Vacancies at Plan International

Role Purpose

The Policy & Positioning Lead provides strategic support to the Executive Director of Global Affairs to strengthen and elevate Plan’s organisational voice through high‑quality policy positioning, strategic communications, and compelling external products. It ensures that Plan’s flagship initiatives, evidence, and impact are consistently articulated, packaged, and communicated across the organisation and externally to build recognition of the impact on girls of Plan’s work and expand partnerships and investments in girls programming. This position is attuned to developments within the sector and helps position the externally facing communications material to current and potential partners (including institutional, academic, governments, donors and foundations). 

The role translates complex internal analysis, data, and intelligence into powerful, accessible narratives—supporting speeches, proposals, opinion pieces, and communications that influence priority stakeholders and position Plan as a leader in the sector. 

This role reports to the Executive Director of Global Affairs, with close interactions with the Office of the CEO (OCEO). The Global Affairs department has multiple teams that together provide strategic guidance and high-level coordination to strengthen external communications and alignment across Plan International. It contributes to advancing Plan’s global strategy by ensuring effective external communication and engagement, particularly during times of change. Aligned with the ‘One Plan’ approach, the Global Affairs department fosters transparent and inclusive messaging, amplifies diverse leadership voices, and supports integration of local insights into global messaging and action. 

Dimensions of the Role 

• Organisational influence: Works across the Global Affairs department including External Communications, engaging with programme teams, the Office of the CEO, regional hubs, and country offices to enhance Plan’s global positioning.  
• Scope of work: Leads on packaging major flagship initiatives for organisational positioning, business cases, and external engagement strategies. Supports leadership’s relationships with external stakeholders to facilitate critical collaborations and opportunities. 
• Outputs used by: CEO, executive leaders including Executive Director of Global Affairs, regional offices (ROs), country offices (COs), and national organisations (NOs).  
• Cross-functional coordination: Aligns with external communications for profile-raising while ensuring programmatic and policy substance is reflected in strategic messaging.  
• Geographical reach: Global – drawing from country-level impact, regional intelligence, and global analysis for technical impact narratives. 
• Internally: Represent Global Affairs in various internal networks when needed. 

Accountabilities 

Strategic Positioning & Policy Packaging 

• Develop unified, high-level positioning for Plan’s flagship initiatives and priority areas. 
• Produce powerful and compelling narrative and statements on Plan’s impact and value proposition. 
• Create polished packaging for business cases, proposals, and strategic briefs for external audiences (e.g., donors, multilaterals, partners). 
• Coordinate leadership messaging for high-profile events, conferences, and strategic engagements in partnership with key internal technical expertise. 
• Source timely geopolitical and sector insights from technical experts across the organisation to ensure the Plan is well positioned and prepared for external engagements. 

Evidence Translation & Thought Leadership 

• Translate complex programmatic evidence, data, and internal intelligence into clear narratives and policy-ready content. 
• Compile problem/solution sets demonstrating how Plan adds value and contributes to transformational change. 
• Ensure coherence and consistency in messages shared across the organisation and externally. 
• Leadership Communications 
• Lead, edit and coordinate the development of high-quality contextually attuned speeches for the CEO and senior executives ensuring consistency, clarity, and impact in all communications. 
• Develop op-eds, expert-driven arguments, and other written materials that reflect Plan’s strategic priorities. 
• Ensure that external communications consistently integrate power-shifting narratives that centre youth perspectives and reflect Plan’s purpose. 
• Work with communications colleagues to align speech opportunities with key external moments. 

Positioning Planning & Engagement Mapping 

• With the Executive Director of Global Affairs and communications teams, identify upcoming opportunities for message amplification across venues, events, and platforms. 
• Develop targeted communications plans for major research releases, flagship initiatives, and sector interventions. 
• Identify entry points for influence across thematic areas (e.g., education, health, climate). 

