Chief Executive Officer

Job Description

YLabs-CEO-Position-Description.pdf

Position Overview:
YLabs is a visionary organization in a pivotal moment of growth and evolution. We are seeking an experienced, mission-driven executive to lead our global team through a social impact lens, with integrity, compassion and enthusiasm.

With a bold, youth-driven vision, YLabs is an environment where people are supported to be courageous, take chances, push their own boundaries, try new ideas, and advocate for change – owning and learning from failures along the way.

Equity, trust and transparency are built into YLabs’ culture and systems, ensuring everyone has the space, safety, voice and power to contribute.

Our team describes themselves as nimble, adaptable, entrepreneurial, optimistic, innovative, problem-solvers. Creativity, curiosity, and playfulness are core to a culture that is self-described as joyful, with an emphasis on bringing one’s full self to work and actively supporting growth, rest, and mental and physical health.
The CEO will lead a global team, currently based in 8 countries with the majority of staff in the US and Rwanda, overseeing the development and execution of our global strategy in order to achieve impact with and for young people across our three impact areas.
They will guide and shape YLabs’ broader transformation towards a technology-focused nonprofit organization that builds social impact digital products and services with and for young people. The CEO will provide executive leadership of the organization, its current and future programs, services and initiatives, stewardship of its current and future donors, and ensuring its financial health and sustainability.

The CEO will work closely with the Board and oversee leadership of YLabs’ talented global team as a highly collaborative coach and mentor who works to ensure equity, growth, and opportunity for all staff. They will be a compelling advocate for our work, adept at shaping and sharing compelling stories and data that inspire action. They are experienced at building effective partnerships with organizations, governments, and funding agencies, and have extensive experience with developing the strategic vision and fundraising for large-scale social impact initiatives for youth populations, especially those who have been traditionally disenfranchised.

Fundraising, External Relations & Partnerships:

The Chief Executive Officer will lead fundraising and be responsible for ensuring YLabs has the resources to execute our current strategic plan and achieve the change, transformation and impact that we aim to see. The CEO will:

• Develop a multi-year fundraising plan that grows diverse revenue streams.
• Continuously engage current and potential funders, clients, and partners and dynamically articulate the organization’s vision and programs.
• Build relationships with donors and foundations rooted in partnership, clarity, and mutual accountability.
• Own annual fundraising and revenue targets and report to the board on progress.
• Use external presence and relationships to garner new opportunities with all relevant YLabs constituents.
• Enhance YLabs’ reputation and impact by establishing themselves as a thought leader in relevant spaces, being active and visible in the community and by working closely with partners.

Strategic, collaborative, and inclusive executive leadership:
YLabs strives to practice inclusive decision-making, and we trace many of our best strategic decisions to moments of collective insight where a group can see possibilities individuals cannot. The CEO will continue and deepen that practice by basing their decision-making on broad input from the team and community.

• Work with the Board, leadership and global team to implement and monitor progress towards our current multi-year strategic plan.
• Lead the team in allocating resources towards the strategic plan through multi-year and annual budgets, and ensure YLabs has the operational structures, systems, and tools to do its best work.
• Steward a supportive, transparent, and equitable work culture with clear growth opportunities that attracts, retains, and invests in talented staff.
• Build relationships with other leaders to support organizational partnerships that keep our work rooted and meaningful.
• Continue to support mechanisms for broad input into executive decision-making and model collaborative methods of working, making decisions, and fostering culture.
• Lead, coach, develop, and retain YLabs’ passionate and high-performing leadership team, bringing out the best decisions and insights from their diverse perspectives.
• Ensure the team has the tools, resources and information necessary to carry out theory work at the highest levels during a period of positive transformation and change.
• Evidence and champion a robust commitment to Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) in complex global contexts and relevant to the diverse geographies and youth populations YLabs serves.
• Cultivate and support a strong Board of Directors that is aligned with our mission and connected to our communities.

Organizational & Programmatic Leadership:

• Ensure ongoing programmatic excellence, rigorous data and program evaluation, and consistent quality of delivery.
• Scale operations and grow impact in a thoughtful and measured way, with appropriate resources.
• Develop and promote personal thought leadership in thematic areas relevant to the organization’s mission, building connections, visibility and knowledge that furthers the organization’s work.
• Develop and evidence commitment to elevating youth voices and perspectives and ensure that diverse youth acumen, vision and insight infuses all of YLabs work.
• Ensure that appropriate safeguarding systems and policies are robust and regularly reviewed. Ensure that any safeguarding issues that are raised are managed in accordance with the policy and best practices.
• Ensure effective systems to track scaling progress; regularly evaluate program components to measure successes that can be effectively communicated to the board, funders, and other constituents.
• Steward fiscal management, budget compliance, and building of operating and cash reserves.
• Develop resources sufficient to ensure the financial health of the organization.

