Vacancies at Aga Khan Education Service, Kenya (AKESK)

The position

Position Overview

The Aga Khan Foundation is seeking a dynamic and experienced Innovation and Design Advisor to join our team in East Africa to lead AKF’s agenda in becoming a regional leader in social innovation and impact. The successful candidate will play a pivotal role in driving design thinking and innovative solutions across our portfolio, ensuring a user-centric approach to address complex challenges.

Responsibilities
Strategic Leadership of Design Thinking & Innovation

• Develop and implement a comprehensive innovation strategy/agenda aligned with AKF EA’s mission and goals as a regional leader in social innovation and impact
• Lead on the development and execution of the Foundation’s design studio, including finalizing and implementing the business model as a program and financial asset
• Elevate AKF EA’s role as a leader in social innovation and impact across the region and globally by elevating our work and best practices

Program Portfolio: Design Processes to Innovate

• Lead on the design and execution of timely, effective, and high quality design processes through our program portfolio
• Develop the fabric of support to enable innovation, such as coaches, materials/documentation, and advising
• Develop country-specific design leads to develop our in-house capacity to deliver on proposal development and design related activities (eg. innovate, incubate, scale)
• Design and implement financial processes to enable timely innovative design work at the school and community level

Programme Portfolio: Incubation for Scale

• Finalize the school and community incubation frameworks, testing them through our program portfolio
• Incubate a minimum of 60 ideas per year, scaling no less than 30 prototypes over that same period
• Deliver on time, on budget, and with quality incubation processes and outcomes

Business Development

• Integrate design thinking strategy into new business development opportunities and program inception processes
• Create resources for partnerships staff to understand why and how to integrate HCD into their work 
• Identify and manage external HCD partners (eg. consultants and coaches) to ensure all processes are delivered on time and with quality, as well as, build on each other to demonstrate impact.

Representation & Broader Learning

• Elevate AKF’s internal capacity to engage in and lead design processes through a learning agenda
• Build AKF’s network of design thinkers and partners
• Create linkages to AKF’s Global work (eg. Bezos, Accelerate Impact, Schools2030 Global Secretariat)
• Contribute to global thinking on HCD/design thinking, including writing stories, speaking, and collaborating with colleagues across the AKDN and externally 
• Represent AKF in the design space/events/conferences

Duration of Contract: Two Years

The requirements

Qualifications

• Master's degree in a relevant field and recognised further education in design, design thinking, or like.
• Proven experience (minimum 5 years) in leading innovation initiatives and design projects, preferably in East Africa and in the social sector.
• Strong facilitation skills with the ability to lead workshops and engage diverse stakeholders. Experience in Northern Uganda and the Swahili coast is a strong asset.
• Experience working in East Africa or a similar context is required.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build relationships at all levels.
• Demonstrated understanding of community engagement and a commitment to participatory approaches.
• Knowledge of monitoring and evaluation frameworks for innovation projects.

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The position

The Academy Fellow will live in an apartment and serve the student residential programme as a Residential Parent promoting community life  and are responsible for the follow aspects of student and academic life.

• While the Academy Fellow does not teach, s/he will be scheduled to have some contact with classes, to engage fully with the learning and teaching of the Academy so that he/she can support students with additional tutoring after school hours and during residential study time.  This will be approximately 10 hours a week (supporting 2 or 3 classes in a subject of the fellow/intern’s choice. Maths and Science are the areas of most need along with English as an Additional Language for our students who join on the Talent Identification Programme from marginalised communities in Kenya.)
• Developing and delivering the Service- Learning Programme which takes place every week with Years 6-10. This is a 10 hour a week commitment and requires planning the activities, working with community partners, delivering the programme to. Students and colleagues and supporting individual groups as they develop and implement their projects.
• Academy Fellows play a major role as Residential Parents in guiding residential students in their personal and academic goals and as Mentors for a small group of students to support them academically and socially. As residential parents fellows are expected to develop close relationships with their dorm sons/daughters by checking in with them frequently as well as supervising in an official capacity twice a week and one weekend in three.
• Academy Fellows are expected to actively contribute to the co-curricular programme in some way such as coaching athletic teams, providing music lessons or running clubs such as gardening, cooking, debating, MUN, TedX, guiding students interested in applying to top international universities with SAT preparation, reading essays personal statements etc
• Academy fellows will be asked to chaperoning off-campus residential and day trips, including to places of worship

The requirements

• A Bachelors Degree with excellent academic achievement and a range of interests
• A  record of significant involvement in residential, student leadership, music, athletic and / or community service during university.
• Genuine interest in and commitment to the mission of the Aga Khan Academies: to influence young people to become future leaders in the developing world.
•  Experience of working with young people or mentoring peers.
• Proactive self-starter, comfortable working autonomously.
• Openness to the new experiences, cultures and learning.