Director at BFA (Bankable Frontier Associates)

BFA is seeking a senior communications and advocacy professional in the financial inclusion space to head a new Practice Area which is currently being called “Insights & Influence (I&I).”

This position is for immediate hire. BFA is a global consulting firm specializing in financial services for low-income people. Our approach is to seek out, create and implement financial solutions to help people manage challenges and seize opportunities. We partner with cutting-edge organizations - such as financial institutions, fintech companies and information providers - and public sector players that touch the lives of low-income consumers and are creating an inclusive and resilient digital economy. In creating solutions, we integrate our deep expertise in customer insights, business strategy, new technology, and growth-enabling policy and regulation.

As we have expanded our company globally and take on the management of multi-year, multi-country programs, we have increasingly felt that the value of our experiences and those of our partners has not been fully put to use to extend the benefit of learning and insights from our direct work with partners to other stakeholders There is further value we can extract from these projects in terms of helping similar institutions or to use these learnings to advocate for change in the financial and other sectors.

The role of the Insights & Influence (I&I) Practice Area is part-communications and part-advocacy, and it also has a mandate to extract insights from the teams executing the work. These insights are then embedded in a range of tools to influence different stakeholders.

These tools include:

• Dynamic toolkits for financial service providers;
• Video and photography to reinforce concepts and processes;
• Infographics that are used to convey key concepts;
• Blogs, case studies, and white papers;
• Engagement with a range of media to spread key ideas;
• Webinars to reach a range of geographies;
• Design sprints to engage financial service providers and other stakeholders;
• Convenings and events across geographies, mediums, and stakeholders.
• These tools are used in the context of broad and deep engagement with a range of media and stakeholders to spread key ideas.
• Depending on projects, our target audience may include:
• Financial Institutions (bank and non-bank)
• Payments providers
• Insurance providers
• Mobile Network Operators providing digital financial services
• Fintech firms
• RegTech and SupTech firms
• Data companies
• Super-platforms (such as Facebook, Amazon, WeChat, Alibaba, etc)
• Government agencies
• Financial authorities that regulate and supervise financial markets
• Donors
• Investors

The full-time position can be based in any one of BFA’s core offices in Boston, New York City, Washington D.C., Nairobi, Medellin or New Delhi. Compensation will be commensurate with experience.

What You’ll Do As Director of Communications and Advocacy, your role will be to:

• Create a vision for the I&I Practice Area;
• Develop a work plan for the I&I team that is integrated within BFA’s practice areas and projects;
• Engage directly with clients to co-create influence strategies;
• Oversee management of the five full-time person I&I team, as well as several contractors;
• Develop tools and methods for framing and executing influence strategies;
• Work closely with other BFA’ers and our clients to effectively communicate our learnings and experiences, as well as those of our partners;
• Create processes and structures that will ensure smooth execution of I&I activities across multiple practice areas and geographies;
• Spearhead communications and marketing strategies and execution for large projects;
• Ensure creativity and design in outputs throughout the company;
• Lead strategy for BFA around social media, social marketing, design, publications, blogs, etc;
• Lead communications and marketing functions for practice areas as needed;
• Create appropriate public relations strategies for BFA as a whole;
• Serve as part of the leadership team and ensure BFA’s positioning within the financial inclusion industry.
• Additionally, you will participate directly in projects as determined by our client-driven work.

Qualifications

The ideal candidate for the position should have the following qualifications:

• At least 7 years in a communications role within the philanthropic or related sector;
• At least 5 years’ experience within the financial inclusion, digital finance or similar field;
• Masters’ degree in Public Policy, Communications, Political Science or equivalent;
• Experience in business development;
• Ability to manage multiple projects at the same time;
• Excellent spoken and written English;
• A true team player;
• Track record or portfolio of creative communications outputs (including different media and channels);
• Comfort working with a geographically dispersed team;
• Proven experience working across multiple subject area teams;
• Fluent written and spoken Spanish and/or French (desirable);
• Knowledge of social media and social marketing.