Career Opportunities at Komaza

About this Role

As COO, you will be at the helm of growing our team from 100 to 400+ staff over the next 3 years. This is a senior management role that requires innovative thinking and positive leadership in a highly-dynamic and demanding fast-growth environment; this is not a technical forestry role. You will be doing hands-on coordination, coaching and problem-solving to lead a quickly-growing team and hit ambitious milestones. We need a true top-performer – someone with exceptional IQ, EQ, positive energy and experience to manage fast-paced, rapidly-changing and complex operations. The COO will report to Komaza’s Founder & CEO and work closely with other senior executives.

Responsibilities

• Lead a socially and environmentally driven business through years of ambitious growth, striving to transform Africa’s lagging forestry sector with a uniquely cost-competitive and high-impact business model.
• Complete P&L accountability for the business’ core value chain, from seedling nurseries to sawmills and sales.
• Lead 10X expansion of our operations in coastal Kenya over the next 5 years. Concurrently, build systems to replicate into new geographies & markets – building an expansion team to launch a second site in 2018, third in 2020, thereafter annually – to establish one of Africa’s top-5 forestry assets by 2025.
• Drive revenue growth by scaling up decentralized harvest operations, establishing value-adding processing facilities, and implementing scalable wood sales of diverse products into regional and export markets.
• Define company strategy, working closely with our Founder/CEO and others on our collaborative “Silicon Valley culture” senior team. Help build a fun management team committed to the tenets of “JFDI” and “Go Big or Go Home.”
• Define and influence company culture according to the principles of servant leadership, and continuous improvement in pursuit of excellence and impact.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant work experience, ideally with successful entrepreneurial experience or 4+ years as a senior leader in a rapidly growing start-up; MBA is preferred.
• Proven experience leading high-performing teams, especially in dynamic, high-growth environments, tackling a very diverse number of challenges.
• Insatiable hunger to learn and desire to continuously improve systems, people, operations to build and scale an innovative, high-impact business model.
• Deep experience in project or operations management preferred.
• Strong relationship-building skills and experience working closely across organizations from senior executives to field-level staff.
• Excellent communication skills with the aptitude to distill complex systems and detailed analysis into simple, structured processes with concrete action plans.
• Comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty, as well as patience and perseverance in the face of serious logistical and environmental hurdles.
• Low ego attitude with a willingness to shift from high-level critical thinking to stepping in and helping drive implementation on the ground. This isn’t a top-down armchair role. To succeed, you must be very comfortable seeking and learning from “upward feedback” from your team, and combining strong leadership skills with openness, humility, and good humor.
• Proven success living and working in Africa is preferred.

Expectations

We need a COO who wants to make a meaningful commitment to leading dramatic scaling of our core operations for a minimum of 3-5+ years. While we will open a Nairobi office to support regional expansion in the near future, this role will be primarily based at our current headquarters in Kilifi, Kenya for the foreseeable future. The role offers competitive salary and benefits, plus equity participation.

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About this Role

As Vice President of Operations Innovation, you are fundamentally tasked with designing the future of forestry in Africa, and will be responsible for driving change both at a strategic level and deeply operational level. As the founder of this initiative, you will need to thrive on ambiguity, and possess the ability to see, prioritize and manage simultaneous multi-year initiatives. Most importantly, you must be a lifelong learner who is able to lead, coordinate and coach your team of bright consultants through the stages of designing, developing and delivering critical projects necessary for the long-term success and sustainability of the company. You are an open-minded, flexible, and generative thinker and operator that cares most about driving lasting impact by converting excellent ideas into testable prototypes and proven reality. You will report to Komaza’s Founder & CEO, and work very closely with other senior executives.

Responsibilities

• Develop a dynamic, deep understanding of how Komaza works – the connectivity between teams, systems, and on-the-ground realities of building a for-profit, impact-driven business – and constantly think about how to improve on it.
• Recruit and lead a team of former innovation consultants, researchers, and operating experts, while inspiring a culture of collaboration and accountability.
• Build deep relationships at all levels across the organization to serve as the eyes and ears on the ground attuned to critical organizational needs and opportunities.
• Design and implement a rigorous methodology for inspiring, building, testing, and scaling blue-sky initiatives.
• Define company strategy, working closely with our Founder/CEO and others on our collaborative “Silicon Valley culture” senior team. Help build a management team committed to tenets of “JFDI” and “Go Big or Go Home.”

Qualifications

• 10+ years’ relevant work experience, ideally 4+ years program innovation consulting, or operations research and strategy from a leading company; qualitative and quantitative data are both your friends; an MBA is preferred.
• Proven experience leading high-performing teams, especially in dynamic environments. You know how to thrive in uber-growth situations. You’ve worked and thrived at a rapidly scaling company.
• Excellent communication skills with the aptitude to distill complex systems and detailed analysis into simple, structured processes with concrete action plans.
• Energetic and enthusiastic – willing to do whatever is necessary to get the job done. You’re well-organized with experience in project and change management.
• Comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty, as well as patience and perseverance in the face of serious logistical and environmental hurdles.
• Proven success working and living in Africa is strongly preferred.

Expectations

We need a VP of Ops Innovation who wants to make a meaningful commitment to building this department and delivering significant innovations for a minimum of 3-5+ years. While we will open a Nairobi office to support regional expansion in the near future, this role will be primarily based at our current headquarters in Kilifi, Kenya for the foreseeable future. The role offers competitive salary and benefits, plus equity