Devex is currently assisting a non-profit organization dedicated to building a sustainable distribution platform for products designed to fight poverty and disease in the developing world, in their search for a Deputy Country Director.
Introduction
Do you want your work to matter? Do you want to use your advocacy skills to make a difference, not just a living? Do you want to improve millions of lives, including your own?
The organization works to reinvent how we improve the lives of the under-served. We think big but operate lean and nimble. We train community health workers to bring health services and products life-saving to people’s doorsteps. Services like prenatal assessments and well-baby visits. Products like medicines, fortified foods, and modern contraceptives.
We also transform community health through mobile phones. We teach community health workers how to assess maternal and child health with mobile phone apps and to treat common illnesses like pneumonia, malaria, and diarrhea. We also create predictive algorithms to make the best use of their time. And we test new tools like paperless referrals to clinics and biosensors to monitor infant and child growth.
At the organization, you will have the chance to apply your ideas and creativity every day. If you work well in a dynamic collaborative culture, set high standards, and meet challenges with determination and a sense of humor, you’ll thrive in the organization.
The organization has a team of 180 employees in Uganda and will grow to 400 in the next four years. This year we will serve 5 million Ugandans. In four years we’ll serve 15 million. We’re growing because we have a proven model and a powerful mission: to ensure that every mother and child has basic healthcare in their community.
Your Charge
To succeed in our work, the organization needs a great operations team at headquarters and in the field – known as Direct Operations.
In Uganda, the Direct Operations team coaches community health workers, opens new branches, and identifies ways to improve areas like accounting, supply chain management, employee recruitment and engagement, and marketing.
And like every great team, our direct operations team needs a great captain.
Lead growth. You will work with the country director and your team to develop the strategy for expanding direct operations to improve community health. The strategy will include Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), programmatic areas, and best-in-class policies in areas such as management, accounting, last mile delivery, and marketing.
Ensure excellence. Identify systems and processes for effective field operations in areas like logistics, supervision, technology, human resources, and incentives. You will work with other teams to develop solutions and will monitor the excellence in execution through the field operations team.
Motivate the troops. You will be the general of a 100+ person team. In your first year, you will directly manage a Deputy Director, Field Operations and an Expansion Manager. You will also build a positive, collaborative culture – one that encourages help team members to learn from and support each other.
Monitor money. Work with the Country Director and finance department to develop direct operations budgets and to monitor and control costs.
Your background
