Director, Digital Innovations in Agriculture
Preferred Location: Washington D.C. preferred.
Other locations possible, depending on time zone.
Work Status (Full Time/Part Time): Full-time
Travel requirement: Up to 25%
POSITION OVERVIEW
Grameen Foundation USA (Grameen) has nearly three decades of experience expanding financial inclusion for the poor. Our digital innovations in agriculture provide poor farming families with the assets, skills and market linkages needed to live more dignified and prosperous lives. Grameen uses a ‘business-to-business’ (B2B) model of working with both private and public sector partners to design and deliver innovative products and services that meet the needs of the poor. This includes a strong focus on how digitally-enabled, community-based agents can resolve information asymmetries, illiteracy, distribution challenges and other market failures.
The Director will lead initiatives that position Grameen with donors as the ‘go-to’ partner for gender-responsive digital agricultural innovation and community agent networks. The Director will ensure a high level of technical excellence in the delivery of projects. Above all else, the Director will embody and understand the vision, leadership, decision making, technical competence, and attention to operational details required for success.
The Director will possess a deep commitment to eradicating poverty and hunger. We are looking for a leader with particular interests in the intersections between agriculture, technology, finance and the cross-cutting issues of gender, resilience and nutrition. In particular, we are looking for someone that understands the differences needed for programs focused on women and knows how to successfully incorporate gender principles from design through implementation.
ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES
Reporting to the Director of Technical Services, the Director will work closely with a diverse group of internal and external stakeholders, including domain experts, country teams, and Institutional Relations. The Director will focus on three main strategic areas:
1) Providing Technical Leadership
The Director will build and execute on a long-term roadmap and theory of change for agriculture interventions that are effective in increasing resilience and income of smallholder farmers, especially women. The Director will drive the development of solutions that integrate agriculture with finance, nutrition, climate, gender, and health. The Director will also lead partnering with regional counterparts to conduct area and landscape analysis in order to develop a cohesive roadmap for achieving positive impact to the lives of poor rural women, their households and marginalized communities.
The Director will also support data analysis of smallholder farmer data from Grameen’s projects as well as external data sets in order to enhance their decision-making, improve their productivity and increase their incomes and sustainability.
As part of the Technical Services team, the Director will provide technical leadership and serve as an internal resource. The Director will work across regions and program areas to create shared direction, align limited resources, and ensure teams effectively deliver integrated solutions and services. Expected activities include:
Driving ongoing program design and solution development that reflects Grameen’s data driven, practical innovation, and incorporating gender analysis and user-centered design principles into solutions;
Expanding Grameen’s profile and role in building last mile agent networks that serve smallholder farmers, especially women and youth; and
Forging long-term partnerships with a broad array of donors, pro-poor organizations, and scaling-partners across the globe.
2) Winning New Projects
The Director will work with the Institutional Relations (IR) team to build a robust funding pipeline that leads to large, multi-year grants for digital agriculture projects. This will include:
Partnering closely with the IR team to build, maintain and deliver against a robust institutional funding pipeline.
Providing technical leadership on new project proposals, both solicited and unsolicited.
Developing strategic partnerships with a wide range of local and global partners, including digital agriculture solution providers, agribusinesses, corporates and financial service providers;
Maintaining a deep understanding of local and global trends in digital agriculture (and ICT4Ag) and related innovations for the poor and for women and youth.
The Director will also contribute to thought leadership and building Grameen’s profile within the digital agriculture industry by representing Grameen at key conferences, writing blog posts and articles, and driving social media campaigns/updates as appropriate.
3) Ensuring Project Delivery
The Director will work closely with country project teams and project managers on the successful delivery of projects. This will include:
Working with regional and program teams to build outcome-focused frameworks (eg, logframes) for their projects that inform the partnerships sought by Grameen as well as Grameen’s gender-responsive and data-driven approaches to design and delivery of programs.
Building the capacity of local implementing partners to design, implement and evaluation digital agriculture solutions and community agent networks;
Providing input and guidance to regional/programmatic REM staff for developing location-specific frameworks for assessing impact or progress, research frameworks, processes for seeking client feedback, and ongoing processes for improving solutions, services or offerings with focus on using data for decision-making.
REQUIRED KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE:
This position requires deep knowledge of agricultural/rural development, market systems development, digital agriculture, and effective approaches to reaching rural women and smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia. In addition, the Director must have excellent strategic, business development, communication, collaboration and people skills.
Essential Requirements that must be present:
· Substantial (10 years) proven experience in digital agriculture, ICT4Ag and/or mobile money programming.
· Demonstrated track record of success in working on and contributing to winning funding proposals to international donors.
· Strong network of contacts relevant to agriculture and ICT4Ag within the international development community.
· Someone that understands the differences needed for programs focused on women and knows how to successfully incorporate gender principles from design through implementation.
Important areas include experience in:
· Agriculture for the poor, understanding of lessons learned and emerging trends, with a deep understanding of:
· mobile technology solutions and how these enable new business models to reach the poor, especially women;
· the ICT4Ag landscape, especially in key markets such as West and East Africa, India and Southeast Asia;
· the challenges faced by rural and smallholder households to accessing and using formal markets and services;
· the challenges and needs faced by agribusinesses and other private sector companies operating in their local markets;
· And, global nutrition, resilience, gender, climate smart agriculture, and integrated development frameworks.
· Minimum ten (10) years of professional experience, including at least three (3) years of work experience overseas in agricultural or rural development programs in sub-Saharan Africa and/or Southern Asia
· Demonstrated track record of success in working on and contributing to winning funding proposals to international donors.
· At least 10 years of experience in digital agriculture, ICT4Ag and/or mobile money programming;
· Strong network of contacts relevant to agriculture and ICT4Ag within the international development community.
· Graduate degree in agriculture, agricultural economics, and agro-enterprise or agribusiness management, post graduate degree an advantage.
· Fluency in English is a requirement.
Grameen Foundation is a global nonprofit whose mission is to enable the poor, especially women, to end poverty and hunger. Grameen uses digital technology and strategic partnerships to develop
Breakthrough solutions that promote financial inclusion, digital innovations in agriculture, and women’s economic empowerment to bring people the tools and opportunities they need to help themselves. For more information, visit www.grameenfoundation.org.
