emergency programs.
• Demonstrated understanding of the critical development issues in the assigned region and significant experience with the challenges of operating programs in the region.
• Demonstrated proficiency and experience with US, EC, UN and other public and private donors, Government grant and financial management requirements.
• Exceptional program and project conceptualization and design skills.
• Successful and proven negotiation, communication, organization, and prioritization skills and experience.
• Strong preference given to candidates with prior experience in Africa and/or Asia.
• Fluency in English is required.