Program Overview:

The office of the Managing Director for Strategy, Learning, and Results oversees the development and implementation of an institutional-wide strategy that is ambitious, aligned, focused, and delivers measurable results in support of WRI’s global people, nature, and climate goals. WRI has grown rapidly over the past decade and is recognized as a global leader in advancing sustainable development. We are in the process of developing our next five-year strategy whose overarching theme is to shift the world from commitments to impact. We are rolling-out an ambitious, living strategy, that puts in place for the first-time institutional-level targets designed to drive ambition, focus and alignment across WRI’s programs, international offices, centers and partnerships. We are adopting an integrated approach to climate, nature and people, recognizing that this triptych is interdependent and must be considered together across all our work. WRI will drive system-level transitions at the global level and in specific countries and regions, with a focus on specific human systems that are the root cause of emissions and the loss and degradation of nature, namely food, land use, energy and cities.

Job Highlight:

We are seeking to hire a leader to help drive the execution of the strategy. This is a newly created position. In this role, you will support the Managing Director for Strategy, Learning, and Results build-out the necessary internal processes to ensure WRI delivers results for the targets in its ambitious 5-year strategy. You will play a lead role ensuring WRI’s new five-year strategy meets our aspirations of aligned, focused, and ambitious and puts equity at the center of all our work. This includes ensuring WRI’s internal incentives are aligned with delivering results against targets, identifying synergies across targets and country/global work, and ensuring coherence across our portfolio of work. The successful candidate will have experience setting up internal management processes, breaking down institutional silos, and bringing together different organizational parts to deliver results in a joined-up coherent manner. This position can be based out of one of the WRI offices in the US, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, The Netherlands or the UK. Existing work authorization is required at the time of application submission for the country office designated. WRI is not able to sponsor work authorization for this position.

What you will do:

Please note that given the “start-up” nature of the dedicated strategy function at WRI, we anticipate that the responsibilities of this role will evolve. The candidate will be expected to take on additional duties as needed.

Strategy Alignment & Learning (60%)

• Put in place a regular schedule of institute-wide strategy check-ins to review progress against targets, promote learning across WRI, and identify areas where adjustments to strategy are needed.
• Work closely with WRI’s other four Managing Director teams to design and implement institutional incentives that drive institutional-wide alignment with the strategy, including a process to prioritize allocation of WRI’s flexible funds to where it can have greatest impact.
• Help facilitate regular strategy discussions at the Global Executive Team to monitor progress against the strategy and trigger adjustments as needed.
• Identify areas for deep-dive analysis by the Managing for Results team. Based on their analysis, develop options and recommendations to the MD for Strategy, Leaning and Results, Program and Operations committees, and the Global Executive Team on changes to the strategy or internal processes to deliver the target results.
• Develop proposals and recommendations for how to better align WRI’s internal decision-making processes with delivering results against the strategy.
• Work with the Managing Directors for Programs and Global Partnerships to develop a plan for ensuring existing partnerships and platforms are aligned with the strategy and targets or there is a plan in place to realign or sunset them.
• Periodically convene thought leaders from across WRI to conduct horizon scanning to identify emerging opportunities and challenges.

Flexible Funding Management (20%)

• Working closely with other MD teams, develop a prioritization process for allocating WRI’s flexible funding where it can have most impact.
• Manage the Managing Director for Strategy, Learning and Results flexible funding allocation process and ensure that it is used as a key incentive to deliver alignment and impact in support of the overall strategy delivering resources to where there is potential to deliver the greatest results.

Special Projects (20%)

• Project manage special projects as assigned. This will include the development of workplans and timelines with key milestones as well as developing and tracking budgets.
• Provide clear guidance and coordination to internal WRI teams and external partners to ensure their compliance with WRI’s internal processes and systems as well as workplans.
• Manage project close-outs including after-action reviews and lessons learned.

Required profile for job ad : Institutional Strategy Manager

What you will need:

Education: 

• You have a completed a Bachelors degree. Masters degree preferred.

Experience: 

• You have a minimum of 8-12 years full-time relevant work experience in project management and organizational and functional strategy development, preferably in a non-profit international development setting.
• You have demonstrated experience implementing successful, complex processes across large organizations.
• You will have a track record of organization and time management skills, with experience managing several projects at different stages simultaneously.
• You will have experience developing workplans including breaking down complex projects into tasks, processes and timelines.
• You will have experience in developing databases and dashboards for decision-making through tools such as PowerBI.
• You will have experience in one of the following areas of expertise: planning, monitoring, evaluation and learning; non-profit operations and finances, including resource allocation.
• You will have the ability to understand, analyze and synthesize a high influx of information.
• You will have a demonstrated track record of working both independently and in teams.
• Past experience with applying analytical thinking and problem-solving skills and experience in the environment, sustainability and/or international development sectors are considered a plus.