Cross-Organisational Coordination 

• Work across teams to harvest high-quality insights, analysis, and impact stories from COs, ROs, and program teams. 
• Ensure external packs and messaging are accessible and usable by COs, ROs, and NOs to maintain one organisational voice. 
• Support internal alignment between strategic communications and programmatic evidence. 
• Manage multiple projects simultaneously, ensuring responsiveness to evolving organisational needs. 

Technical expertise, skills and knowledge required

Essential 

• Significant experience in strategic communications, policy positioning, and influencing in external forums with a focus on international development. 
• Experience developing positioning plans linked to major initiatives, research releases, or organisational strategic priorities. 
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex programmatic evidence, research, and internal analysis into clear, compelling narratives for external audiences. 
• Proven experience drafting high‑quality speeches, op‑eds, policy briefs, and strategic positioning materials for senior leaders. 
• Strong track record of working cross‑functionally with programme teams, communications functions, and senior leadership supporting organisational messaging. 
• Experience working in a global, complex organizational environment, with a strong understanding of stakeholder management. 
• Knowledge of geopolitical and sector trends, experience in strategic analysis and positioning against trends, with the ability to provide informed insights for external narrative, communication and engagements. 
• Knowledge of and experience in the development and humanitarian sector, both the donor community and programming. 
• Experience producing content tailored for donors, multilaterals, or sector‑wide engagement (e.g., investment cases, flagship initiative positioning). 

  ​​​​​​​Desirable   

• Experience working with or within international NGOs, multilateral institutions, or global development organisations.  
• Experience in global governance, advocacy, or external relations.​ 
• Familiarity with thematic areas such as girls’ rights, education, health, or climate change.  
• Formal training or qualifications in communications, public policy, international relations, or related fields. 
• Understanding of feminist leadership principles and anti-racism approaches.​ 
• Additional language skills, particularly French and/or Spanish  

go to method of application »

Role Purpose

The Intelligence and Foresight Analyst monitors and analyses the external policy, donor, geopolitical, and humanitarian environment to surface trends, risks, and opportunities that sharpen Plan International's positioning, influence strategic decision-making, support rights based, equitable decision making and identify key partners for maximum impact.

This role brings rigorous evidence-based analysis and forward-looking intelligence that reflects diverse perspectives, including from crisis affected and marginalised contexts into the heart of the Global Affairs function, enabling Plan International's senior leadership to make informed, timely decisions and to position the organisation proactively at global policy moments. The Analyst is central to building and maintaining networks and influence across key multilaterals, think-tanks, academic institutions, foundations and the private sector to ensure “just-in-time” briefings and longer-term horizon projections of high relevance to Plan and impact on girls. The Analyst is central to Plan International's drive to be propositional, data and intelligence-led, and strategic in its global engagements and impact.

Dimensions of the Role

This is a technical and analytical role within the Policy, Advocacy and Strategic Partnerships function with significant cross-departmental reach. The post-holder monitors and analyses the external policy donor and humanitarian trends to identify trends, risks  and opportunities and produces intelligence outputs that directly inform the Global Affairs Executive Director, senior leadership, and the CEO's Office, as well as the Policy, Advocacy and Strategic Partnerships Director, Leads and team, the Fundraising Intelligence function, and the Programme Impact and Innovations team, to sharpen position and influence and enable identification of partners for impact

There are no direct line management responsibilities. The role requires a high degree of intellectual independence, strong analytical capability, including economic analytical capabilities, and the ability to communicate complex findings clearly and credibly to senior non-technical audiences. The Analyst operates within a high-functioning Global Affairs team and is expected to set the standard for evidence-based thinking across the department. The Analyst serves as an essential intelligence advisor to the Plan International Leadership. The Analyst is expected to apply critical awareness of bias, power dynamics and whose voices are represented or excluded in global policy, donor and geopolitical analysis

