Nutrition Program Officer – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Vacancy Announcement, August 12 2023
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Organization: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Position: Nutrition Program Officer
Employment:
Location: Addis Ababa
Deadline: August 24 2023
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Job description
The Foundation We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.
The Team
The Africa Team works to enable the foundation’s ambitious goals of scaling evidence-based interventions that target a range of disease and socio-economic conditions which are endemic across Sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, the focus of the Africa Team is to enable collective impact for the foundation in Africa by influencing policy and finance towards key development priorities, strengthening capacity and enabling systems for delivery, and innovating and using cross-cutting enablers for impact at scale. The team performs its responsibility through direct country engagement to deploy interventions and delivery models, and by building the partner architecture to replicate successful interventions and models across multiple countries.
Your Role
The Nutrition Program Officer (PO), Ethiopia Integrated Health Team (EIHT), is an important member of the Ethiopia Country Office (ECO). In Ethiopia, the foundation’s nutrition portfolio focuses on strengthening national and regional-level institutions to improve the delivery of quality nutrition services and fortified foods at scale. To this end, the portfolio includes investments in maternal-child nutrition, large-scale food fortification (LSFF), micronutrient supplementation, nutrition-sensitive agriculture, and research and innovation. Overall, the foundation aims to support the Government of Ethiopia to achieve its Food and Nutrition Strategy and roll out mandatory food fortification.
To foster this country-led approach, the ECO works to shape investments that are in alignment with government priorities while also considering foundation’s proficiencies, values (including a “One foundation approach” that emphasizes strong internal coordination across teams), and mandates, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as gender-sensitive programming. As such, the ECO aims to work with government, development partners, the private sector, and other collaborators to support food and nutrition governance to deliver evidence-based, high impact food and nutrition services and commodities using a systems lens. The foundation’s EIHT supports investments in service delivery; data systems; supply chain; health financing; research, innovation, and scale; and nutrition (multi-sectoral).
The Nutrition PO Will
The Nutrition PO will be a key part of the EIHT within the ECO, and an important member of the wider Africa Team. This role, which will also engage closely with the Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Discovery and Tools (MNCH D&T) and Nutrition teams to help operationalize the foundation’s country nutrition strategy. This will entail working to support the ECO Senior Program Officer for Nutrition and the broader EIHT, MNCH D&T, and Nutrition colleagues to implement and manage multi-year investments in maternal, infant, and young child nutrition, LSFF, and food systems.
• Use an evidenced-based approach to manage and distill key findings from assessments to inform programming and the team’s approach to promote country-led, sustainable, and resilient practices – such as local institution strengthening and partner diversification.
• Be responsible for managing a discrete grant portfolio and/or providing research and analysis work in support of grant-making, strategy development, coordination, communications, and advocacy.
• Leverage strong relationships with key in-country nutrition stakeholders across government, civil society, and the private sector and work closely with the broader ECO, MNCH D&T, and Nutrition teams to support foundation-wide efforts in strengthening women’s and adolescent nutrition services and innovation, micronutrient deficiencies and anemia, and the roll-out of mandatory fortification in Ethiopia.
• Support broader ECO needs as requested for up to 20% of the time (e.g. serve as the broader Adolescent Lead for the foundation in Ethiopia). The postholder will be based at the foundation’s ECO in Addis Ababa and will report to the Senior Program Officer, Nutrition for Ethiopia.
What You’ll Do
The selected candidate will be responsible for the following tasks:
• Support the ECO, MNCH D&T, and Nutrition teams in planning, developing investment opportunities, and managing grants, as well as internal and external relationship management.
• Collect data coming in from grants, assessments, contracts and partners. Analyze and use data to interrogate team hypotheses and support better decision-making.
• Support the team measurement, learning and evaluation strategy. Help operationalize processes, which will feed data and analysis from grants and research back into key strategy and portfolio management decisions.
• Handle discrete grant portfolio that includes collaborating with grantees to achieve desired impact of grants; conduct site visits when appropriate, provide technical guidance, convene meetings and apply and evaluate milestone-based performance objectives. Ensure appropriate documentation, grant budgeting and reporting as well as operational efficiency and effectiveness.
• Review letters of inquiry and grant proposals; provide clear, concise, and insightful written analyses and recommendations for funding, including drafting and editing proposal summaries and progress reports for existing grants for review by foundation leadership.
• Interact and communicate clearly and consistently with grantees and partners in the field. Draft sections of key documents, reports, and presentations for a variety of purposes and audiences, summarizing developments and recommendations for program areas and external partners.
• Prepare and write briefs and synthesize existing literature. Provide written analysis of key topics for foundation management. Fulfil data requests from leadership.
• Represent the foundation to key program-related external constituencies, as appropriate, on committees related to area of expertise and responsibilities of the position.
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Job requirements
Your Experience
• Bachelors or other advanced degree in nutrition, food technology, public health or other relevant field, with 5+ years of experience.
• Deep understanding and experience in food and nutrition program management, with particular focus on micronutrient nutrition.
• Demonstrated experience in large scale food fortification and maternal-child nutrition program delivery. Strong knowledge of food systems, nutrition-sensitive agriculture, and micronutrient supplementation. Experience engaging with the private sector is preferred. Experience in adolescent nutrition is a plus.
• Extensive project management, implementation and monitoring experience.
• An excellent teammate with strong interpersonal skills. Comfortable in a wide range of cultural, geographic and operational situations, demonstrating culturally sensitive behavior with a diverse range of people.
• Strong analytical, writing and verbal skills for communicating with a broad and diverse audience.
• Language: Ability to operate effectively in English, both verbally and in writing. Verbal Amharic skills is preferred.
• Effective as a collaborator in complex internal and external organizations. Leadership abilities to work with multi-sector food and nutrition partners, including government (health, industry, agriculture), industry, civil society, other donors, and grantees to create a common vision and visualize simple and effective but implementable solutions to complex problems.
• Demonstrated initiative to solve unstructured problems with little oversight, creativity, high energy, and a positive attitude.
• Handles complexity and ambiguity effectively: proven ability to be flexible, efficient, and tactful in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience in data analysis and strong data synthesis and communication skills.
• Creative problem solver with a rigorous approach. Highly organized and efficient; able to prioritize work based on minimal direction and multiple competing priorities.
• Strong understanding of shaping and managing sustainable and scalable ventures Other Attributes
• Comfortable in a wide range of cultural, geographic and operational situations, demonstrating culturally sensitive behaviour with a diverse range of people.
• Ability to travel up to 25% domestically and internationally. Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.
Closing date: 24 August 2023
Hiring Requirements
As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.
Candidate Accommodations
If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.
Inclusion Statement
We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.
All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity
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