Background:
The International Rescue Committee helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC works with people forced to flee from war, conflict and disaster and the host communities that support them, as well as with those who remain within their homes and communities. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure.
As a global humanitarian organization, the IRC has unique capabilities - and is particularly known for generating rigorous research and implementing evidence-based programs. The IRC's strategy over the next 5 years builds on these capabilities, and its mission is to extend IRC's thought and operational leadership in the sector.
A key initiative that supports this strategy is the IRC Research & Development (R&D) lab, aimed at investing in the design, development, and scaling of new humanitarian interventions and delivery models. The lab seeks to apply best practices from strategy consulting and design-thinking to solve the most challenging problems the humanitarian sector faces. Combining these capabilities in IRC's extensive field reach in multiple crisis-affected areas, deep sector expertise, and our unique research capability, we believe it is possible to design and scale new breakthrough humanitarian solutions that could impact millions of people most affected by conflict and disasters.
Job Overview:
The IRC has identified a clear need for employment solutions in crisis situations. Many standard practices, such as vocational training or microfinance have been shown to have minimal impact, or do not operate at scale. The R&D lab at the IRC aims to explore a range of ways to create wealth and employment in fragile economies.
Reporting to IRC R&D leadership, the Employment Strategy Lead, will drive an intensive "Idea Generation" process to develop and evaluate new approaches to creating scale job creation in conflict and crisis affected areas. This position will lead a multi-disciplinary team of researchers, strategists, and design-thinkers to produce 1-2 high-potential concepts that could achieve this objective. Applying your experience in combining economic theory, quantitative and qualitative research, and strategy development, you will lead the team in a 5-month process to generate new concepts that the IRC and other sectoral leaders can pilot and launch. Concepts will be rigorously evaluated for their potential to be implemented at scale by IRC or other institutions, impact on the lives of people in crisis-contexts, and for the usability/desirability of the solution by likely users. If successful, R&D and the Economic Recovery and Development (ERD) Technical Unit will quickly aim to apply the concepts developed with the goal of piloting and scaling new solutions.
This role will partner closely with IRC's in-house economic technical experts, IRC field implementers with deep expertise implementing programs with refugee populations, private sector leaders, and a panel of leading international economists. This role will be of high visibility, and offers the opportunity to work closely with business leaders, politicians, and major international economic figures on a global challenge.
Major Responsibilities:
1 Outline key objectives and manage the analytical processes to identify and validate promising new innovations around employment creation for R&D and the ERD Technical Unit to invest in, including:
1 Develop strong hypotheses about potential new solutions for creating scale employment opportunities that link data, research, qualitative assessments, and design insights 2 Using a hypothesis-driven approach, identify, structure and lead the team to execute key pieces of analysis - including developing frameworks to define key issues, synthesizing research and qualitative data, identifying and prioritizing new ideas, creating economic models of potential solutions, and specifying potential solution design criteria and features 3 Design and execute field visits to collect information from policy experts, MSME owners, investors, government officials, and job seekers and others in potential countries of focus 4 Facilitate the prioritization and selection of leading concepts through a rigorous evaluation process 5 Contribute to the planning of 1-2 round-table sessions with leading policy experts 6 Lead the development of synthesized conclusions into polished policy papers and practical planning documents for dissemination and planning 7 Facilitate partnering with internal and external collaborators as necessary - including subject matter experts, R&D design staff, IRC field leadership, and implementation staff
Job Requirements:
Minimum Requirements
- Master's/post-graduate degree in economics, business administration or other related field. Or equivalent combination of education and experience is required.
- 6-8 years of experience in economic development, SME development or market strengthening programming or research
- Strong quantitative and qualitative research methodologies applied in Economics
- Demonstrated expertise in developing new programmatic approaches for employment, program design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of market-based programs.
- Proven analytical and problem solving skills with confidence distilling data into actionable insights
- Strong presentation skills and ability to communicate with senior leaders
- Cross-functional, generalist skillset to engage with internal and external participants
- Comfortable managing a project team and/or external resources (e.g. consultants)
- Ability to work well in a distributed, multi-cultural fast paced environment
Preferred Requirements
- Experience in a strategy role at either a top tier strategy consulting firm, or in the strategy development function of a global organization
- Knowledge of data analysis software (Excel, Stata, etc.) is a plus
- Fluency in French and/or Arabic
- Previous work in either humanitarian or development contexts
- Experience/familiarity with NGO setting
- Ability to travel 25% of the time
Working Environment:
- Standard work office environment
HOW TO APPLY:
Please follow this link to apply: http://www.aplitrak.com/?adid=YXN0cmlkLm1hdGhldy45ODI3MC4zODMwQGlyYy5hcG...