Accountabilities

• Conduct ongoing market and landscape scans that consider differential impacts of global trends on children, young people, girls and marginalised groups across political, economic, donor, geopolitical, and humanitarian environments, producing timely updates, rapid short analytical briefing notes, and reports on emerging trends, risks, and opportunities relevant to Plan International's strategy and positioning.
• Draft high-stakes “just-in-time” briefings, intelligence reports and strategic memos to be considered by the CEO, Leadership Team, International Board, and ensuring Plan’s highest governing bodies are sighted on horizon risks and opportunities.
• Build and sustain a high-level network with foresight leaders and economists across key institutions, including multilateral development Banks (MDBs) and key UN agencies, global think tanks (e.g., Brookings, Chatham House), academic institutions to exchange early-warning signals and emerging policy shifts.
• Provide a strategic interface with key private sector analytical heads, including at major consultancy firms to synthesize private sector macro-trends with humanitarian needs and build a networked private sector analyst community.
• Influence key partners, shape approaches and identify areas for collaboration with key strategic partners and institutions to undertake research and translate cutting-edge research into actionable foresight for children’s rights. Consolidate, synthesise and analyse foresight inputs from across the Global Affairs team and wider organisation into actionable scenario summaries, horizon scans, and strategic intelligence briefings and recommendations for Plan
• Deliver evidence-based intelligence outputs that directly inform decision-making by the Global Affairs Director, senior leadership, and the CEO's Office.
• Support the global strategy design process by coordinating input-gathering activities across relevant teams and synthesising key findings into clear, usable strategic recommendations.
• Maintain a live intelligence repository and horizon-scanning system, that include analysis from Global South research institutions, local think tanks and diverse knowledge sources, where available to track policy shifts, donor trends, economic and geopolitical developments, and emerging thematic issues of relevance to Plan International.
• Provide thematic intelligence and foresight analysis to support the Policy, Advocacy and Strategic Partnerships Director and Leads in identifying funding opportunities, policy windows, and partnership entry points with consideration of safeguarding, GEI alignment and ethical partnership principles.
• Produce compelling, high-quality written intelligence outputs that translate complex multi-source information into concise, accessible formats for senior leadership, including drawing from economic trends analysis and drawing out implications for Plan International.
• Ensures that Plan International's global policies for Safeguarding Children and Young People and Gender Equality and Inclusion are fully embedded in accordance with the principles and requirements of the policy including relevant Implementation Standards and Guidelines as applicable to their area of responsibility. This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring staff and associates are aware of and understand their responsibilities under these policies and Plan International's Code of Conduct (CoC), their relevance to their area of work, and that concerns are reported and managed in accordance with the appropriate procedures.

Technical expertise, skills and knowledge required

Essential

• Strong analytical background in economics, political economy, international relations, development and humanitarian sectors; and finance, or a related discipline.
• Demonstrated experience in intelligence analysis, policy research, economic trends analysis, horizon scanning, or strategic foresight – ideally within an INGO, multilateral, government, top-tier strategic consultancy firm; or research institution context.
• Ability to synthesize large volumes of complex, multi-source information quickly and accurately into clear, actionable intelligence outputs and recommendations.
• Experience in applying macro-economic trends and fiscal analysis to development contexts.
• Exceptional ability to distill complex, often contradictory, intelligence into high-impact narrative presentations and "talking points" for the CEO's and Leadership Team use in public-facing engagements.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present complex findings persuasively to senior non-specialist audiences.
• Demonstrated experience in synthesizing extensive analysis and data into succinct, visually engaging formats such as infographics, charts and slide decks tailored for decision-makers
• Experience working with or analysing global multilateral systems, institutional funding and financing landscapes, and donor behaviour trends.
• Strong understanding of the global development and humanitarian sector, including key policy debates, donor priorities, and funding mechanisms.
• Proven ability to influence senior executives to adopt forward-leaning, propositional stances on emerging issues.
• Proven facility in using AI-enabled analytical tools to augment insight generation, detect patterns, and strengthen forward-looking analysis.

Desirable

• Experience using data visualisation tools or quantitative analysis methods to support intelligence reporting.
• Familiarity with Plan International's thematic areas - including education, protection from violence, climate, and youth.
• Strong experience and networks within private sector, policy research, think tanks, or multilateral institutions.