Research Specialist - Gender at Busara Center

Role Purpose

The Research Specialist supports the research and consulting arms of Busara by managing the design, planning, analysis, presentation and publication of gender focused behavioral science research projects led by the Research and Innovation Director. The role holder will lead many aspects of gender and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) focused research; particularly in planning, designing, implementing, and analyzing lab experiments and field randomized controlled trials, conducting literature reviews, developing interventions, analyzing data, preparing working papers and online content and contributing research support such as budgeting, writing grants, preparing IRBs, and liaising with research partners. The role has an internal facing component which will involve synthesizing the evidence base, assessing current policies against that research base and providing recommendations and reports.

The Research Specialist is Busara’s subject matter expert on experimental design, and provides a technical core to project teams to ensure high standards of rigor on gender and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) focused research projects. 

Key Responsibilities

Manage a current portfolio of gender focused projects. Project manage current portfolio by coordinating with lab and projects division staff (20%):

• Lead experimental design for lab and field studies on a variety of internal and external projects and design lab and field research instruments.
• Generate key research inputs, such as pre-analysis plans, experimental protocols, analysis code templates, and data check templates.
• Manage the project team toward project implementation and success; manage project budgets and timelines.
• Analyze data from experiments and transform data into graphs and other presentable output.

Contribute to new proposal and project development. Support to increase business development opportunities and strengthening partnerships (20%):

• Identify and track funding opportunities and requests for proposals relevant to Busara
• Support proposal writing by fleshing out ideas and skeleton structures for review and submission
• Support in building out academic networks and practitioner partners; organize and coordinate external partner meetings
• Draft client-facing materials as necessary

Support internally focused research. Support internal work as a platform for our gender voice (35%):

• Lead the synthesis of current research in DEI and gender in the workplace for an internal evidence base
• Support the analysis of our internal policies and processes from a gender lens
• Coordinate internally across divisions to ensure relevance of work

Lead creation of internal and external dissemination materials (20%)

• Generate blog posts that communicate research and internal outputs for a more general audience.
• Lead the production of gender sensitive research best-practice guides and tools for internal use.
• Communicate our findings externally through contributing to writing up DEI reports, policy reports and analysis reports
• Support in convening dissemination events 

Capacity building and miscellaneous (5%)

• Set time aside every week to focus on personal capacity building and any other activities of interest

Necessary Requirements:

• A Bachelor’s degree in Economics, Psychology, Public Policy, Social Sciences, or related fields. Clear interest in gender and behavioral science.
• 2+ years previous work experience in a related field
• Strong knowledge of experimental social science literature (economics, political science, psychology)
• Experience designing lab and field experiments
• Strong skills in statistics and programming (STATA, Python, R, Matlab)
• Strong analytical and writing skills
• Flexible, self-motivating, able to manage multiple tasks efficiently and a team player.
• Interest and experience working in a fast-paced working environment.
• Excellent communication and writing skills, with fluency in English.

Preferable requirements:

• A Master’s degree or PhD in Economics, Psychology, Public Policy, Social Sciences, or related fields.
• Experience managing or mentoring staff
• Advanced statistics, research methods, or econometrics
• Familiarity with and interest in behavioral science
• Previous experience conducting research in developing countries