Vice President, Global Health Programs

Job Description

As the Vice President, Global Health Programs, you will be central to delivering on MSH’s mission to close the gap between knowledge and action in public health for the most disadvantaged populations in the world. Specifically, you will be responsible for MSH’s global portfolio of health care programs and people; oversee program execution; and shape and manage all country operations to support the achievement of MSH’s mission, goals, and objectives. You will report directly to the CEO and will be a close colleague with all other members of the Executive Team.

Working closely with country leadership across the 30+ countries where MSH currently operates, and in coordination with our subcontractors and partners, you will be accountable for the design, delivery, and organizational learning of cutting-edge and impact-driven programs that influence local, regional, and global outcomes. You will lead a team of senior program and operational professionals (e.g., Global and Country Chiefs of Party, Project Directors) responsible for the design, effective management, fiscal stewardship, compliance adherence, delivery of our donor promise, and contract adherence.

As Vice President, Global Health Programs, you will work with the Heads of our Global Health Systems Innovation and Business Development and Partnerships teams to influence strategic direction by focusing on global health thematic areas of need. Together, you will develop innovative programs and approaches to achieve measurable impact at scale.

You will serve as a change agent and thought leader—both internally and externally—for spearheading a model for achieving improved and sustainable health outcomes in targeted developing countries while leveraging innovative and global solutions, applications, and capacity. MSH knows that lasting impact will require new, fully integrated approaches in the communities where we work.

The Vice President, Global Health Programs, must be effective at developing, managing, growing, and institutionalizing complex relationships. You must actively build and manage a network of relationships with individuals from multiple constituencies. You must be a thought leader for donors and constituents, offering solutions and big-picture thinking in addition to robust expertise. You must be able to develop talent and cultivate leadership among senior staff. Your reputation will be enhanced by delivering and mobilizing all that MSH has to offer—the right people, resources, and ideas to deliver on our donors’ objectives.

In this role, you must embrace partnership and empowerment. At MSH, we take our inspiration from the 3,500-year-old Tao (Way) of Leadership, working shoulder to shoulder with our local colleagues and partners toward their empowerment and success.

MSH seeks a deeply passionate and experienced global health development leader who will champion our values, balance strategic thinking with operational excellence, relentlessly push for superior quality, and motivate a high-performing team. You will manage, motivate, and develop high-performing, high-energy Program Directors. In addition, you will serve as an executive leader in driving a process that allows staff to engage in defining priorities; ensure that roles and responsibilities are clear; guarantee timely decision making; and ensure two-way, effective communication. You will also provide broad oversight and strategic thinking to increase MSH’s overall influence, resources, and impact. You will provide thought leadership and constant collaboration with the MSH Executive Team to ensure the most effective and successful design and execution of programs.

Specific Responsibilities

Program Management: Reputational Excellence in Local-to-Global Programming

As Vice President, Global Health Programs, you will:

• Develop short- and long-term program deliverables that will position the organization as both a thought leader and a savvy champion for innovative health solutions, locally and globally.
• Lead all program delivery areas in implementing leading-edge, high-impact solutions during the program period and beyond.
• Build impact and learning throughout the organization and among our partners.
• Deliver programmatic leadership, guidance, and input for strategic implementation and ensure that all program activities operate ethically and are consistent with our mission, vision, and values.
• Demonstrate competence in program financial management. Possess the ability to manage complex budgets and donor relationships while mitigating and controlling financial risk across a large number of countries and programmatic themes. Implement and monitor internal controls while meeting the compliance and regulatory requirements of all programs.
• Demonstrate proven senior leadership experience in managing and motivating multidisciplinary, multicultural, and matrixed teams; working with multidisciplinary peers; and influencing colleagues across a global network. Demonstrate a high degree of understanding of how to drive and support excellent team performance and individual development. Act as a role model, demonstrating inspirational leadership.
• Demonstrate the ability to take calculated risks based on evidence-based assumptions and to continually access and analyze the external context of the organization, enabling the development of realistic strategies that maximize future thinking, learning from experience, and sound judgement in uncertain or high-pressure situations.
• Demonstrate the ability to anticipate and manage risks that could threaten the organization’s reputation, operational viability, or security. Take responsibility for leading all compliance, crisis management, and security management within programs and countries.
• Enable MSH’s program management organization, which develops standard operating procedures, common project management frameworks, and global reporting capabilities and systems for evaluating and analyzing individual program success, effectiveness, policy alignment, and contract adherence.

Strategic Aptitude: Building Capacity through Innovation, Evidence, and Advocacy

• The Vice President, Global Health Programs, will actively participate in the development and implementation of MSH’s strategic objectives, priorities, plans, and initiatives. You will work with leadership teams across MSH to identify both short- and long-term potential business opportunities and develop strategies to win those projects. This will involve forecasting and planning for changing risk profiles and risk mitigation strategies with current programs and donors around the world.

External Relationship Management: Building Relationships and Using Influence

• The Vice President, Global Health Programs, will create visibility and credibility to appropriately position MSH as a strong leader in public health. This will include building and managing trusted relationships with a diverse range of stakeholders and countries, including governments, multilateral organizations, partners, foundations, and other clients and funders. You will represent MSH through active participation in corporate initiatives and programs as well as external events and conferences focused on global public health issues. As a key representative of MSH, you must communicate effectively and maintain a strong professional profile and broad, influential network.

Critical Internal Team Interdependencies

• Technical Excellence
• Business Development and Innovation

Qualifications and Experience

• Advanced degree in public health, medicine, international development, or a related field. Postgraduate degree or 15+ years relevant progressively increasing levels of leadership.
• Recognized global health leader with a minimum of 15 to 20 years of leadership of large-scale health development programs, including in-country experience, and deep experience executing US government-funded programs.
• Well-established track record of sound, ethical business judgment; financial acumen; and fiscal stewardship and a proven ability to build trust, foster collaborative partnerships, and realize impactful relationships with diverse groups of stakeholders.
• Well-versed in international public health issues; understand the current challenges and approach them with optimism, integrity, and passion for creating real and sustainable change.
• Experience working in a complex global health international NGO and significant experience managing teams with a broad range of technical expertise that work collaboratively toward common strategic goals.
• Active engagement in proposal development and resource mobilization with key public and private donors such as USAID, CDC, PEPFAR, UNICEF, DFID, the Global Fund, and other major donors and partners.
• Relentlessly strategic with the ability to translate these skills into flawless operational plans, ensuring that MSH has a competitive edge and takes advantage of best practices.
• Excellent interpersonal and written and oral communication skills that inspire, influence, and negotiate with broad and diverse audiences, including governments, donors, and pivotal figures in society. Be an active listener and learner and work with enthusiasm and diplomacy, both individually and as part of a complex international team.
• Demonstrate humility, intellect, creativity, curiosity, discipline, and resourcefulness.
• Fluent in written and spoken English; ideally have some ability to work in at least one other relevant language.
• Ability to travel away from home, often to remote locations, estimated at approximately 30% of your time (COVID pending).

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.