Senior Activity Manager, Communities and Governance Practice at IREX

Your Background & Skills

• Bachelor’s Degree in related field required. Master’s degree preferred. 
• Minimum 10+ years of progressive job experience, or a master’s degree and 9+ years of experience. 
• Demonstrated experience providing technical leadership for donor-funded youth development programming in Africa, Latin America, Asia, or the Middle East and North Africa. Familiarity with USAID is useful. 
• Demonstrated partner management experience, particularly with local, youth-led and grassroot organizations. Track record of building collaboration and strengthening capacities to achieve goals. 
• Excellent ability to communicate effectively on the technical aspects of implementation related to cross-sectoral youth development with a wide variety of stakeholders. 
• Ability to simplify complex and technical concepts and package these into capacity strengthening trainings and mentorship sessions for both activity managers and partners. 
• Proven track record of working effectively with other projects, youth, civil society, government, and other international partners. 
• Demonstrated technical knowledge in cross-sectoral positive youth development.
• Experience in any of the following is a plus: implementation research, gender equality and social inclusion, protection, knowledge mobilization/knowledge management, capacity strengthening. 
• Excellent virtual and in-person facilitation skills for diverse stakeholders, especially for meaningful and inclusive youth engagement. 
• Proven experience managing multiple complex programming in a demanding, time-sensitive work environment. 
• Ability to plan both strategically and creatively to meet program objectives. Strong problem-solving skills and demonstrated flexibility. 
• Strong representational, writing and organizational skills. 
• Learning and growth mindset.  
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). 
• Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in English required. Other language skills, particularly French and/or Spanish, are a plus. 
• You must have unrestricted authorization to work in Kenya.

 Your Daily Tasks

• Engage with Youth Excel staff team, consortium, and donor to give input in setting and adapt program strategy and goals. Contribute to annual work planning, reporting, learning & adaptation, deliverables, and communications. 
• In collaboration with activity managers and technical leads, create and oversee implementation of a standardized but flexible, contextualizable, and responsive approach to partner onboarding, technical support, and capacity strengthening for implementation of Youth Excel technical approaches across discrete Youth Excel activities, in support of partners’ providing high-quality, timely deliverables.  
• Lead periodic internal learning and reflection activities among Youth Excel activity managers to foster a culture of adaptive practice and continuous improvement.
• Serve as Activity Manager directly monitoring assigned activities and partners and provide oversight and support to other activity managers in managing their assigned activity in a holistic, responsive, technically sound way. 
• Directly supervise assigned staff, who may include Activity Managers or other team members. 
• Spearhead development of youth-friendly, clear, concise, and cohesive technical guidance, training, and tools.  Ensure easy accessibility on internal and external platforms.  
• Socialize technical materials to build shared understanding and expectations. Test and refine effective delivery methods for high-touch and low-touch technical support and capacity strengthening for diverse partners.  
• Maintain strong working relationships that foster equity, transparency, and collaboration with diverse partners, participants, donors, and other stakeholders.
• Develop inclusive communications and facilitation approaches to build trust and a positive learning environment at program meetings, trainings, and events.
• Represent program to internal and external stakeholders at the local, regional, and global level through meetings, presentations, conferences, and other events and communications.
• May co-author and publish articles and thought pieces on behalf of Youth Excel.
• Support the mobilization of buy-in funding by pitching the program and co-creating new activities with different offices and country missions across USAID.
• Co-lead recruitment of new program partners by contributing to the design of new activities and funding opportunities, development of requests for applications, technical evaluation of proposals, and subgrant planning. Specifically responsible for ensuring that Activity Managers co-lead these processes and that subgrant development is fully responsive to activity goals and global Youth Excel technical approaches.
• May contribute to IREX new business development.
• Ensure alignment of activity and partner workplans with budgets in collaboration with finance and grants team. Optimize technical support and capacity strengthening strategies in line with available resources and priorities.
• Manage consulting agreements for targeted technical expertise.
• Mentor activity managers and strengthen capacities for technical design, writing, training, and partner and program management.
• Supervise assigned staff.
• Other support duties as needed.