Head of Strategic Projects

Who We Are! 

🌍 Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined. At Educate!, we're obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent. 

Educate! prepares youth in Africa to learn, earn, and thrive in today’s economy by: 

1. Introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary and 
2. Delivering livelihood Boot Camps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.

So far, we’ve impacted over 250,000 youth across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya—and the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa. Our team of over 250 largely African staff and 300 volunteer mentors is passionate about creating meaningful change. Plus, 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over five years! 🎉10+ alumni have started their organizations and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows. 

Global organizations like  Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy,  #startsmall, Generation Unlimited, CIFF and Echidna Giving have backed us and support our mission! In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. By 2025, we’re on track to quadruple our reach and impact 400,000 youth annually. Want to join us on this journey?

Position Overview

Educate! is seeking a Head of Strategic Projects to support two fast-growing teams that work across our global offices in East Africa, the USA and Europe (Netherlands, Spain and the UK). This role will support the strategic projects for the Research, Measurement and Evaluation and People functions to build new systems and improve upon existing processes and workflows in preparation for our anticipated organizational growth and scale, including new country expansion efforts. 

This is an exciting and enriching opportunity for an experienced operator who easily adapts in changing environments, can bring clarity to emergent systems, engages stakeholders to embrace new processes, and enjoys working on a diverse portfolio of projects. Responsibilities include building and iterating on systems that support the foundational operations of the Research, Measurement and Evaluation and People functions. 

Performance Objectives

Operationalization of Functional Vision

Take the vision set by the functional leader and take it to the next stage to create a process for refining strategy, defining details for how it might go from idea on paper to an operational system, and ensuring execution/uptake. The content of the builds will be driven by existing functional leadership, this role will be project managing the end-to-end process. 

• Resources and tools - Oversee tool and resource creation process including tool design, analytical processes, engagement of internal and external experts, and construction of high-quality outputs including guides, checklists, briefs, and many possible other materials.
• Process improvement: Facilitate process to identify and prioritize improvement initiatives (e.g.identify inefficiencies, streamline processes) with function leaders. Manage the execution of those initiatives. 

• Work collaboratively within and across functions/teams at Educate! - Typical collaborators include the Head of People Operations, Head of Talent Acquisition, Director of Impact Evaluation, Head of Performance Metrics, and the Director of Product Operations, to name a few.  

Process Documentation & Document Management

• Documentation of strategic processes - To date, teams have developed ways of working that work for them, resulting in some disparate processes. This role will identify opportunities for shared processes and create clear, user-friendly SOPs, guides and tools for the teams to use. Improving them from time-to-time.
• Document management infrastructure - Build and manage document and resource infrastructure through the development of a document management system (we use G-drive). 
• Maintain knowledge management and access - Keep the intranet up to date and ensure resources are thoughtfully organized and easy to access across the infrastructure.

Strategic Project Management (outside of builds)

• Internal strategic project planning: Support internal strategic project project planning, developing deliverables, and coordinating with contributors and users. 
• Project management: Lead project management including day-to-day cross-functional team coordination and alignment with strategy.
• Operationalization and handovers: Plan and execute handovers of strategic projects to position the receiving team for success after they are operationalized.
• External relationship management: Manager end-to-end relationships with external research projects, consultants, vendors, etc
• Other strategic projects as required but functional leadership

Qualifications

We're looking for an entrepreneurial, "get stuff done" teammate with 6-8 years of relevant experience.

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills and the ability to work effectively in a multicultural environment.
• At least 6 years of experience working in an administrative function, with 4 of those being in a research and/or operational role.
• Extremely organized and able to thrive in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment, juggling multiple competing priorities and responsibilities.
• Adaptive and able to quickly switch or entirely change activities to meet team needs.
• Very high attention to detail. 
• Strong project management, able to assess and negotiate trade-offs with respect to juggling multiple tasks and workstreams.
• Self-motivated with strong personal organizational skills. Able to get things done with little direction or supervision coupled with discretion in elevating key updates, questions and recommendations.
• Have a clear and confident communication style to manage stakeholder expectations and to bring stakeholders along in changes to processes and adapt to new systems.
• Must be curious and seek to learn and improve while also simultaneously proactive and solutions oriented.
• Experience building or improving systems and processes.
• A solid understanding of research processes, experience working on M&E, data collection, data analysis, and/or research is a plus.
• A solid understanding of people processes, experience working on HR systems is a plus.

• Aligned with our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below) and learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here.

Location Details

• We prefer candidates based in East Africa (Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda). We welcome applicants from Europe (Netherlands, Spain and UK).
• We have a hybrid work philosophy! Teammates work from our offices twice per week and attend monthly team socials and culture-building events. 
• International travel will be required occasionally. 

Terms

• Salary will be based on market factors and commensurate with experience.
• Benefits will align with the country of hire and typically include medical and travel insurance, flexibility on work hours and hybrid work, paid leave plus one week of office closure over the winter holidays, and more.

What Is Educate! About? 

We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey of their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

1. We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed - We never forget that Educate! exists to impact youth. We are purpose-driven. We obsess over impact daily and if it doesn’t lead to impact, we want nothing to do with it. We prioritize interacting with and listening to youth. We design and manage the organization to ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences that youth value. 
2. We Exceed Expectations - We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results. When we know what needs to be done, we do it. We don’t wait to be asked and we don’t stop at what is asked of us. We look for solutions as much as we identify problems.
3. We Are Always Learning - We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded. We know there is always another way and we are excited to learn about it. We continuously look for resources of all kinds from multiple disciplines. We try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.
4. We are One Team, Many Views - We say what we think while treating each other well. We believe that all people have the same inherent value and that diverse ideas and open dialogue fuel excellence. We constantly strive to create an environment where everyone can and does express themselves freely. We support and respect each other as people and colleagues. We act as one team: We prioritize the organization's mission and goals over team or individual goals.
5. We have the Startup Mindset - We will always keep innovating to grow our impact. We aspire to be game-changing. We never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.” We question the status quo in our industry. We move fast and embrace change to move towards our long-term vision. We’re not afraid of failure. We interrogate anything that slows us down. 

Every person at Educate! — from interns to the Chief Executive Officer— is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do. 

Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community.  In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team. 

Child Safeguarding: Educate! is committed to child-safe/youth-safe recruitment, selection and screening. Our recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to the safety and protection of children in our programs. The successful candidate will be required to provide a satisfactory Certificate of Good Conduct as a condition of employment. We reserve the right to decline to offer employment to an individual or terminate an employment contract with an employee that may pose a risk to children and youth.

What We Offer 💼

• A vibrant, mission-driven environment with a supportive and fun team.
• Flexibility— Hybrid work environment with at least 3 days in our awesome Nairobi office (If working from the Nairobi office)!
• Competitive salary based on experience.
• Healthcare coverage for you and your dependents, work laptop, Internet & call stipend
• Learning & growth opportunities
• This is a 2-year contract with a possibility of extension

Application Process: Rolling basis, interviews happening soon!

Our Culture & Tenets(Values) 🌱

At Educate!, we pride ourselves on living by the Tenets: 

• We’re ambitious. 
• We put Youth First
• We are Impact-Obsessed
• We Exceed Expectations

We’re ambitious, youth-first, and driven by impact. We always strive to exceed expectations, continuously learn, and push for innovation. We’re one team with many perspectives, and we welcome people from all backgrounds to join us.

We’re committed to ensuring all candidates are screened for child and youth safety. As part of the process, you’ll need to provide a Certificate of Good Conduct. Educate! reserves the right to withdraw employment offers if any risks to youth are identified.