Strategy Associate

Job Description

The Foundation is seeking an Associate to support strategic planning and strategy development for initiatives, and to provide consultative assistance on other projects that aim to improve the Foundation’s overall impact. The Strategy Associate plays a critical role in helping to design the future work of the Foundation and adapting the current portfolio of work to optimize impact. The Foundation’s programmatic work is organized into successive stages of refinement called Search, Development, and Execution. The Foundation’s Strategy team focuses on helping initiatives teams in Development to make strategic choices and design initiative models that will achieve ambitious goals. The Strategic Planning team supports the implementation of these models, working closely with initiatives in the Execution phase to assess and mitigate risks, build effective implementation plans, and adapt approaches as the work evolves.

The Strategy Associate role offers the rare opportunity to work closely with multiple functions and teams across the Foundation to drive real impact and offers strong opportunities for professional growth. The role will generate functional experience in the areas of strategy, strategic planning, and program design, in addition to experience in the Foundation’s various issue areas (Revalue Ecosystems, Secure Livelihoods, Transform Cities, and Advance Health). The work will be fast-paced, often ambiguous, and spread across multiple, diverse projects simultaneously. The successful candidate will need to blend flexibility with disciplined execution in their work approach, in order to manage competing demands and deliver high quality work.

• Contribute to initiatives in Development, providing support related to shaping strategy and setting objectives for impact
• Consult with teams with initiatives in Execution to support assessment and adaptation of strategies in complex, evolving systems
• Conduct quantitative and quantitative analyses to inform learning and choice-making within initiatives
• Manage relationships and engagements with grantees and partners contributing to strategy and strategic plan development

Strategic planning support for operationalizing strategies

• Consult initiative teams on target setting and implementation planning, including resource management and planning (e.g., budgeting, grant-making plans)
• Conduct risk assessment, mitigation planning and monitoring in collaboration with initiative teams

Support continued refinement and strengthening of dynamic management approach across teams

• Continue to enhance organizational capabilities around project management, work planning, team structuring and process planning
• Collaborate with the Monitoring and Evaluation teams to support dynamic learning and strategy shaping
• Push thought leadership/Foundation perspective on key questions and develop tools that can be used across teams

Ad Hoc Strategic/Organization Project Support

• Provide bounded strategy and planning support for fast-moving opportunities beyond those that emerge from the Foundation’s pipeline of initiatives
• Support ad hoc projects that aim to improve RF impact and performance in areas that are critical to RF goals and strategy

Qualifications

• Experience with hypothesis-driven problem solving; comfort distinguishing “signal from noise” and pushing through conceptual ambiguity to arrive at powerful insights
• Analytical skills to break down complex problems into component parts, in order to better understand underlying patterns and dynamics in complex systems
• Ability to research, synthesize and integrate disparate pieces of data, analysis, and information
• Demonstrated ability to help craft a clear path forward in rapidly changing or ambiguous contexts
• Ability to multi-task and experience dynamically setting work priorities among competing needs; comfort with a changing work environment
• Ability to build informal working relationships, quickly establish credibility in new areas of work, and mobilize people at all levels towards collaborative goals (including more senior colleagues and external partners)
• Excellent communication skills to convey complex information appropriately to stakeholders with different backgrounds and needs, both oral and written
• High level of self-confidence with a direct, honest, respectful, and empathetic approach and ability to effectively provide and receive feedback
• Basic knowledge and broad curiosity about issues that the Foundation seeks to positively impact
• An appetite for and sensitivity to working with and in diverse cultures

Successful applicants will demonstrate:

• An action-oriented, entrepreneurial person who is a self-starter, and can work independently as well as in teams
• Sound, mature judgment and integrity
• Commitment to the Rockefeller Foundation’s mission and core values – effectiveness, equity, integrity, innovation and leadership – and the particular social impact objectives of the U.S. Youth Employment effort

• Bachelor’s degree in an area requiring integrative and analytical thinking (e.g. Management, Social Sciences, economics, finance, statistics)
• Minimum of two years’ strategy and/or strategic planning work experience, ideally with project experience in both for-profit and non-profit environments
• Knowledge of and experience with common approaches for research, strategic analysis, project management tools and processes, and partner engagement
• Experience working in a range of teams and managing complex stakeholder environments
• Experience delivering high-quality work in a fast-paced environment
• Consulting and/or client service experience strongly preferred
• International development and/or non-profit exposure strongly preferred
• Experience working in global organizations and /or contexts strongly preferred
• High proficiency to work, communicate, and write in English is required, with fluency in other languages an asset

About the Organization

For more than 100 years, The Rockefeller Foundation’s mission has been to promote the well-being of humanity throughout the world. Today, The Rockefeller Foundation pursues this mission through dual goals: advancing inclusive economies that expand opportunities for more broadly shared prosperity, and building resilience by helping people, communities and institutions prepare for, withstand, and emerge stronger from acute shocks and chronic stresses. To achieve these goals, The Rockefeller Foundation works at the intersection of four focus areas – advance health, revalue ecosystems, secure livelihoods, and transform cities – to address the root causes of emerging challenges and create systemic change. Together with partners and grantees, The Rockefeller Foundation strives to catalyze and scale transformative innovations that create unlikely partnerships that span sectors.

The Foundation currently maintains offices in New York, a study and conference center in Bellagio, Italy, and regional offices in Bangkok and Nairobi.

Since 2009, the Foundation has structured its programmatic work through a portfolio of interconnected Initiatives. This role will support the U.S. Youth Employment Initiative, through which the Foundation seeks to create a more inclusive U.S. economy that employs more disadvantaged young people in career-building jobs. The work takes a strong “demand-side” focus, emphasizing new solutions that can both address employers’ entry-level hiring challenges and create more opportunities for youth. In the next year, the U.S. Youth Employment team will focus on engaging large employers to adopt these solutions and building broader visibility and momentum around employer-led efforts to address youth employment. This position will play an instrumental role in designing and executing our approach to employer engagement.