Job Title: Program Lead, The ARISE Fund

The END Fund is the world’s leading collaborative philanthropic investment vehicle dedicated to controlling and eliminating neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). NTDs are parasitic and bacterial infectious diseases – including intestinal worms, river blindness, trachoma, schistosomiasis and lymphatic filariasis – that affect over 1.7 billion people globally. The END Fund’s vision is to ensure people can live healthy and prosperous lives free of the risk of NTDs and has set out to accomplish this by:

– Mobilizing and investing resources for maximum impact,

– Advocating for innovative, integrated and cost-effective NTD programs; and

– Facilitating philanthropic and private sector engagement to end these diseases.

By engaging a community of activist-philanthropists and taking a systems approach, the END Fund works in collaboration with governments, local and international NGOs, pharmaceutical companies, and academic partners on the global campaign to control and eliminate the most prevalent NTDs by 2030.

Since our founding in 2012 through 2020, with our partners, the END Fund has provided over 1.1 billion treatments for NTDs worth more than $1.3 billion. In 2020 alone, we reached more than 91.9 million people with more than 133.6 million NTD treatments, representing an almost 10-fold increase from 2012. The END Fund works globally in 25 countries, with a primary emphasis in Africa. You can learn more about the END Fund and our 2020 impact story here.

The Programs team is responsible for sourcing, designing, managing, supporting, and monitoring the END Fund’s project investments, which totaled more than $30 million in 2021 across three programmatic sub-funds: the Flagship Fund, the Deworming Innovation Fund, and the Reaching the Last Mile Fund. In 2022, the END Fund is honored to operationalize a new programmatic investment fund called the ARISE Fund in collaboration with founding partners the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and the ELMA Foundation.

The END Fund is seeking a collaborative leader to oversee the design and implementation of the program activities of a new investment portfolio called the ARISE (Accelerate Resilient, Innovative, and Sustainable Elimination of NTDs) Fund. The successful candidate will have NTD technical expertise, senior-level people and program management experience, and demonstrated communication skills with both technical and non-technical audiences. Most importantly, the Program Lead will demonstrate commitment to and passion for the core principles of the ARISE Fund: supporting countries as leaders to achieve the political prioritization, financing, technical expertise, human resources, and community awareness needed to control and eliminate NTDs at national scale, with an emphasis on proximate investment; innovation to move beyond business as usual; country co-investment; and excellence in monitoring, evaluation, and learning.

The position–an Associate Vice President, Programs–will report directly to the Vice President, Programs, and work in close partnership with a large number of the END Fund’s most important external stakeholders, including the founding donor organizations, local and national government representatives, local and international implementing partners, NTD technical advisors, and other NTD sector stakeholders.

This role is remote, working on a distributed team that communicates regularly via Zoom and Slack. This is a new position with people-management responsibility for at least two direct reports (to be hired).

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS & CORE COMPETENCIES

• • Ensure best-in-class grant management for the ARISE Fund portfolio across five countries and five diseases in support of national NTD roadmaps
  • Oversee grant-making to local and national governments, NGO and INGO partners, and other technical and innovation partners to optimize support for country-led plans and priorities
  • Provide oversight that technical activities are implemented according to approved work plans and reported with sufficient data and details required
  • Strategically support organizational and movement strengthening at the local and regional levels in support of NTD control and elimination goals
  • Provide technical and programmatic technical guidance in the areas of health systems strengthening to facilitate the continued integration of NTDs into the mainstream health systems
  • Oversee and strengthen the ARISE Fund’s advocacy efforts and build partnerships at the national and local level with other NGOs, government and private sector as appropriate to increase attention, resources and programming for NTD control and elimination efforts
  • Serve as the primary external spokesperson for the ARISE Fund and its principles, on behalf of the END Fund and collaborating donor organizations
  • Strengthen program sustainability through domestic and regional resource mobilization
  • Drive the Fund’s efforts to explore and support innovative financing initiatives
  • Represent the END Fund/ARISE Fund in meetings with donors, ARISE countries and stakeholders
  • Support national programs and local partners to be direct recipients of funds in future years
  • Serve as a leader on the ARISE Fund, and more broadly within the Programs department of the END Fund, proactively communicating and collaborating with internal and external stakeholders of all levels
  • Serve as primary liaison with external technical, program and advocacy experts providing counsel to the ARISE Fund country partners
  • Provide leadership, coordination and support across the multi-functional, global team working on ARISE within the END Fund
  • Provide engaged people management for at least two direct reports
  • Contribute expertise across the END Fund’s portfolio of programmatic investment funds in partnership with program leadership colleagues

EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION

• • Minimum 15 years of experience in international development in low-resource countries; senior-level technical or program management experience in neglected tropical disease sector required
  • Graduate degree in international development, public health, or a relevant discipline
  • Strong collaborative team-work experience, including experience playing a leadership role in a large-scale, multi-stakeholder initiative
  • Demonstrated strategic thinking in program design
  • Strong communication skills, both verbal and written, in English required, French preferred
  • Ability to translate technical material and distill programmatic learnings for both technical and non-technical audiences; experience reporting to philanthropic or bilateral donors preferred
  • Proactive communicator and collaborator who enjoys working in a dynamic, evolving, cross-cultural, globally distributed team
  • Passionate about philanthropy and public health, with a global mindset and perspective
  • Proficient knowledge in Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) and Google products (Drive, Mail, Calendar); comfortable working virtually on a globally dispersed team
  • Work authorization in either Ethiopia or Kenya required
  • Willingness and ability to travel

POSTING: Program Lead, The ARISE Fund

LOCATION: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; or Nairobi, Kenya

REPORTS TO: Vice President, Programs

TRAVEL REQUIREMENTS:  Up to 50% local and international travel

POSTING DEADLINE: This position will close at 11:59 pm EDT on Sunday, June 26th

SALARY: If based in Addis Ababa, anticipated starting base salary range is 4,149,378-4,668,050 Birr. If based in Nairobi, anticipated starting base salary range is KES 15,882,353-17,058,824.