U.S./ Europe Managing Director at Educate! Full Time

Position Overview 

Educate! is seeking a dynamic manager/operator looking to take the next step on their leadership path to join our industry-leading non-profit social enterprise as U.S./Europe Managing Director. This US/Europe-based role of our East African organization reports to the Global Director of Revenue.  The MD will be focused on people and team leadership, managing operations to achieve results, and owning the execution of our fundraising workflow. You’ll draw on your experience managing high-performing teams

Fundraising experience is NOT required for this role. Work experience outside the U.S., ideally in Africa, is very helpful but not absolutely required. To excel in this role, you will need exceptional abilities to understand & translate strategy to action swiftly, pragmatically prioritize & organize work to results, and warmly connect and collaborate with coworkers across time zones and cultures — along with a passion for efficiently turning collective effort into social impact. (Please see below for much more detail on the role and qualifications.)

This role would be a great fit for someone who has been working abroad in a management or leadership role at a social enterprise, NGO, or social-impact startup, and is now looking for opportunities in the U.S/Europe. Must love achieving results through a team, including improving how people work together through strong management processes, developing teams and people to do their best work, and overseeing detail-oriented projects. Sound like you? Apply here.

About Educate!

Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined.

At Educate! we’re obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent.

Educate! prepares youth in Africa learn, earn and thrive in today’s economy by:

1) introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary, and

2) delivering livelihood bootcamps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.

To date, more than 250,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 250 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows.

We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy,  #startsmall, Generation Unlimited, CIFF and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by the World Bank’s S4YE’s Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.

Educate!’s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. By 2025, we aim to scale our annual reach by 4x and measurably impact over 400,000 new youth.

Performance Objectives

1) Management of Team, Strategy, and Functions

Despite working mostly remotely from each other, our team is a tight-knit group of kind, collaborative, and motivated team players, and you’ll use your ability to perceive and understand people and dynamics to connect with the fantastic, diverse individuals on the team and support them to succeed. You’ll use your naturally strategic style to prioritize where to focus and your rock-solid judgment to make the important decisions.

• Excellent Project Management Skills: Ability to effectively plan, execute, and oversee projects to achieve organizational goals.
• Strong People Management Skills: Experience in managing and developing teams, particularly in operational roles such as field teams or logistics.
• Experience Managing through Others: Ability to delegate tasks and responsibilities while maintaining oversight and accountability.
• Leadership Experience: Experience managing directors or heads of departments, demonstrating the ability to lead at a high level.
• Management Systems: Familiarity with implementing and maintaining management systems to ensure efficiency and effectiveness.
• Defined Management Philosophy: Ability to articulate and apply a management philosophy that aligns with the ethos of the organization.
• Strategy alignment: You quickly absorb and internalize organizational strategy and communicate strategy to the team. You translate that strategy directly into team priorities and goals, and adapt them as strategy shifts in course inevitably arise. You understand and have articulated the principles, philosophies, and standards that are core to the team’s work, and where possible, you build them into systems. You make these foundational ideas explicit in order to empower the team to do more and make more decisions without directly involving you.
• Risk management: You assess & understand key risks to the team and greater org in terms of probability and impact; you flag when high-risk issues arise and watch, address, or escalate appropriately.

2) Strategic Development 

The US/Europe Managing Director will establish new organizational functions and enhance existing capabilities. The primary focus initially will be on developing the systems and solutions necessary to secure and manage larger, more intricate funding opportunities with key stakeholders in the sector. The ideal candidate will be able to learn new areas quickly and be willing to build iterative systems that improve to meet the organization’s needs as we grow.

• Lead the development of Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) to test and validate ideas with minimal resources quickly.
• Utilize agile methodologies to rapidly iterate on MVPs based on user feedback and market insights.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define MVP requirements and ensure timely delivery.
• Can correctly identify and order priorities with the ability to change priorities by introducing new information. Is able to make decisions with either too much information or incomplete information and then test.

3) US & Global Finance & Ops

The US team leads the execution of global finance and revenue for the entire organization, so running US operations smoothly, efficiently, and proactively is fundamental for the organization as a whole. We have a strong Controller who you’ll manage on this key work channel, and you’ll also work with our excellent Director of People, to ensure that policies are consistent across geographies.

Educate! also has robust finance teams in each country, and their finances are consolidated in the US. As a result, our US finance function owns our consolidated global books, leads our annual global audit, and liaises with the Board on finance. The US finance function is also responsible for finances supporting our fundraising, including external financial reporting and compliance and drafting and managing budgets for grant proposals.

