Development Director, Nigeria

Development | Nigeria, Nigeria

About the position

Bridge has done what many people thought was impossible. We've standardized and delivered high-quality education to 100,000 pupils in Kenya for just $6 a month. As the largest private provider of basic education on the African continent, we're now ready to take our approach to other countries across Africa, and the globe. The Development Director, Nigeria will be the first to make this happen in Nigeria, and with that prove that a family's income does not determine what a child's future can hold.

This is an incredibly exciting position, and not for the faint at heart. There will be many intense hours and you will face more conflicting priorities and unexpected setbacks than you thought possible before the grand opening celebrations of the first cohort of academies are even underway. Luckily, there will be just as many rewards both personally and professionally. You will personally build a business that will drive innovation and reform in education in Nigeria for the majority of the region's population. Bridge's model is simple in its concept – hire experts to build best-in-class systems, use technology to deliver them, and data to track and improve upon them – but very laborious in its implementation. As the Development Director, you drive growth of new service delivery units, or academies. You direct and drive delivery for the teams that produce a full school ready to enroll children: real estate acquisition, urban and physical planning, and construction. You must interface and engage heavily with People Operations to ensure fully trained academy staff and with Supply Chain to ensure the materials needed for construction are ready to use, at or under the budget set. You will engage with Marketing to ensure your teams are integrated into holistic brand engagement and customer acquisition.

This is a role for someone who is excited by taking on a radical challenge: delivering land at very low cost, securing planning approvals in 2 weeks, constructing and kitting a 12 classroom school in 14 days. You will be excited the challenge of figuring out how to drive this all across Nigeria.

This is not an armchair position. This is not a position where there is light management. This is a position for someone who can manage managers to succeed through coaching and empowerment, but digs into the weeds when a manager is flailing and can personally help solve the problem and set a new pathway to success.

This will be exhilarating but demanding. You'll be working on one of the biggest problems of developing economies and poverty alleviation, where trillions of dollars have had little effect, and thousands of initiatives have failed to change the systematic failure to provide children living in poverty with high-quality education. You are going to change this, enabling children from low-income families to access world-class basic education, democratizing the right to succeed.

We're looking for ambition, organization, drive, intellect, problem solving, and respect for others. We are also looking for someone who has deep experience in managing managers and delivering work directly. And, critically, you know that you still have a lot to learn and you know that working at Bridge will give you that opportunity to build on your experience while learning anew. You will report to the Expansion Director, Nigeria, with dotted line reporting to the Chief Development Officer. You will have an equity stake in the global company.

Who should apply

• Detailed doers – You have a track record of getting things done. You're organized and responsive. You take ownership of every idea you touch and execute it to a fine level of detail, setting targets, engaging others, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. You can multi-task dozens of such projects at once and never lose sight of the details.
• Creative problem-solvers – Growing any business from scratch comes with massive and constant challenges. You are growing 150 businesses a year, readying them for customers – in our case, children eager to learn. On top of that, Bridge works in volatile, low-resource communities and runs on fees averaging just $6 a month per pupil. You need to be flexible and ready to get everything done effectively, quickly, and affordably with the materials at hand. Every dollar you spend is a dollar our customers, who live on less than $2 a day, will have to pay for.
• Customer advocates – Our customers – these families living on less than $2 a day per person – never leave your mind. You know them, get them, have shared a meal with them (or would be happy to in the future). You would never shrink back from shaking a parent's hand or picking up a crying child, no matter what the person is wearing or looks like. Every decision you make considers their customer benefit, experience, and value. If you understand and engage with our customer, parent and child, you will be better at managing your teams and delivering ultimate results.
• Life-long learners – You believe you can always do better. You welcome constructive criticism and provide it freely to others. You know you only get better tomorrow when others point out where you've missed things or failed today.
• Skills coaches – You share your knowledge. You know that you need to teach others on your team what they need to know to succeed. You know how to work with team members to get them to perform at a level they didn't think was possible. You can dig-in deep on why a team member isn't getting it done, and the work through how to get them to the right level. Most of the time, you've process-mapped what needs to happen before you even assign the task so that the team you are working with knows what needs to be done to succeed. Every step of the way you are there, coaching your own team to the win.

Who shouldn't apply

• 9-to-5ers – If you like the comforts of an office job – be it short and consistent hours, free ramen noodles, or rolly chairs with back support, you won't like it here. Hours are long, there are no freebies (we're not going to have our customers' hard-earned money pay for your snacks!), and you're going to spend most of your time in the early months in the field, learning your teams' work, finding radical improvements, and enjoying the adventure.
• Narcissists and Prima Donnas – If you've ever finished the statement, “I didn't go to college to do ______,” you won't like it here. We're all equal at Bridge. We all roll up our sleeves and get the work done when needed. The accomplishments of the team, and the overall success of Bridge in serving our customers is more important to you than title or company schwag or luxe benefits. This is the ethos you'll build in the whole team.
• Seniority surfers – If you think your degree, age, lineage, and past experience matter more than your results today, you won't like Bridge. Typical status markers are not important to how you are treated at Bridge or how you will be promoted. Only your current output, and how it benefits our customers, matters in how your work is evaluated.
• Hand-holders – We love teamwork, but sometimes we get busy. You need to work well independently and have the self-motivation to never slow down. Of course, you'll be very responsive and constantly update us on your status. Because everyone else is super busy too, you'll need to be comfortable jumping up and down to get attention when you need it from other people! You will manage your MDs, ensuring they know what they need to know from you before they ask. You will not have to be asked for a report twice.

About Bridge

Bridge International Academies is the world's largest chain of nursery and primary schools offering high-quality education at an affordable price to families living on less than $2 a day per person. Our vertically integrated Academy-in-a-Box approach has re-engineered the entire life-cycle of basic education, leveraging data, technology, and scale in order to keep quality up and prices a low as $6 a month (on average). Our mission is Knowledge for all. Currently, we have 359 academies in Kenya, with almost 100,000 pupils enrolled and are growing at a rate of one new academy every three days. We are opening in Nigeria and Uganda in 2015. Ten years from now we plan to be operating in at least a dozen countries and to count 10,000,000 children as our pupils.