Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The COVID-19 Response team was formed to organize and execute an investment strategy for the foundation’s comprehensive $100M response towards containment and mitigation of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus. This effort is comprised of several workstreams from across Global Health, Global Development, and Global Policy & Advocacy and includes resources from multiple PSTs within each division. As part of the foundation’s commitment to respond to this rapidly growing epidemic, we are seeking an Associate Strategy Officer to support across several workstreams that are responsible for coordination of efforts across three major areas of focus: accelerating detection & containment, protecting the most vulnerable populations, and developing products for a sustained response.
This job posting is for an LTE position, with an end date no later than December 20, 2020.
Position Summary & Core Responsibilities
As a key member of the COVID-19 Response team, the Associate Strategy Officer (ASO), is accountable for cross-cutting support to the response team on strategy, communications, material development, and project management, especially for leadership updates. ASOs design and implement high-quality qualitative and quantitative analyses, synthesize key information and insights, and effectively communicate this information with foundation leaders.
You will also partner closely with the various foundation Program Strategy Teams (PSTs), functional teams, subject matter experts and the China Country Office to contribute to the continued development of the foundation’s COVID-10 product development strategic vision including participating in the setting of the overall strategy and goals for the group.
Key responsibilities will include:
- Partner closely with COVID-19 team leadership, including the Incident Manager, DDSPM, PM, and Workstream Leads
- Provide project management, problem-solving support, and initiative leadership on cross-foundational strategy projects
- Act as the key integrator for planning and material development for a cadence of executive and co-chair updates on COVID-19 response.
- Execute strategy development and refinement process:
- Participate in scoping and designing the overall strategy development process
- Employ strategic resources to develop and assess options, ensure sound reasoning, and challenge assumptions
- Liaise closely with internal stakeholders to co-develop and test strategy concepts, and facilitate change management
- Bring a customer-focused skillset of effective communication and relationship management to partner engagement
- Support the implementation of creative solutions to guide group processes (e.g. managing conflict and encouraging alignment).
- Contribute to the identification and implementation of research and analytical work to support resolution-making, including statistical analysis and working with third party resources to develop analytical methodologies
Position Summary & Core Responsibilities
As a key member of the COVID-19 Response team, the Associate Strategy Officer (ASO), is accountable for cross-cutting support to the response team on strategy, communications, material development, and project management, especially for leadership updates. ASOs design and implement high-quality qualitative and quantitative analyses, synthesize key information and insights, and effectively communicate this information with foundation leaders.
You will also partner closely with the various foundation Program Strategy Teams (PSTs), functional teams, subject matter experts and the China Country Office to contribute to the continued development of the foundation’s COVID-10 product development strategic vision including participating in the setting of the overall strategy and goals for the group.
Key responsibilities will include:
- Partner closely with COVID-19 team leadership, including the Incident Manager, DDSPM, PM, and Workstream Leads
- Provide project management, problem-solving support, and initiative leadership on cross-foundational strategy projects
- Act as the key integrator for planning and material development for a cadence of executive and co-chair updates on COVID-19 response.
- Execute strategy development and refinement process:
- Participate in scoping and designing the overall strategy development process
- Employ strategic resources to develop and assess options, ensure sound reasoning, and challenge assumptions
- Liaise closely with internal stakeholders to co-develop and test strategy concepts, and facilitate change management
- Bring a customer-focused skillset of effective communication and relationship management to partner engagement
- Support the implementation of creative solutions to guide group processes (e.g. managing conflict and encouraging alignment).
- Contribute to the identification and implementation of research and analytical work to support resolution-making, including statistical analysis and working with third party resources to develop analytical methodologies
Core Knowledge & Skills
We are looking for people who enjoy the opportunity of working on complex projects and collaboratively creating solutions that have the potential for transformational change. We seek a self-starter who can integrate a diverse set of perspectives to build consensus, structure and drive forward progress on complex topics, and provide both strategic and operational capacity to the COVID-19 response team.
We are looking for individuals with:
- Demonstrated ability to work with flexibility, efficiency, and enthusiasm in a fast-paced and complex internal and external environment
- Deep knowledge of strategy development and end-to-end complex project management (including process design, team structure, critical thinking requirements, development of novel communication resources and external/senior stakeholder engagement).
- Proven program and stakeholder management skills: ability to coordinate inputs from many people; to track progress against targets and identify barriers to progress; to plan agendas and facilitate meetings; and to organize, evaluate, and communicate information
- Excellent software skills with Microsoft Office applications, including a demonstrated ability to convey complex information using supporting tables, graphs and other visual representations.
- Strong judgment with a demonstrated ability to handle complex issues, multiple tasks, confidential information, and competing priorities with skill, discretion, a strong attention to detail, flexibility and diplomacy.
- Intellectual quickness, curiosity, discipline, resourcefulness and resilience.
- Demonstrated strength in structured problem solving and strategic business planning, with the ability to easily identify and communicate frameworks to facilitate strategy creation and analyze core issues
- Comfortable with highly unstructured and ambiguous situations; ability to proactively resolve.
- Excellent interpersonal and diplomatic skills. You must possess excellent relationship management skills to develop trusting and productive relationships with a wide range of colleagues, dignitaries, leaders, grantees, consultants and other partners.
- A sense of humor.
- Demonstrated passion for the Foundation’s values with a commitment to deliver results against our mission.
Education and Experience
- Bachelor’s degree and two years management consulting experience required
JOB ID: B014420