Job Information
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Deputy Director, Strategic Initiatives in Seattle, Washington
The Foundation
We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.
The Team
The Gender Equality Division’s mission is to ensure women and girls in Africa and South Asia can enjoy good health, make their own choices, earn their own money, and be leaders in their societies. When women and girls have an equal chance to thrive and lead, everyone benefits. We know that women and girls are not a monolith. A woman’s experience and the barriers she faces are different depending on factors like where she lives, how old she is, and how much money her family has—alongside other factors including her race, caste, and education level. We seek to address these compounding barriers through deep partnership with our grantees. As a philanthropy, our role is to listen to and learn from these experts. We take risks in new areas, prove concepts, and bring these ideas to governments, partner organizations, and private sector companies to scale. The Gender Equality Division builds off our existing strengths as a foundation in areas like global health and data, partnering closely with all of our global divisions.
The Gender Equality Office of the President creates an enabling environment and a strong business engine that drives forward the achievement of the GE Division’s goals. This is achieved through four core pillars: President Enablement & Engagement (includes the Division’s Strategic Partnership and the GE Presidents external and internal engagement), GE Division Experience & Engagement (includes president support, executive and leadership team engagement, division communications, and division culture, norms, and DEI efforts), Centralized Business Capabilities (includes rhythm of the business, division guidance for Strategy Reviews and Annual Planning, and knowledge management), and a Strategic Advisory Function whose primary remit is to provide timely, responsive strategy and decision support capabilities to the GE President and to cross-division strategic areas of work in alignment with division impact goals.
Posting Close Date: Sunday, October 27th
Your Role
As Deputy Director, Strategic Initiatives you will lead a team that runs high-priority strategy projects that range from providing deep strategy development support to a single Program Strategy Team (PST) to providing advisory and decision support for cross-cutting initiatives that impact multiple teams across the GE Division. You will work collaboratively to identify and answer strategic questions, design and lead qualitative and quantitative analyses, and elevate key insights to guide team and division-level strategy, partnerships, and investment-making.
You will be responsible for shaping and prioritizing strategy efforts, managing strategy officers, and providing strategic thought partnership, project management, and analytical support to clients across the GE division. Your role will partner on key GE President strategic priorities, with a focus across our health and livelihoods-oriented work, with a primary focus on health.
What You’ll Do
Translate new division-wide priorities into strategy design, including the structuring, sequencing, and identification of dependencies in overall strategy development. Primarily focused on health.
Lead the Strategic Advisory team to identify, select, and manage a pipeline of priority strategy projects.
Oversee engagement and partnership with Directors and leadership teams across the division and within the Office of the President of time-bound strategy development projects that provide decision support capacity to address critical questions that impact multiple PSTs, extend analytical support to accelerate mission-critical strategy development for individual programs, and leverage our cross-cutting vantage point to support learning and incubation of new ideas as the field and division’s needs evolve.
Lead the iterative improvement of the strategic advisory function: refining our approach as we learn from early execution and responding to changes in internal and external environments
Co-lead the development of materials for annual planning, division context meetings during strategy reviews, learning sessions, and other informal communications with foundation leadership, partner with the Director and Leadership team to gather content and expertise, lead synthesis and development of recommendations, and set the bar for quality and rigor in slides, memos, and other communications.
Support change management activities within domain-specific or foundation-wide initiatives, with an emphasis on successfully bridging strategy with implementation for select projects
Responsible for hiring and managing the talent needed to achieve the foundation’s goals.
Accountable for integration and driving progress against DEI organizational goals and division commitments.
Foster enabling conditions for talent to thrive and be accountable for inclusive team culture.
Model and coach equitable decision-making, inclusive behaviors, and actions; address escalated issues in a timely fashion.
Other duties as assigned.
Your Experience
A Master’s degree or equivalent demonstrated experience, preferably in business, economics, engineering, science, or policy.
Knowledge and/or experience in areas central to our division’s programmatic areas, primarily health.
Comprehensive experience leading projects at a premier strategy consulting firm.
Demonstrated strength in structured problem solving, data analysis, and strategic business planning with the ability to easily identify and communicate frameworks to facilitate strategy creation and analyze core issues
Ability to learn new content quickly, identify connections and second-order implications and demonstrate proficiency with internal / external teams. Strong pattern recognition grounded in relevant knowledge
Ability to manage a high level of ambiguity within and across strategy projects
Excellent interpersonal skills and demonstrated ability to rapidly build trusted advisor relationships with senior leaders
Deep knowledge of strategy development and end-to-end sophisticated project management (including process design, team structure, critical thinking requirements, development of novel communication resources and external/senior partner engagement)
Ability to work in a self-guided manner, prioritize, and work towards demanding timelines
Ability to question and challenge colleagues including managers and partners in constructive manner
Accustomed to highly unstructured and ambiguous situations
Excellent organizational, facilitation, oral, and written communication skills. Ability to work effectively and with sensitivity across barriers such as language, culture, and distance. Excellent listening skills and compassion.
*Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.
The salary range for this role is $249,600.00 to $386,900.00 USD. We recognize high-wage market differences in Seattle and Washington D.C., where our offices are located. The range for this role in these locations is $229,100.00 to $355,200.00 USD. As a mission-driven organization, we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission. New hires salaries are typically between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidate’s job-related skills, experience, and expertise, as evaluated during the interview process.
Hiring Requirements
As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.
Candidate Accommodations
If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.
Inclusion Statement
We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.
All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.