Director, New Portfolio

This job is for a social impact incubator that builds early-stage initiatives, including designing their business strategy and model, developing their brand identity, hiring and retaining talent, and constructing their financial and operational infrastructure.

Company details will be shared with shortlisted candidates.

The Role:

The company is hiring a Director(s) to develop and lead a portfolio grounded in a sustainable development focus area. Preferred areas include AI, Gender Justice, Agriculture, Climate and Health. This role provides a unique opportunity to shape and lead a portfolio of initiatives. Directors are responsible for leadership of their portfolio in addition to partnering with organisational leadership in shaping the growth of the organisation.

We are looking for individuals with a passion to build and grow a portfolio aligned to their expertise and experience in that particular space, and/or build initiatives within 1-2 portfolio focus areas leveraging on leadership and entrepreneurship experience in the sector.

The Directors collaborate with social sector leaders, experts and entrepreneurs to address some of the world's toughest problems, helping to turn big ideas into effective, value-adding organizations. Sometimes their Directors hatch initiatives in-house. In other cases, entrepreneurs or donors come to them with a big idea that needs an incubation partner. In either case, you will act as a strategist, advisor, integrator, implementer and often board member.

What You'll Do:

Portfolio Leadership

- Cultivate prospects and shape new opportunities for incubation. Lead outreach, network-building, and fundraising effort.

- Serve as the strategic advisor, executive coach, and chief operator to incubation partners.

- Develop a roadmap to scale for initiatives; ensure an iterative approach to developing strategy and then building-the-plane-while-flying-it.

- Deliver end-to-end accountability in managing priority relationships throughout the incubation lifecycle.

- Oversee budgets for financial sustainability of the initiative and of the company.

- Integrate services provided by other teams and external consultants and experts and ensure implementation.

Leadership

- Contribute to overall growth and management as a key member of the Leadership Team, including by proactively contributing to resource mobilization, ongoing development of our incubation practice and mentoring staff.

- Manage an overall thematic portfolio of Initiatives against milestones, budget, and target outcomes; participate in quarterly portfolio reviews with the leadership team.

- Support broader thought leadership and knowledge management, including documenting best practices or authoring articles, blogs and other publications.

What We're Looking For:

- 15+ years of work experience in social enterprises or other impact organizations, management consulting, and/or responsible investing (a mix of strategic and operating professional experiences is ideal).

- A strong network of funding and knowledge partners in the social impact sector.

- Successful track record of developing strategy and ensuring a team's ability to deliver against it, including through periods of growth, adaptation, and ambiguity.

- Demonstrated success developing cross-sectoral partnerships.

- Fluency in the languages of global development and public-private partnerships.

- Entrepreneurial mindset and experiences, in the private, public, and/or social sector.

- Exceptional verbal and written communication skills; effective influencer of diverse perspectives with a demonstrated ability to facilitate change at the senior level of organizations.

- Thematic portfolio areas of interest/exploration - Agriculture, Mental Health, and AI/Technology for Impact