Manager, Leadership & Development at Bridge International

Job Details

We invite you to join this incredible endeavor that is having world-changing impact across multiple continents. You will join a team of dedicated change-makers committed to ensuring that each decision we make keeps a child’s experience of learning as its guiding principle.

Country (Kenya)

We work across Kenya to improve learning for underserved communities. Kenya was where we launched our social enterprise, opening our first school in 2009. We began partnering with the government, communities, teachers and parents to improve education in Kenya.

We’re data driven and our models adapt to the needs of individual governments. We’re flexible wherever we can serve more marginalized communities and improve learning outcomes for children.

Academics Group at Bridge

The objective of the Academics group is to drive student achievement. To do so, we must know — what is happening minute-by-minute for the typical child. The student’s daily experience, and thus the path to achievement, emerges from their relationship with the teachers and the content that is delivered in the classroom.

Our team is collaboratively organized around these levers. We develop rigorous content pitched at the right level for students to be delivered by a teacher who is prepared to succeed in the classroom. Our Instructional Design department builds the content; our Leadership & Development department trains teachers and school leaders using scientifically-proven techniques; our Learning Innovation department looks at cutting-edge research to generate breakthrough learning gains.

Underpinning all of this is the work of the independent Measurement and Evaluation group, which provides Academics with an empirical orientation toward improving that daily experience and, in turn, driving achievement.

Learning and Development Department

In joining the Leadership & Development team you are joining the group charged with ensuring that our front line staff are exceptional leaders who are energized and empowered to ensure the kids in their communities and classrooms receive an excellent education.

The Learning and Development Department ensures that talented and passionate candidates from each of our communities are made into high-quality trained teachers, passionate and motivated about their work, and prepped and ready to deliver education outcomes for pupils in their classrooms.

The Department is responsible for all aspects of managing, improving and delivering on Bridge’s 3-week long training programmes that happen approximately 4-5 times per Academic year Kenya.

About the Role

Delivery excellence, integrity, quality and systematization are all part of ensuring successful implementation.

You will work closely with the global training team who has and will continue to design the training sessions delivered in each country.

As the manager of the training with responsibility for two countries, your responsibilities extend to ensuring that such training sessions and overall structure work well on the ground, providing feedback and working closely with the design team so that there is a continuous improvement cycle to ensure that at the end of the day you deliver world-class, passionate and prepared teachers.

You will also lead a team of training facilitators who will execute our 15 day residential training programme 3-4 times per term. It is your job to train, mentor, and evaluate the facilitators each step of the way, ensuring that they achieve ambitious outcomes with our teacher trainees.

What You Will Do

• Lead the teacher training efforts for two countries ensuring all training graduates are world-class teachers, prepared to succeed in a Bridge International Academies’ classroom, passionate and motivated to deliver for each pupil.
• Manage and motivate a team of training officer and training in Kenya to achieve the overall goal of preparing talented individuals from each community to be exceptional teachers motivated to make a difference through teaching at Bridge International Academies.
• Be responsible for teacher trainee outcomes in the training environment and in the classroom after training completion; imbue the training team with this same sense of responsibility.
• Be a world-class project manager ensuring high quality delivery, continuous improvement and transparency for the execution of frequent (3)-week training programs in Kenya.
• Lead the execution of up to (4) trainings per Academic year in Kenya to ensure that all training facilitators are prepared and delivering top quality sessions and activities and achieving the desired goals for each of their sessions and training candidates.
• Work closely with the administration, HR, technology, and other departments to ensure a seamless user experience for trainees (i.e. the training runs operationally smoothly and all trainee needs are met)
• Document and address all trainee needs, concerns and issues.
• Create GREAT teachers by ensuring that every aspect of induction, on boarding, content delivery, skill development, messaging, and creation of buy-in from all teacher trainees are executed with passion and precision.
• Ensure your team possesses the same charge. The measure of your success is the learning outcomes delivered by teachers you and your team trained once they are placed in the classroom.
• Develop, coach, and mentor deeply skilled and mission-aligned facilitators.
• Train, coach, and support facilitators as they begin new roles.
• Observe and appraise facilitators according to the Bridge Training criteria for presentation skills and group management.
• In collaboration with the global training team create and execute professional development opportunities for your trainers to ensure they are growing as professionals and their ability to create impact.
• Engage in thoughtful leadership on how to improve training for those who are at the core of Bridge – our teachers
• Constantly look for ways to improve both the delivery of, the content of training sessions, the structure of training, and the overall delivery mechanism to ensure that world-class teachers are placed in our classrooms
• Be the leader for East Africa, working with global training teams to provide feedback, insight, leadership to continuously improve the training program.
• Provide detailed written and verbal feedback to the global training team during and after each training. In collaboration with the global training team, use feedback to understand where the successes and gaps are for trainees and for delivery.
• Work closely with the Schools team once teachers are placed in the field to understand how successful training was at creating teachers who are successful once they are placed in the classroom.
• Work with the content team to continuously improve and adapt our global training content to deliver quality teachers for Kenyan academies.
• Drive Process and Systems Training Improvement.
• Evaluate training and create a detailed report at the conclusion of each training in accordance with Bridge Teacher Training systems.
• In collaboration with the global training team develop new systems and processes to continually improve quality and efficiency.

What You Should Have

• A Bachelor’s degree
• Above 5 years of management experience, preferably experience managing both in person and large teams.
• More than 5 years of adult training experience; primary teaching experience is a big plus
• Experience leading small to medium (50 – 400 participant) training experiences
• A track record of leading teams to achieve strong and measurable training impact
• Experience as a thought leader on teacher improvement and a passion for teaching, training, and coaching
• A fundamental belief that great teachers are “made” not born
• A strong sense of accountability to training results and responsibility to lead your team to achieve those results
• Exceptional organization and project management skills
• Strong people management skills with experience managing a large team of professionals
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to manage and execute large-scale projects
• Experience with designing and implementing organizational systems
• Comfort analyzing data and effectively using data to inform decisions
• Flexibility and a strong work ethic with an ability to overcome obstacles
• Proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint

You’re also

• A detailed doer – You have a track record of getting things done. You’re organized and responsive. You take ownership of every idea you touch and execute it to a fine level of detail, setting targets, engaging others, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. You can multi-task dozens of such projects at once and never lose sight of the details. Likely, you have some experience in a start-up or other rapid-growth company.
• A creative problem-solver – Growing any business from scratch comes with massive and constant challenges. On top of that, Bridge works in often fragile, sometimes volatile low-resource communities and with complex government systems. You need to be flexible and ready to get everything done effectively, quickly, and affordably with the materials at hand.
• A relentless advocate – The children we serve and teachers we empower never leave your mind. You know them, get them, have shared a meal with them (or would be happy to in the future). You would never shrink back from shaking a parent’s hand or picking up a crying child, no matter what the person was wearing or looked like. Every decision you make considers their benefit, experience, and value.
• A malleable learner – You believe you can always do better. You welcome constructive criticism and provide it freely to others. You know you only get better tomorrow when others point out where you’ve missed things or failed today.
• A data-driven decision-maker – When making decisions, you don’t rely your intuition alone. You collect data, you analyze it and make decisions with clear justifications.
• A curious investigator – You ask why a lot. You don’t just take what you see and accept it. You wonder why it is that way, and are aware that the world we see is created by human choices and actions – and it could be different. You wonder, and see the world as wonderful even when you want to change a part of it that is unjust.