About Landesa: Landesa is an international nonprofit dedicated to ending global poverty by securing land rights for women and men experiencing poverty around the globe. Founded in 1981, Landesa has worked in over 50 countries, with offices staff in the U.S. (Seattle, WA and Washington, DC), China, India, Kenya, Liberia, and Tanzania. Landesa’s current portfolio also includes projects in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia, Myanmar, Rwanda, and Thailand. Landesa partners with governments, civil society, and companies to advice, design and support pro-poor and gender-sensitive legal reforms and programmatic interventions that, in the last five years alone, have helped strengthen land rights for more than 540 million women and men. Landesa is supported by NGOs, foundations, donor agencies (USAID, US DoS, BMZ, World Bank, etc.), world leaders, educational institutions, and individual supporters around the world.
Job Summary: The Project Manager will serve on a variety of multi-year, multi-country, high-visibility projects across our programs. They will be ultimately responsible for ensuring projects are implemented as designed, and for obtaining guidance from Program Directors when material or strategic adjustments to a project’s design are warranted. In practice this means (a) ensuring that projects are launched and implemented in line with the project’s vision and with Landesa, partners and donors’ processes and management, compliance and reporting requirements. The Project Manager will be responsible for ensuring project milestones are delivered on time and on budget, and will coordinate with technical staff to ensure project activities and products meet the quality expected from Landesa. The Project Manager will develop project workplans and manage project contributors and stakeholders to ensure successful project implementation, compliance, and reporting. The Project Manager will troubleshoot and be a key decision maker in creating and executing problem solving strategies. The Project Manager will contribute to internal reporting and information flows to ensure internal stakeholders have relevant project information to meet oversight, communications, and fundraising needs. The Project Manager is a new position at Landesa, and as such, Project Managers will be expected to thoughtfully contribute to organizational change efforts and development of new systems, tools and processes.
Reporting and relationships: The Project Manager, Africa reports to the Africa Region Director and works closely with technical staff and leadership in programs and operations to address project management needs. The Project Manager will be part of a project management community of practice led by the Deputy Chief Program Officer and including Program Operations.
Availability: The Project Manager will be expected to work a standard workweek of 40 hours plus additional hours as necessary to get the job done. As a global organization, we work across time zones, and this position will regularly require work outside of standard business hours. This position may require international and domestic travel of up to 40 days annually. Many of Landesa’s offices are taking a hybrid approach, with work performed at home and in the office, negotiated with a supervisor.
Essential Job Functions: The Project Manager will advance Landesa’s mission and strategic objectives through:
· Designing and actively managing systems for project planning, tracking, control, and compliance. These systems need to effectively control project scope, timelines, and resources, align with Landesa’s existing policies and processes, and meet donor requirements in a practical, timely, and cost-effective way. They will align with Landesa’s project lifecycle system and result in effective assignment and management of human and financial resources to successfully complete projects, considering project goals, staffing, budgets, risks, and deliverables. They will support the projects’ compliance with internal policies and goals as well as with funders’ policies and regulations.
· Managing project teams. The Project Manager will ensure all project team members and external contributors (partner organizations, consultants, contractors, and key vendors) understand and align work with the project’s vision and goals, that all stakeholders understand and fulfill their project roles and responsibilities, and that teams are working effectively and collaboratively to execute successful projects.
· Assessing and addressing project capacity gaps. The Project Manager will assess the level of project staffing, staff capacity, and partner organization operational capacity, and address any gaps to ensure project success. The Project Manager will work with relevant Program Directors to assess and resolve gaps in level of staffing needed or capacity gaps. The Project Manager will assess operational capacity of partner organizations’ implementing scopes of work on projects and identify and address capacity gaps to ensure successful and compliant execution.
· Managing contractual relationships with consultants and other contractors. The Project Manager will work with technical staff and relevant Program Directors to recruit consultants and contractors as needed, and will manage contractual relationships. This includes working with technical staff to ensure consultant scopes of work are complete and accurate, recruit and evaluate potential consultants, conduct compliance-related due diligence, steward contract negotiations, and manage consultant payments, deliverables, and post-contract performance evaluations.
· Managing project budgets and controlling spending. The Project Manager will be responsible for managing project financial resources to deliver projects on budget. This includes regularly analyzing budget-to-actuals, managing project forecasting/reforecasting, authorizing small budget adjustments, recommending larger/material budget adjustments, and identifying and addressing financial gaps in coordination with relevant Program Directors and Resource Development.
