IPA Program Senior Manager Job in Kisumu, Kenya

Senior Manager, Programs- Dispensers for Safe Water, Kenya

Location: Kisumu, Kenya with occasional domestic and international travel
Reporting To: Deputy Regional Director of Africa
Start Date: Immediately, Applications considered on a rolling basis

About Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)

IPA is an international non-profit research organization. Based in New Haven, CT, with offices in Washington, D.C. and worldwide, IPA works with development partners and academic researchers to create and evaluate approaches to solving development problems, to communicate “what works” in development and to scale up successful projects in a variety of fields, including health, education, microfinance, governance and agriculture.

About Evidence Action

Evidence Action is a new organization working in partnership with IPA to scale

proven interventions. IPA has played in important role incubating technical assistance and service delivery programs, such as the Dispensers for Safe Water program and the Deworm the World Initiative.

The management and further growth of these “scale up” initiatives is transitioning to Evidence Action. IPA will continue to provide support for these programs during their transition period.

About the Dispensers for Safe Water Program

Each year, over 1.8 million children under the age of five die from diarrhea, a leading cause of which is unsafe drinking water. Dispensers for Safe Water (DSW) is an entrepreneurial team tasked with scaling chlorine dispensers – a proven innovation that dramatically expands access to water treatment at an extremely low cost. 

The dispensers program is growing rapidly: we currently serve over 1.2 million people in Kenya, and about 1.5 million people in East Africa. Our goal is to provide 25 million people in multiple countries with on-going access to safe water to reduce the disease burden by 2018.

About the Position

We are looking for a motivated individual who is passionate about using operational and people management experience to build a high performing rural service delivery program and strong team to eventually serve 15 million Kenyans with access to safe water.

As the head of DSW’s largest country program, the Senior Manager is a key member of our leadership team and the ultimate people manager. 

DSW’s program currently has more than 100 staff across 6 field offices in Kenya and will continue to grow rapidly over the next years to reach about 175 staff across 12-15 field offices, breaking new ground in scale and operations while serving as a model and resource for new country programs. 

The new Senior Manager will be a strong leader and manager who can guide motivate, and grow our team in Kenya, translating DSW’s innovative financing (e.g. carbon crediting) and partnership opportunities into a nationwide program with world-class operations.

In Kenya the DSW program works in partnership with social enterprises and government at the national and county level. 

The Senior Manager will be responsible to take these partnerships forward with ultimate goal of developing sustainable partnerships with private and government bodies.

Goals and Responsibilities

• Manage a high-performing program serving millions of Kenyans
• Achieve the goals of 5 million people served by end of 2015 and 15 million Kenyans served by 2018;
• Create and strengthen program delivery systems to ensure high-quality implementation and service delivery (e.g. a GPS-enabled circuit rider model for the chlorine supply chain);
• Primary responsibility for budget of KES 173 million (~$2M USD) annually (and growing), and the oversight and leadership on financial and administrative functions that this responsibility entails;
• Lead performance management and professional development across the DSW Kenya program;
• Lead the DSW Kenya team and oversee team growth and development essential for successful nationwide chlorine dispenser service delivery;
• Further develop and refine program operations strategy and lead activities between field operations, research/evaluation, information systems and support functions;
• Provide supervision, guidance and support to the program management team, developing team members into future leaders of our initiative;
• Generate, manage and share knowledge for continuous program improvement;
• Forge and strengthen partnerships with government and other organizations which leverage DSW’s ability to deliver high-impact programs;
• Contribute to setting program-wide research and development priorities.
• (Do we want to include something about membership in regional leadership team?)

Qualifications, Experience and Skills

• A Master’s Degree in Project Management or closely related field.
• Track record of inspiring and empowering teams with the right level of structure and direction;
• At least 5 years of senior management experience;
• Experience leading scale-focused work with a major operations component – building systems, bringing together organizational functions, and developing teams with the ability to reach millions of people;
• High level of comfort with information technology and databases, and a demonstrated track record of using data for decision making;
• Experience working in the water sector desirable but not essential;
• Work experience in managing a cross-cultural team, ideally in Kenya/East Africa;
• Experience of working in private sector/for-profit organizations desirable;
• A critical, analytical, and process-oriented thinker with willingness to form and adjust opinions based on evidence;
• Inspired by our mission of cost-effectively bringing safe water to millions of Kenyans;
• Track record of being a good steward of program funding and responsibly managing resources; alignment with our philosophy of building cost-effective program
• A strong commitment to evidence-based practice and policy in the development field;
• An entrepreneurial spirit – the ability to lead in a fast-moving start-up environment;
• A sense of humor
• Willingness to spend 60% of the time in the field in rural Kenya

Application Instructions:

Please follow the application instructions below. Any applications or CVs submitted outside this process will not be considered. Note, only short-listed candidates will be contacted for an interview. 

Applicants will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

2) Send an email to jobs@poverty-action.org and cc jobs@evidenceaction.org, following these instructions exactly:

• In the subject line: Copy exactly the following position line: Senior Manager, Programs- Dispensers for Safe Water, Kenya
• In the email body: Put your full name, first (given) name followed by last (family) name
• Attachments: Please attach ONLY your cover letter and CV

Please do not include any text besides your name in the body of the e-mail. Adding extra text will interfere with the processing of your application.