Senior Manager, Program Delivery Group

Job Description

The Senior Manager (SM) leads project support teams in the home office, providing strategic management support to projects throughout the full lifecycle, including business development. The SM is a senior position in the Center of Project Management Excellence (CPME) within the Program Delivery Group and contributes thought leadership to strategic initiatives of the Group. The SM is a confident leader and seasoned professional with expertise in health project management and support.

Project Support

• The SM is the primary home office point of contact for project directors, and ensures cohesion and effective collaboration and communication among the Project Director, Portfolio Director, the CPME support team, technical experts, and MSH business units. The SM provides strategic guidance to the Project Director, project team, and home office staff to establish efficient and effective project management and implementation strategies, navigate challenges, and solve problems. The SM is knowledgeable about donor requirements, contractual requirements, and MSH policies and procedures and provides guidance to the project team to ensure compliance and the use of best practices.
• The SM actively monitors deliverable timeliness and quality, performance against indicators in the MERL plan/PMP, Workplan implementation progress, execution of the strategic management plan, project quality improvement, etc. The SM provides guidance to projects and directly contributes to strategic reports, presentations, and correspondence to donors, clearly describing project results and strategies, including compelling data visualization. The SM is knowledgeable about the project and country context and will represent the project internally and externally.
• In partnership with the Portfolio Director and Technical Strategy Lead, the SM supports excellence in program implementation in line with MSH’s standards, values, and mission. The SM plans and coordinates all home office support on assigned projects to ensure that the project achieves stated objectives and meets all targets on time and within budget. The SM oversees the CPME staff supporting the projects and provides leadership and guidance to maximize their efficiency and work quality.

Business Development

• The SM is a key liaison to MSH’s business development activities, including providing project management input for positioning, proposal development, key personnel selection, proposal review, award negotiation, pre-award preparations, and handover to start up teams.

PDG and CPME Management

• Senior Managers are members of the CPME and PDG management teams, and contribute to conceptualizing, leading, and implementing departmental, cross-departmental, and organization-wide initiatives. The SM ensures that the CPME maintains standards and consistency across the entire MSH project portfolio, including designing tools, systems, and processes, and creating and delivering trainings.

Supervision

• The SM may be responsible for directly supervising one or more CPME project support staff. SMs will mentor and coach supervisees to help them grow professionally. In our matrix environment, the SM is also expected to provide professional growth opportunities and mentorship to all CPME staff with whom they work.

Qualifications

Education and Experience

• A graduate degree in public health, international relations, or a field of study relevant to job responsibility is highly preferred. Or a bachelor’s degree in a related area and a minimum of 12-15+ years of relevant work experience supporting or leading global public health or international development projects.
• Demonstrated experience in the oversight, management, and implementation of USAID and other donor-funded projects (e.g., CDC), including an understanding of donor requirements, trends in donor priorities, and best practices for donor reporting and relations. Experience with USAID PMI projects encouraged.
• Demonstrated experience ensuring compliance and successful completion of USAID contracts, and knowledge of USG contractual requirements and restrictions.
• Experience working in the home office of global nonprofit organizations or funders, with an understanding of organizational structures and management. Experience supervising professional staff. Experience working successfully in a matrix environment, building professional relationships and communications to collaborate seamlessly with staff on adjacent teams.

Knowledge and Skills

• Proven track record in budgeting and financial management of international projects.
• Demonstrated experience planning, writing, and ensuring the quality of project deliverables, including progress reports, technical reports, and documents, as well as other high-level project correspondence and documentation.
• Strong interpersonal skills and a demonstrated capacity to lead global teams and to collaborate with colleagues and partner organizations to achieve results.
• Proven ability to work independently with minimal direction. Strong ability to problem solve. Proven ability to anticipate needs and plan in advance.
• Demonstrated ability to provide relevant advice to senior project management teams, bringing different perspectives (external, client, MSH corporate, etc.). Ability to guide project teams and support teams in navigating processes and systems.
• Strong writing and oral presentation skills in English and a second language as appropriate for the portfolio of countries under supervision.
• Successful experience working in a fast-paced, multicultural, results-driven environment. Relevant experience working in a developing country environment on a long-term assignment or multiple short-term assignments. Experience working in and familiarity with the context of Sub-Saharan Africa, such as Nigeria, encouraged.

