Global Development Incubator Job Vacancy: Senior Associate, Impact Escalated - New York, United States

Portfolio: Impact Escalated Portfolio

Job Title: Senior Associate
Location(s): New York, NY; other locations considered on a case-by-case basis

Background: The Global Development Incubator (GDI) was created to advance and scale social impact. We do this by creating and expanding select ideas, organizations, and initiatives that address urgent global problems. GDI provides structured pathways over 2-3 years to support the achievement of critical step-changes necessary for ideas and organizations to move to the next level.

GDI goes beyond traditional consulting models, capacity builders, and bureaucratic platforms to do hands-on implementation in addition to strategic and networking support. We take the initiative to address real-world barriers to growth, offer a critical and independent perspective, and partner with innovators to deliver social impact at scale. GDI typically focuses on three phases of work, including 1) design and strategic direction setting 2) pilot and launch and 3) medium - long term implementation support and capacity development through to exit.

Impact Escalated Portfolio Overview: The portfolio focuses on creating scaled solutions across various sectors such as impact investing, livelihoods and social protection, financial inclusion, youth employment and education, SME and social enterprise networks, corporate and INGO innovation, and energy and the environment.

The Impact Escalated portfolio drives towards scaled impact from both a top down and bottom up approach:

Top down initiatives bring a multi-sector lens involving three areas:

• Aggregating commercial and philanthropic capital in different structures to scale impact, such as commercial fund structures, financial platforms, blended finance funds, donor collaboratives, and multi-donor trust funds
• Developing multi-stakeholder initiatives to organize efforts that create impact at scale, including groups such as corporates, investors, civil society, entrepreneurs, governments, bi-lateral organizations, and multi-lateral organizations
• Leveraging existing assets, infrastructure, and strengths of organizations such as INGOs and corporates to support innovations, social enterprises, and small and medium businesses

Bottom up strategic and implementation support for innovations, social enterprises, and small and medium businesses to build capacity, scale their impact, drive towards sustainability and facilitate partnerships. This includes:

• Developing growth strategies and endgames to help organizations scale from a critical inflection point (see “What’s Your End-game?” for further detail on our approach)
• Supporting with flexible capacity in all organizations areas ranging from operations and program management to legal and communications advisory

Approach: GDI believes that private sector actors, INGOs, foundations and multi-laterals have the potential to reinvent how we think about profit. Entrepreneurs at all levels have demonstrated an appetite for incorporating social impact into their operations, but often lack the know-how to take an idea to action. Regardless of whether the entrepreneur is a small business, social enterprise, or intrapreneur, we work with our partners to find new ways of doing business that are financially and socially sound. Through a flexible and holistic model, we help partners seek out creative financing opportunities and work hand-in-hand to develop and implement strategies with sustainable social and environmental impact.

Position Description: The Associate role is a unique opportunity to work closely with social leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs who are addressing some of the world’s biggest problems. In a single day, you will be a researcher, analyst, strategist, program manager, and implementer. As the engine of GDI’s programs across focus areas, you will conduct extensive research and analysis to support strategy development; participate in senior-level meetings with experts and partners; manage work plans, workflows, and budgets; and make sure all efforts are implemented for results. Although you will work closely with your manager, GDI Associates are expected to exercise a high degree of autonomy and take on significant responsibility.

Responsibilities:

Strategy and analysis

• Apply mix of strategy consulting toolkit, operational realities, and development ambitions toproblem-solve around sustainable and scaled impact
• Identify core value proposition of innovations, interventions, and platforms
• Develop recommendations on critical partnerships, role of stakeholders, and pathways to scaleimpact
• Conduct complex financial, competitor, market, and policy analyses
• Develop compelling Theory of Change, “Endgame” pitch deck and business plan materials, includingteam, governance, budget, growth and impact evaluation metrics, and KPIs

Client and Donor Engagement

• Support the development and delivery of structured verbal and written communications
• Develop high quality reports, presentations and proposals
• Participate in and support expert interviews
• Support and facilitate high stakes meetings, including travel to supportworkshops/implementation
• Support outreach, network-building, and business development efforts
• Collect, organize, and prepare program/ financial information for donors and management reports

Project Management and Operations

• Manage overall work plan, including tasks and milestones
• Track risks, issues, budget, stakeholders, and potential funders
• Coordinate support from other teams within GDI, such as the Communications and Finance/Adminteams

Thought Leadership and Support for the GDI Team

• Suggest and support thought leadership development
• Participate in GDI wide brainstorming sessions
• Contribute to the refinement of incubation methodologies based on your hands-on experiences
• Support broader knowledge management and dissemination

Desired qualifications: We are looking for candidates with a mix of entrepreneurial, strategic, and operational experience, including 1-3 years of professional experience in management consulting, finance, or social impact organizations; and/or demonstrated experience supporting management, operations, or implementation.

The following qualities are a must for GDI employees:

• Curious and entrepreneurial mindset?Razor-sharp problem solving skills?A relentless drive to get things done?Ability to move fluidly between collaborative and independent work styles?Ability to make assessments quickly and identify the best course of action?Commitment to thinking critically and creatively about social change

If you are interested and meet the qualifications, please send your cover letter and resume in one PDF document to jobs@globaldevincubator.org using “Job Applicant: GDI Associate” as the subject line

Closing Date: 07 May 2017

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