Overview:
ASLM
The African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) is a pan‐African professional body working to advocate for the critical role and needs of laboratory medicine and networks throughout Africa. Recognizing the World Health Organization (WHO) Resolution AFR/RC58/R2 for strengthening public health laboratories in the African region and the 2008 Maputo Declaration on Strengthening of Laboratory Systems, ASLM addresses these challenges by working collaboratively with governments, local and international organizations, implementing partners, and the private sector to achieve the following goals by 2020:
- Mobilize efforts to strengthening laboratory workforce to meet Africa’s growing healthcare needs
- Transform laboratory testing quality through quality improvement and accreditation programmes
- Support the development of strong, harmonized regulatory systems for diagnostic products
- Build networks of national public health laboratories to improve early disease detection and collaborative research
For more information, please visit www.aslm.org
Position
Reporting to the Board of Directors, the CEO will have overall strategic and operational responsibility for ASLM’s staff, programs, expansion, and execution of its mission. S/he will initially develop deep knowledge of field, core programs, operations, and business plans.
Responsibilities:
Strategic Vision:
- Regularly demonstrate and articulate a clear vision for the future of the organization.
- Establish and actively maintain a wide range of relationships with strategic partners, continue to build on these relationships to advance the goals of the organization.
Leadership & Management:
- Demonstrate a strong external profile of leadership externally, be an effective decision-maker and inspire the staff and external partners.
- Ensure ongoing programmatic excellence in each country of operation, rigorous program evaluation, and consistent quality of finance and administration, fundraising, communications, and systems; recommend timelines and resources needed to achieve the strategic goals
- Effectively manage the stable and successful growth of key programs and actively seek opportunities to expand into new programmatic areas to widen and diversify the organizations work.
- Actively engage and energize ASLM staff, board members, donors, partnering organizations, and requisite Ministry officials in all locations.
- Strengthen and implement an effective ASLM strategy
- Develop, maintain, and support a strong Board of Directors: seek and build board involvement with strategic direction for both ongoing operations as well as for the continental expansion.
- Hire and develop a high quality staff team capable of handling current responsibilities of the organization; effectively and promptly manage HR problems and identify ways to enable staff to develop and take on stronger roles.
- Lead, coach, develop, and retain ASLM’s high-performance senior management staff.
- Manage effectively ASLM’s distributed workforce as it expands its presence to new countries.
- Ensure effective systems to track scaling progress, and regularly evaluate program components, so as to measure successes that can be effectively communicated to the board, funders, and other constituents.
Fundraising & Communications:
- Diversify the sources of funding for the organization and successfully increase funding levels.
- Expand revenue generating and fundraising activities to support existing program operations and regional expansion while simultaneously retiring debt
- Ensure a vibrant and impressive external profile of the organization through professional and regular formal and informal communications; actively build membership of the Society.
- Deepen and refine all aspects of communications—from web presence to external relations with the goal of creating a stronger brand.
- Use external presence and relationships to garner new opportunities.
Infrastructure Planning & Operations:
- Establish an office capable of running the day-to-day operations of the organization.
- Ensure that projects are effectively managed from inception to delivery.
- Put in place adequate financial management systems to ensure efficient and timely transactions and prevent mismanagement.
New Business
- Design the continental expansion and complete the strategic business planning process for the program expansion into new markets.
- Begin to build partnerships in new markets, establishing relationships with the funders, and political and community leaders at each expansion site.
- Be an external local and national presence that publishes and communicates program results with an emphasis on the successes of the local program as a model for regional and national replication.
Qualifications:
The CEO will be thoroughly committed to ASLM’s mission. All candidates should have proven leadership, coaching, and relationship management experience. Concrete demonstrable experience and other qualifications include:
- Advanced degree, ideally an MBA, preferably with at least 5 years of senior management experience, especially in the Global Health sector; track record of effectively leading and regionally and/or nationally scaling a performance- and outcomes-based organization and staff; ability to point to specific examples of having developed and operationalized strategies that have taken an organization to the next stage of growth
- Unwavering commitment to quality programs and data-driven program evaluation
- Excellence in organizational management with the ability to coach staff, manage, and develop high-performance teams, set and achieve strategic objectives, and manage a budget
- Past success working with a Board of Directors with the ability to cultivate existing board member relationships
- Strong marketing, public relations, and fundraising experience with the ability to engage a wide range of stakeholders and cultures
- Strong written and verbal communication skills; a persuasive and passionate communicator with excellent interpersonal and multidisciplinary project skills
- Action-oriented, entrepreneurial, adaptable, and innovative approach to business planning
- Ability to work effectively in collaboration with diverse groups of people
- Passion, idealism, integrity, positive attitude, mission-driven, and ability to be self-directed