Competencies

• Strategic and cross-cultural agility, business acumen, cross-cultural sensitivity, comfort communicating with higher management, dealing with paradox, perspective, dealing with ambiguity, attention to detail while understanding the big picture, managing diversity and relationships, motivating others, managing for results, prioritization and time management, organizational resilience.

Physical Demands

• Up to 20% U.S and international travel, keyboard use, pulling drawers, Lifting papers <10lbs

About the Organization

Management Sciences for Health, an international nonprofit organization, is dedicated to closing the gap between what is known and what is done about public health problems. MSH saves lives and improves health by helping public and private organizations throughout the world to effectively manage people, medicines, money, and information. Working from more than 30 country offices and our US headquarters, our staff from 65 nations is highly regarded for its technical expertise, integrity, and commitment to making a lasting difference in health.

Management Sciences for Health (MSH) is a nonprofit international health organization composed of more than 2,000 people from 73 nations. Their mission is to save lives and improve the health of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people by closing the gap between knowledge and action in public health. Together with their partners, they are helping managers and leaders in developing countries to create stronger management systems that improve health services for the greatest health impact.

EXPERTISE

MSH takes an integrated approach to building high-impact sustainable programs that address critical challenges in leadership, health systems management, human resources, and medicines. Simply put, they support stronger health systems for greater health impact.

Their expertise in these areas falls into the broad categories of management functions—for example, leadership and governance or pharmaceutical management—and health areas like tuberculosis or maternal, newborn, and child health. They apply their expertise by

• Partnering with governments, local organizations, and communities in developing nations to build their own capacity for long-term health impact;
• Providing global leadership in critical areas of health management and health care delivery;
• Bringing the best of MSH from around the globe to the people we serve, working as One MSH with a focus on lasting health system improvements.

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Leadership, Governance, & Management

They work with in-country partners to build stronger health systems to improve:

• the management and leadership of priority health programs, health organizations, and multisectoral partnerships such as The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, developing a critical mass of managers at all levels of the health system who can lead and inspire teams to achieve results;
  
• the management systems of health organizations in the public and private sector, transferring practical approaches and skills to ensure that management structures contribute to sustainable organizational success;
  
• the governance and management of health organizations and multisectoral partnerships, facilitating change and transferring knowledge to enable organizations to administer their resources efficiently and scale up their services.

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Health Service Delivery

MSH combines extensive public health expertise, proven service delivery approaches, and evidence-based interventions in five critical areas:

• HIV & AIDS
• Tuberculosis
• Maternal, newborn, and child health
• Family planning and reproductive health
• Other communicable diseases, including malaria and pandemic and avian influenza

Human Resources for Health

MSH helps governments develop multisectoral strategies and policies to plan and manage their health workforces. We use a comprehensive approach that addresses all the facets of human resources for health needed to achieve an adequate supply of well-trained and motivated health workers. MSH offers capabilities in leadership, human resource management, education, partnerships, policy, and finance to achieve these goals.

Pharmaceutical Management

Vital to our success is a participatory approach to project design and implementation, which cultivates broad-based support from all stakeholders. We also build and improve infrastructure and local capacity to effectively purchase, store, deliver, and use quality essential medicines.

Health Care Financing

MSH helps governments and NGOs assess their current financial situation and systems, understand service costs, and develop initiatives to use existing funds more effectively and generate additional revenue—all with the goal of supporting a nation’s health priorities.

Health Information

MSH has developed proven methods for rapidly strengthening the analysis and use of existing health data—normally at the province, district, and facility levels—without revising existing recording and reporting requirements. With an emphasis on learning through action, district teams undertake assessments of health services, identify gaps in performance, and design solutions to support better decision-making and, therefore, better management of improved services.

MSH has worked closely with the Health Metrics Network of the WHO to develop a comprehensive approach for enhancing the performance of health information systems and data by employing a practical, strategic planning process that can be carried out by national working groups.