Interim Regional Director – Asia, Middle East and North Africa, Europe and Central Asia

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced senior peacebuilding programmes professional to lead one of International Alert’s two regional groups through a key period of transition.

We are hiring this role at a pivotal time for Alert, as we implement our new organisational strategy and transition towards a new operating model driven by that strategy. Key to that future model is making Alert’s long-term presence and expertise in peacebuilding contexts more sustainable, through the implementation of a “country hub” model in which capabilities are shared between existing country offices at a sub-regional level and thus across a larger overall project portfolio.

This model recognizes the locally-led, long-term peacebuilding model at the heart of our strategy and aims at:

• better sustaining technical expert resource at country level;
• reducing risk and increasing impact and fundability;
• offering a more flexible range of options for our work in some contexts without full-scale country office presence;
• facilitating greater connections across neighbouring contexts; and
• establishing a clearer and more uniform set of capabilities at the country level that dock more efficiently with smaller global teams.

The postholder will have a great opportunity to lead the initial phase of implementation for this new model, including development of capability assessments and transition plans and early implementation of these, working closely with our country teams in the region and with our global teams.

The successful candidate will be an experienced programme and operational senior manager in the international NGO context, with experience in peacebuilding programming and budget oversight. You’ll have strong experience in supporting proposal development, judging how to maximise value from the available pipeline of opportunities and how to work with others to expand that pipeline further within a mainly institutional project funding environment. You’ll have strong interpersonal and collaboration skills, with the ability to work both within your own team and in partnership with others, and a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Role duties and responsibilities:

Leadership and management

• Lead Alert’s country office network in AMECA, providing direction and ensuring staff work collaboratively to deliver effective peacebuilding in support of Alert’s mission and strategy.
• Provide effective leadership and support to a diverse team of staff, ensuring their professional development and well-being, and fostering a participatory and inclusive work environment.
• Line manage Country Directors, providing support, development and task management.
• Support Country Directors to implement strong country strategies and fostering coherence and complementarity between these.
• Play a key role in the first stages of implementation of Alert’s Country Hub model across the AMECA programme, assessing the capabilities within country hub groups, developing and implementing plans to align those capabilities fully with the overall model in ways which maximise efficiency and effectiveness within a model which shifts accountability and expertise more to our country programmes and ensures that the country hub model works effectively with global teams
• Develop and oversee implementation of annual plans and budgets, monitor and adapt these during the year and report against the plans, with a focus on outcomes and learning.
• Foster a collaborative environment across our AMECA-based teams, and work with staff to ensure close collaboration between country teams on regional initiatives.

Programme delivery

• Ensure Alert’s programming in AMECA delivers impactful peacebuilding, including supporting project implementation and grant management through oversight and monitoring.
• Support staff to work effectively with partners, supporting locally led peacebuilding and ensuring our partnerships are equitable, effective, deep and diverse.
• Ensure learning and adaptation in Alert’s work, including monitoring and evaluation of projects and cross-team biannual reflections using Outcome Harvesting.
• Ensure the AMECA team undertakes frequent and effective donor liaison during project delivery.

Fundraising and programme development

• Work closely with Country Offices/Hubs and the Global Fundraising Team to drive Alert’s fundraising in the region. This includes supporting development of programming ideas and funding bids for peacebuilding programming in countries in the region. Ensure that Country Teams work collaboratively with partners to develop joint country or regional programming initiatives.
• Maintain key relationships with potential donors in countries across the region, within an overall coordinated donor engagement approach between country and global teams.
• Oversee development of compelling new project proposals drawing on lessons learned and up to date context analysis, ensuring input of partners and Alert colleagues in the process.
• Ensure our AMECA programme portfolio is sustainable for Alert overall by ensuring sufficient coverage of country and global shared costs in all budget submissions and that these costs are funded throughout project delivery.

Finance and operations

• Be accountable for effective financial management across AMECA programmes, ensure efficient use of financial resources by staff and partners, and minimize the risk of fraud. Work closely with the global and country finance teams to ensure robust financial controls are in place, and all staff understand and comply with procedures.
• Oversee the AMECA team’s financial reporting, budgeting and reforecasting, working with country and global finance teams. Ensure timely, accurate financial reporting by staff and partners to donors, authorities and within Alert.
• Ensure Country Directors build sufficient country and global shared cost recovery into project budgets.
• Ensure compliance with finance, procurement, HR and administrative procedures in line with national laws, donor requirements and Alert global policies.
• Oversee Alert’s institutional presence in countries in AMECA, including ensuring up-to-date registrations and compliance with national legislation.
• Oversee the security and safeguarding of Alert’s staff, partners and participants, ensuring Alert’s policies and procedures are followed, and adapted where necessary to AMECA contexts. Review and act as approver for any international travel into the region.

Advocacy and Communications

• Support Alert’s communications in AMECA, to increase the reach, influence and effectiveness of Alert’s peacebuilding messages.
• Represent Alert externally at conferences, workshops and meetings to strengthen Alert’s reach and reputation in contributing to peacebuilding debates.

Organisational contributions

• Serve as a member of Alert’s Executive Team
• Work collaboratively with leaders and teams across Alert, modelling and championing an efficient, mutually supportive and -inclusive working culture.
• As a member of Alert’s Global Leadership Team, contribute to organisational development, raising and engaging on organisational issues, policy development and strategic workshops.
• Ensure the AMECA team contributes to Alert’s organisational knowledge through sharing experience and contribute to learning initiatives.
• Provide regular updates to the Executive Director and others as requested on activities, challenges and opportunities, and oversee quarterly and annual organisational reporting.
• Collaborate with other teams to ensure alignment with organisational strategies.
• Undertake any other tasks reasonably requested by the Executive Director.

Please note that the above are just some of the role requirements. For the full role requirements, please click here to view the job description.