· Ensuring accurate, compliant, and timely project reporting. The Project Manager will develop project donor reporting processes and timelines with input from Finance, Grant Managers, technical staff, and Program Directors. The Project Manager will ensure reporting processes capture accurate and timely data and information from all project contributors (technical staff, consultants, partner organizations, monitoring systems, etc.), and meet internal quality control and review requirements.
· Supporting internal information flows and sharing of project-level learnings. The Project Manager will be responsible for contributing project-level information to internal reporting and oversight workflows, and for capturing and sharing project learnings.
· Contributing to an internal community of practice to enhance Landesa’s project management capacity. Spot areas for continuous improvement in project management practices, identify gaps and challenges with existing systems, tools, and processes, and engage collaboratively in efforts to improve. Support Landesa staff, consultants, and partners on project management principles, tools, and best practices to help them populate or use project management systems.
· Performing other duties as assigned.
Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:
· A deep commitment to the mission of a better, safer future for the world’s poorest people through land ownership and secure land rights.
· Commitment and skills to apply a gender-responsive and socially inclusive approach to projects.
· Demonstrated proficiency to motivate teams, and agility to manage vertically and horizontally to ensure high performance from team contributors.
· Inter-personal skills and political savvy sufficient to modify approach as needed to fit purpose and move work forward.
· Demonstrated proficiency to work collaboratively with project and organizational stakeholders.
· Strong communication and writing skills, with the ability to effectively communicate across cultures and with a variety of internal and external stakeholders (staff at all levels, donors, government officials, civil society organizations, researchers, contractors, and vendors).
· Comfort navigating through uncertainty, dealing with change, and driving towards clarity and constructive solutions.
· Demonstrated proficiency with holding teams accountable to deadlines and deliverables
· Proficiency using project management software and the Microsoft Suite of products.
Education and Experience: The Project Manager we seek should have:
· An undergraduate degree is preferred;
· At least 5 years of Project Management experience required, with Professional Certification from the Project Management Institute or equivalent accreditation preferred;
· Demonstrated track record of successfully managing projects in not-for-profit or non-governmental organizations, with international development project management experience strongly preferred;
· Experience managing projects in a matrixed organization;
· At least 5 years of experience managing projects with government funding (US or European bilateral or multilateral funding experience preferred), with a strong understanding of government compliance issues under grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts;
· Experience with project financial and contract management; and,
· Experience assessing operational capacity and managing relationships with partner organizations operating in low-resource environments.
Physical and Environmental Conditions: Work is primarily performed indoors with some potential for exposure to safety and health hazards related to electronics work. This position does not require unusual demands for physical effort. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate. Work environment involves everyday risks or discomforts that require normal safety precautions typical of places such as offices, meeting or training rooms, residences, or commercial vehicles; e.g., use of safe work place practices with office equipment, and/or avoidance of trips and falls, and observance of fire regulations and traffic signals.
Work Environment and Working Conditions for Travelers to Developing Countries: While performing the duties of this job, the employee may be exposed to working conditions and hazards which are prevalent for the location and/or country of assignment. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate. Work is primarily performed indoors with some potential for exposure to safety and health hazards related to electronics work. The employee may be required to travel overseas and domestically. When traveling in a developing country, the employee may be exposed to: Physical Hazards (illnesses, noise, extreme temperatures, wet or humid climates, etc.); Road Hazards (unfinished/dirt roads, potholes, traffic-related accidents, etc.); and Atmospheric Conditions (odors, dust, fumes, smog, etc.).
Additional Comments: The above job description is not intended as, nor should it be construed as, exhaustive of all responsibilities, skills, efforts, or working conditions associated with this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made in appropriate circumstances to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of this job.
Landesa: Landesa, a 501c3 nonprofit organization based in Seattle, works to strengthen land rights for people experiencing poverty around the world – those 2.47 billion chiefly rural people who live on less than two dollars a day. Landesa works with communities, NGOs, corporations, and governments on land-related programs that provide opportunity, further economic growth, and promote social justice. Landesa places special emphasis on establishing and protecting land rights for women and inheritance rights for girls.
Landesa employs a staff of more than 120 worldwide, including senior land tenure specialists with legal, economic, gender, natural resource management, measurement and evaluation, and agricultural expertise. Landesa has offices in Seattle, Dar es Salaam, Washington DC, Yangon, Beijing, Delhi, and Monrovia.
