The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

The Gender Equality Division’s mission it to ensure women and girls in Africa and South Asia can enjoy good health, make their own choices, earn their own money, and be leaders in their societies. When women and girls have an equal chance to thrive and lead, everyone benefits. We know that women and girls are not a monolith. A woman’s experience and the barriers she faces are different depending on factors like where she lives, how old she is, and how much money her family has—alongside other factors including her race, caste, and education level. We seek to address these compounding barriers through deep partnership with our grantees. As a philanthropy, our role is to listen to and learn from these experts. We take risks in new areas, prove concepts, and bring these ideas to governments, partner organizations, and private sector companies to scale. The Gender Equality Division builds off our existing strengths as a foundation in areas like global health and data, partnering closely with all our global divisions.

The Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Discovery & Tools (MNCH D&T) is responsible for an end-to-end approach focused on product discovery, development, introduction, and scale of novel and existing high impact products for women, adolescent girls, and children in low-resource settings. Our approach targets underlying biological vulnerability and seeks to intervene as early as possible in the life course. We fund development on a core set of products that range in type (including drugs, foods, microbes, risk algorithms, and devices), technical risk (from novel concepts to product substitutions), and development phase (from early discovery to late-stage efficacy testing and implementation research). We also support launch and introduction planning of a subset of our core products that are further in the development process to accelerate country adoption and uptake in the global architecture and drive impact at scale. These products target pregnancy risk, maternal undernutrition, prematurity, neonatal encephalopathy, child wasting, child neurodevelopment and maternal morbidity. Our team is multidisciplinary and includes physician scientists with backgrounds in obstetrics and pediatrics, perinatal epidemiologists, and professionals in neurodevelopment, nutrition research, engineering, global health, and strategy development. We emphasize in-country partnership to integrate the local context into research and development.

Our culture shapes our choices about what we do and how we do it. We believe that energized people, working well together, motivated by great leadership in an inclusive environment can do extraordinary things. We expect foundation employees to intentionally and consistently embody our four agreements; show respect, offer trust, be transparent, and create energy.

Note: This job posting will close on October 20, end of day.

Your Role

The Senior Program Officer (SPO), Monitoring and Evaluation, will support the MNCH Discovery & Tools team in operationalizing its downstream measurement work by leading the development and management of a portfolio of investments aimed at (i) tracking progress towards uptake of key MNCH products (including existing, emerging, and novel product categories) in priority geographies and (ii) assessment of impact on service utilization/quality and maternal and newborn morbidity/mortality. You will manage the execution of workstreams and investments through collaboration with in-country and measurement partners both external and internal to the foundation. You will leverage past experience in both the design, collection, and analysis of primary monitoring and evaluation data to build iterative learning cycles that inform our strategic approach in response to data-led insights.

What You Will Do

• Lead the design, coordination, and execution of the MNCH D&T Monitoring and Evaluation portfolio, including development and management of investments in key areas that support the measurement and tracking of programmatic process, and health outcomes and impact metrics.

• Collaborate with analytics partners like the Institute for Disease Modeling to craft iterative analysis plans and map incoming data to decision points.

• Analyze and interpret incoming monitoring and evaluation data to inform strategic approach based on data-led insights.

• Innovate methodology to strengthen measurement approaches and produce high-quality, low-cost, rapid and iterative monitoring and evaluation data to feed into foundation strategy and improve policy and programmatic decisions.

• Routinely assess data quality gaps and identify areas of innovation and investment opportunity to improve overall data quality.

• Advocate for and support transparent flow of data from grantee to in-country and foundation partners.

• Provide cross-portfolio support on design of outcome-focused investments and implementation of practical and rigorous monitoring and evaluation strategies for downstream-focused bodies of work.

• Engage with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders, spanning country offices and measurement partnerships.

• Identify harmonies and areas of collaboration with external partners and other collaborators working in the data, analytics, and measurement ecosystem.

What You Will Bring

• PhD in statistics, epidemiology, or an applied measurement field, or equivalent experience, and 10+ years of technical experience in monitoring and evaluation in the development, social sciences, or public health field.

• High level of technical proficiency and methodological rigor, including in emerging measurement approaches.

• Field experience, including design of measurement tools and implementation of monitoring and evaluation efforts in LMIC settings.

• In-depth knowledge of statistical methods, formative, summative, developmental, and additive evaluation designs, nuanced approach with qualitative and quantitative methodologies, data collection and management.

• Ability to critically design MLE tools, surveys, surveillance systems, and evaluations.

• Experience in a dynamic environment with a consistent track record of balancing multiple contending demands and thoughtful prioritization, while providing continual attention to detail in proofing materials, tracking projects, and grants.

• Understanding of the nuances and pros and cons of different types of data systems and tools.

• A curious, proactive, self-learning mentality to understand and engage with the sophisticated political economy of data, analytics, and measurement, and with complex data from multiple sources.

• Comfort in working on large scale health programs across multiple geographies, including localized settings and resource-constrained environments.

• A self-critical, reflective, humble mentality; an immersive approach to understanding various contexts; the ability to think innovatively.

Other Attributes

• Comfortable in a wide range of cultural, geographic, and operational situations, demonstrating culturally sensitive behavior with a diverse range of people.

• Ability to travel up to 50% domestically and internationally.

Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Candidate Accommodations

If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.