Description:Lutheran World Relief seeks a Senior Technical Advisor for Resilience and Food Security to play a key role in a growing team within the International Programs Department (IPD) that is focusing on program quality, technical support, M&E and learning. LWR has a long history in resilience work, and a growing portfolio of projects and external recognition; however the team is ready to build on dedicated technical attention to the topic of resilience, both for internal technical strengthening and for external networking and positioning. LWR as an organization is committed to a strategy for growth in impact in the upcoming years, while sharpening its technical approaches and ability to contribute to the wider technical discourse. The IPD team at LWR, both at HQ and in the field, are engaged, eager, experienced and enthusiastic about working with this new technical advisor. It is therefore a fantastic time to join the LWR team.
This position will sit within LWR’s IPD department, in the Program Quality and Technical Support unit, and will be closely integrated with the monitoring and evaluation and gender technical advisors. He/she will also work closely with our regional teams in Asia/Middle East, Latin America, and Africa and be primarily supporting the intersections of resilience in our agricultural production, value chain and food security work. Support to LWR’s emergency recovery and climate change work may also be included.
The LWR is looking for a person who believes that he/she has the experience and skills to contribute to this unique opportunity, who enjoys challenges, demonstrates leadership skills, and who takes initiative to find creative solutions that can efficiently meet the needs of LWR stakeholders. The successful candidate will be likely based out of LWR’s Baltimore HQ and will have the opportunity to work with staff from over 16 different countries and will also have the opportunity to travel. LWR is an organization that cares about program quality, values its staff, and is open to and active in sharing our experiences widely with peers, donors and stakeholders. Although LWR was founded by, and continues to be supported by many U.S. Lutherans, LWR is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is entirely secular in its programming approach with beneficiaries overseas.
This position is currently funded with a 2-year commitment, with the expectation for support beyond that, funding permitting. Expected start date for this position is approximately March or April 2016. Duties: 1) Internal technical leadership around resilience (25%)
a. Coordinate LWR’s internal process to capture regional approaches to resilience, and facilitate the process of aligning and articulating a global approach.
b. Conduct capacity building of staff at HQ and in the field about the various technical aspects of effective, integrated resilience programming, from design to measurement. Remain up-to-date of current thinking and transfer that knowledge across LWR.
c. Identify, extract and disseminate successful approaches, innovations, case studies, lessons learned and other relevant content to promote internal, global learning
d. Identify and manage meta-level analysis of resilience program results
e. Manage LWR’s internal positioning strategy around resilience, coordinating closely with a variety of internal stakeholders
f. Establish and manage a sustainable community of practice and/or learning platform around resilience; ensure close liaison with other technical working groups
2) Direct technical support to proposals and projects (50%)
a. Provide direct technical support to project proposals, such as technical design leadership, building in and budgeting for resilience measurement, technical writing, and/or technical review and feedback
b. Provide direct technical support to projects as needed, such as during the start-up phase, during implementation, or for mid-term or final evaluations.
c. Review grant solicitations and/or donor policies and strategies to understand technical requirements and donor expectations; help to communicate technical approach to proposal team and ensure it is maintained during project implementation.
d. Conduct periodic technical reviews of projects, providing feedback to ensure projects are following or advancing best practices, achieving expected targets, meeting beneficiary and donor expectations, and taking full advantage of programs to capture and share innovations being developed by project teams.
e. Where relevant, provide capacity building and technical support to local partners overseas.
f. Conduct periodic work planning around which proposals and projects to provide technical support to, based on a combination of need and strategic priority. Ensure clear communication within LWR of direct technical support plans.
3) External representation and positioning (25%)
a. Serve as the main LWR point of contact at external resilience meetings, workshops and other stakeholder and donor events.
b. In 2016, this person will likely serve as co-chair to an external working group on gender and resilience.
c. Where relevant, follow and/or engage in relevant technical dialogue in intersecting technical areas such as agriculture, climate change, emergencies, gender, and evaluation.
d. Provide thought leadership in resilience issues externally, expanding LWR’s technical reputation.
e. Manage the writing, publication, and dissemination of external materials that come out of LWR’s internal evaluation and learning systems (as described above).
f. Assist regional and business development teams to identify, scope and secure new opportunities, partnerships and donors, to include private sector and university partnerships. Qualifications: 1. Ph.D. or Master’s degree in anthropology, economics, agronomy, international development, or a relevant social science field.
- Ten or more years of progressively responsible experience in international relief and development at the academic, NGO or other practitioner level, including direct experience with technical support and project implementation.
- State-of-the-art knowledge of the core concepts, tools and resources in resilience for international development and emergency response programs, especially related to agriculture and food security, monitoring and evaluation, and gender.
- Specific understanding of, and experience in, measuring resilience, preferably in an agriculture and food security context.
- Excellent writing skills, including experience writing strong technical proposals for USAID or other donors, technical training materials, strategic think pieces, and/or technical strategies. In particular, experience with larger USAID proposals such as Feed the Future and/or Food for Peace, or USDA Food for Progress is preferred.
- Demonstrated experience in analyzing and simplifying complex data and information contained in reports and studies into products that respond to unique information needs of diverse stakeholders.
- Ability to act independently, manage potentially diverse stakeholder needs and priorities, multi-task extensively, and follow-through with results.
- Engaging personal presence, illustrated by the ability make strong public presentations, conduct internal or external learning workshops, facilitate interpersonal communications, and build a wide network of external technical relationships.
- Ability to speak Spanish and/or French highly desirable. French preferred.
- Willingness to travel internationally, at least 25% of the time, sometimes to remote locations with few amenities.
TO APPLY: Go towww.lwr.org/jobsand please apply online.
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