Experience:

• You bring experience leading global teams who are dedicated to driving social impact in technology, public health, economic inclusion, or climate.
• You are convinced of the power and impact of youth-driven solutions and ideally have prior experience advancing or advocating for youth power and agency.
• You have broad experience across finance, operations/technology, strategic marketing, programs, fund-raising and working with a highly engaged team and sophisticated Board.
• You have an extensive track record leading growth and positive change in values-driven global teams and organizations.
• You have developed and led the strategic vision and fundraised for large-scale social impact initiatives in emerging economies, and have (or can quickly build) a robust partnership and funding network to draw upon in a social change framework.
• You have prior experience working on the African continent or, at minimum, can adapt your professional skills and experiences gained in other emerging economies to an African context.
• You are skilled at building relationships of trust that enable organizational partnerships and fundraising.
• You have implemented, guided and appropriately adjusted a multi-year strategic plan aimed at structural change and can apply those lessons immediately.
• You are adept with interpreting and presenting impact data – and ensuring that the internal data systems are robust.
• You think holistically about program impact, social justice, global youth and intersectionality.

Skills & Personal Characteristics:

• Experienced in, and passionately committed to, the YLabs mission and vision.
• Strategic and visionary leader who combines strong leadership, organizational management skills, and creative problem-solving with commercial instinct and resourcefulness, in the service of social change.
• You bring a track record of building collaborative teams and helping them bring out their best ideas.
• You are a creative innovator and are able to establish credibility as a thought leader with global philanthropy, business and social sector audiences.
• You are well-practiced and comfortable presenting in a variety of public and organizational settings, and enjoy being able to engage, move, and convince a diverse range of audiences.
• You equip and prepare your senior leadership team with clear expectations and support and then trust them to lead in their areas of expertise.
• You are an adaptable leader able to lead a distributed global team in a hybrid work environment.
• You’re experienced at incorporating broad input into key decisions; you know how to include perspectives at every level of the organization, right-sizing opportunities for feedback to make effective decisions.
• You model humility and accountability by being transparent about your own processing, learning, and areas of growth.
• You lead and design process with an awareness of power dynamics, including both organizational hierarchy, and dynamics of race, gender, and class.

About the Organization

The Organization:

YLabs is a leading global design and research organization designing technologies that amplify youth power, agency, and opportunity.
Founded in 2014 at the Harvard Innovation Lab, YLabs partners with young people to co-create inclusive digital products and services that improve their lives. Our design process opens spaces where young people’s ideas can become a reality – where they are the architects of the solutions to their most pressing challenges.

Our Work
YLabs’ multidisciplinary team delivers youth-driven innovation and impact at scale. Our team combines expertise in youth-driven design with adolescent health, climate, livelihoods, digital product design, behavioral science, and epidemiology.
Based in Rwanda and the USA, we’ve worked in 18 countries to date on projects spanning three impact areas: optimum health and wellness, improved economic opportunity, and increased climate resilience.

Our current programs focus on the biggest global opportunities for youth-driven innovation and change, including HIV/AIDS, Sexual & Reproductive Health, Mental Health, Climate Action and Resilience, and Economic Inclusion.
Our partners and funders include INGOs, CBOs, public and private foundations, and Government agencies.

Our Impact Areas

• Optimum health and wellness
• Improved economic opportunity
• Increased climate resilience

Our Global Reach

• To date, YLabs has worked in 18 countries: Burkina Faso, Cambodia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mexico, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and the United States.

Our Values

• Design with youth, not for youth
• Measure what we do
• Blend expertise to solve tough problems
• Appreciate complexity
• Create lovable and lasting solutions
• Embrace bold thinking

Our Culture

• We embrace courage
• We love a good challenge
• We prioritize wellness, weirdness, and collective joy
• We operationalize equity
• We make decisions together with trust and transparency

Location:
YLabs is seeking a global citizen, with a local and global perspective and expertise. This is a remote role, with preference for a base in the geographies where team members convene, which include the following countries: Rwanda and the USA (primary global hubs), as well as Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania and Nigeria.

This role will require 20-30% international travel in Africa and the USA for in-person team meetings and in order to build effective team and partner/funder relationships, and for our annual retreat. The CEO will also be expected to travel for external meetings, conferences and fundraising events. This travel is fully reimbursed by YLabs.

Compensation:
YLabs adheres to Project Fair’s principles and standards to establish equity in pay with the overriding principle of “equal pay for work of equal value” outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals. All salary ranges are based on level within the organization and are competitive to regional and national salary benchmarks, based on the respective office location.

The pay range for this position if based in the United States is $200,000 - $275,000 per annum commensurate with experience. If the role is based outside the US, appropriate currency conversion, regional norms and cost of living adjustments will be applied in alignment with the respective region's market.

All YLabs offers of employment are conditional on satisfactory background check and criminal record clearances.

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