HR systems and processes–e.g., contract management, HR policies, and payroll–also sit under the US & Global Ops function.

• Finance & operations team work plans, workflow and capacity planning: You ensure the finance & operations function has annual and termly goals and has the resources and support needed to meet them. You manage the team to the core objectives of working efficiently and flexibly with a mission to serve the US and global teams and ultimately Educate!’s work and impact.
• Quality & financial integrity: You manage the US finance and operations systems and people to standards of quality, in addition to outputs. You are ultimately responsible for the integrity of the US financial system, and you keep a sharp eye out for areas that could leave the organization exposed in collaboration. US procurement practices are ethical, fair, efficient, and cost-effective and achieve quality results in a timely manner.
• Finance & Ops Systems: Working with the US Head of Finance & Ops, you oversee the systems and processes to manage key finance, operations, and HR functions, ensuring they exist where needed (and not where they aren’t), and that they are efficient and only as complex as necessary.
• Grants Finance Strategy and Quality Assurance: Identify and mitigate financial risks associated with grant funding, implementing controls to safeguard assets and ensure compliance. Establish and maintain quality standards for financial management of grants, ensuring adherence to best practices and regulatory requirements. Provide training and support to staff involved in grants finance, building their capacity to manage grant funds effectively.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 5 years of work experience, 7-10 years preferred
• Excellent manager with at least 3 years of experience of managing teams, great “EQ” (emotional intelligence), and ability to manage to results without micromanaging or being too hands-off
• Process-oriented, organized, and orderly thinker & worker
• Quickly understands & applies strategy; used to prioritizing and re-prioritizing regularly in alignment to strategy
• Known for your good judgment and integrity and ability to work independently
• Enjoys working at “medium altitude” — bridging the gap between vision/strategy and day-to-day execution
• Ability to work and make friends across cultures, time zones, and personality types.
• Experience working overseas (ideally in Africa) is strongly preferred
• Willing to travel internationally and domestically (likely 2x/year international travel and 2x/year domestic travel).
• Candidates must be authorized to work in the U.S, the UK, the Netherlands, or Spain.

Educate! constantly strives to take actions to provide an inclusive, equitable, and welcoming environment for all who we serve and work with. In creating this environment and in line with our values, we encourage exceptional people of all races, ethnicities, nationalities, religions, cultures, classes, genders, sexual orientations, abled and disabled, family statuses, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team.

Terms

• Salary will be based on market factors and commensurate with experience.
• Benefits include fully paid premium for health insurance with global coverage, flexibility on work hours and remote work, 403(b) savings account access, paid leave plus one week of office closure over the winter holidays, and more.

Application Process

Intrigued? Please visit this link to apply. You will be asked to upload a resume and respond to application questions in lieu of a cover letter.

Application deadline will be rolling, but interested applicants are strongly encouraged to apply by 15th May 2024. The goal is to fill this position ASAP, to enable our current US Director to move into a new role focused on strategic revenue growth.

What Is Educate! About? 

We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

1. We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed – We never forget that Educate! exists to impact youth. We are purpose-driven. We obsess over impact daily and if it doesn’t lead to impact, we want nothing to do with it. We prioritize interacting with and listening to youth. We design and manage the organization to ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences that youth value.
2. We Exceed Expectations – We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results. When we know what needs to be done, we do it. We don’t wait to be asked and we don’t stop at what is asked of us. We look for solutions as much as we identify problems.
3. We Are Always Learning – We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded. We know there is always another way and we are excited to learn about it. We continuously look for resources of all kinds from multiple disciplines. We try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.
4. We are One Team, Many Views – We say what we think while treating each other well. We believe that all people have the same inherent value and that diverse ideas and open dialogue fuel excellence. We constantly strive to create an environment where everyone can and does express themselves freely. We support and respect each other as people and colleagues. We act as one team: We prioritize the organization’s mission and goals over team or individual goals.
5. We have the Startup Mindset – We will always keep innovating to grow our impact. We aspire to be game-changing. We never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.” We question the status quo in our industry. We move fast and embrace change to move towards our long-term vision. We’re not afraid of failure. We interrogate anything that slows us down.

Every person at Educate! — from interns to the executive director — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do.

Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community.  In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team.

Child Safeguarding: Educate! is committed to child-safe/youth-safe recruitment, selection and screening. Our recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to the safety and protection of children in our programs. The successful candidate will be required to provide a satisfactory

Certificate of Good Conduct as a condition of employment. We reserve the right to decline to offer employment to an individual or terminate an employment contract with an employee that may pose a risk to children and youth.