View Jobs in All Categories:

Job Description

Strategy Officer, Strategy, Planning, & Management, U.S. Program Office of the President

The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: that people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. By building a global and cultural workplace that supports greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — together with our employees and partners, we can help all people improve their lives from poverty and health to education. As an organization we offer various work arrangements, generous PTO, 15% contribution to your retirement fund, a diverse and inclusive workplace backed by 12 Employee Resource Groups and embed DEI in everything we do!

The Team

The vision of the foundation’s U.S. Program (USP) is to ensure that everyone in the U.S. has access to life-changing opportunities so that race, ethnicity, and income are no longer predictors of educational and economic outcomes. In education, our primary focus is ensuring that all students – especially Black, Latinx, and students from low-income backgrounds – have an opportunity to earn a degree or credential that prepares them for a successful career and life. We also support efforts to increase the number of actors working together to understand and advance economic mobility. USP works on five key drivers toward our goal:

• Increased kindergarten readiness and school and life success.
• Increased academic and socio-emotional outcomes for K-12 students, with a focus on mathematics, to ensure they are on-track for high-school graduation and college preparedness.
• Increased successful transitions for K-12 students between high school and postsecondary systems.
• Increased completions of quality, affordable postsecondary credentials that offer value through economic mobility and security.
• Increased outcomes for adults experiencing poverty with regards to economic success, power, and autonomy, and being valued in their communities.

The USP Office of the President (OOP) endeavors to promote collective ownership and integration of our work, transparency, leadership, intellectual dialogue, and continuous learning and improvement. Our mission is to:

• Ensure optimal impact of division programs and operations, and high standards of stewardship through performance management and the strategic allocation of resources.
• Deliver division-wide supports to program teams to bolster capacity and drive the implementation and associated change management of programmatic and operational initiatives.
• Partner with program teams to ensure alignment of strategic priorities (programmatic and operational) and actively establish understanding of USP progress and learning across USP and foundation leadership.

Within USP OOP, a centralized Strategy, Planning, and Management (SPM) team operates to provide strategy, business, and operations support to multiple USP program strategy teams and cross-cutting functions.

• This position is a limited-term position for 18 months.

Your Role

A key member of the OOP SPM team, the Strategy Officer provides research, analytic, project management, knowledge management, and other essential support for our US Charters and Washington State strategies to ensure clear strategies, effective execution plans, and strategy-level results for quality data for decision-making. The Strategy Officer will be responsible for leading strategy development and execution planning projects to ensure the portfolios of work will achieve ambitions aligned with strategic direction and priorities. The Strategy Officer will provide strategic and organizational support for meetings and updates with foundation leadership that require strategic framing and content. This role may also provide support for management of one or more portfolios of grants and contracts designed to ensure that program outcomes area achieved, and progress is monitored.

We are looking for a team member who enjoys working on complex problems and crafting strategies that have the potential to transform the lives of students. You enjoy working on collaborative teams, can adapt to differing styles of problem solving, like to have fun, and bring joy and optimism to your job.

What You’ll Do

• Lead strategy development and other strategic projects for the U.S. Charters and Washington State teams.
• Define and frame challenging problems and explore data-driven solutions.
• Design and conduct research and analyses in support of strategy exploration and decisions.
• Facilitate effective and inclusive stakeholder engagement to inform strategy work and work towards alignment and decisions.
• Create materials for communicating strategy and key analyses with internal/external partners.
• Provide complex program management and intellectual integration of programs where needed.
• Provide DDSPM and program strategy team leadership with critical, transparent, challenging thought partnership on strategy. Consult/strategize with program leadership to maximize impact of strategy development and execution planning processes to ensure the highest and best use of resources.
• Partner with the Senior Officer, SPM, to support the articulation of strategy and progress narratives, including strategy review, initiative strategy development and execution planning against a theory of action.
• Where needed, drive priority projects in support of programmatic investments and/or portfolios.
• Identify and work with the most appropriate partners/grantees to deliver the work.
• Consult with grantees and other partners to maximize impact of projects and ensure grants are meeting strategy goals. This may include: site visits, providing operational guidance and convening meetings of key stakeholders.

Your Experience
We are looking for individuals who enjoy the opportunity of working on complex problems and collectively creating solutions that have the potential for transformative change. You must be prepared to work with flexibility, creativity, efficiency, and diplomacy in an exciting and challenging environment. Additional qualifications include:

• MBA or other advanced degree in a relevant field
• Deep knowledge of strategy development and end-to-end complex project management (including process design, team structure, critical thinking requirements, development of novel communication resources and senior partner engagement).
• Proven strength in structured problem solving and strategic business planning, with the ability to easily identify and communicate frameworks to facilitate strategy creation, analyze core issues, and facilitate discussion of trade-offs between strategic choices.
• Ability to bridge strategy development to business planning to ensure portfolio of work will achieve ambitions aligned with strategic direction and priorities.
• Experience with qualitative and quantitative analyses as well as group facilitation and workshops.
• Ability to learn new content quickly, identify connections and second-order implications and demonstrate proficiency with internal/external teams.
• Ability to work in a self-guided manner, handle multiple priorities and to demanding timelines on multiple projects simultaneously.
• Ability to engender trust and effectively engage with leadership and technical experts; ability to question and challenge colleagues including managers and partners in constructive manner
• Accustomed to highly unstructured and ambiguous situations; ability to actively make progress and resolve challenges.
• Excellent organizational, facilitation, oral, and written communication skills.
• Ability to work effectively and with sensitivity across barriers such as language, culture, and distance.
• Excellent listening skills and compassion. Ability to act independently to determine methods and procedures on projects.
• Program and project management experience and acumen.

• Ability to travel up to 20% domestically.

Other Attributes

• At least 5+ years of progressive experience, preferably with experience leading projects at a strategy consulting firm
• Broad understanding of education issues and some U.S. education experience is preferred

• Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.

#LI-BR1

Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Depending upon your work location, we may require proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 and any recommended booster doses. All employees based in the United States are to provide proof of full vaccination upon hire and any recommended boosters, subject to applicable laws.

Accommodations

If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request to hr@gatesfoundation.org.

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We’re committed to creating a workplace where employees thrive both personally and professionally. We also believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve—in race, gender, age, cultures and beliefs—and we support this diversity through all of 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.