Position Overview

Educate! an award-winning non-profit social enterprise, is seeking a Director of Operations to lead operational excellence across our programs and support functions in Rwanda. This is a leadership role ideal for someone who loves managing people and projects to seamless execution and is driven to maximize impact through excellent management practices, processes, and attention to detail. The right person for this role will have a history of achieving results through teams and experience managing projects (including budgets and support functions). Private sector or social enterprise experience is strongly preferred.

Educate! launched in Rwanda in 2015 to support the Rwanda Education Board in giving secondary school youth the skills to succeed in today’s economy. In the past four years we have worked to build the most innovative, sustainable, scalable and cost-effective model possible to create the first evidence-based solution for governments to effectively roll out competence-based education reforms in Africa. We have worked in more than 400 secondary schools, and in all 30 districts of Rwanda, and in the future we aim to offer the solution built and tested in Rwanda to governments across Africa.

Reporting to the Country Director, our new Director of Operations will lead and improve upon operational processes (in program implementation and support functions) to increase efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and performance at scale, so that we can deliver on testing this solution and positioning in it for even greater scale. You’ll join a dynamic leadership team committed to organizational and professional growth.

About Educate!

Educate! is a non-profit social enterprise that prepares youth in Africa with the 21 century skills to succeed in today’s economy. We tackle youth unemployment by partnering with schools and governments to reform what schools teach and how they teach it. Our model is delivered through practically-trained teachers and youth mentors. We’ve massively scaled up our program in the past several years, growing more than 4x since 2014. In 2019, we’re working in over 400 secondary schools in Rwanda, 60 pilot schools in Kenya, and over 800 schools in Uganda reaching over 42,000 students intensively and 530,000 more broadly. Our model has proven to have massive impact — after the program, students earned DOUBLE the income of a control group and had a 44% increase in business creation. Our graduates change their lives and their communities, such as Lillian Aero who employs over 100 AIDS-affected women.

Educate!’s team includes almost 200 staff and almost 300 volunteer youth mentors. We have been backed by top foundations such as MasterCard, Big Bang Philanthropy, Mulago, Echoing Green, Ashoka and Global Innovation Fund. Educate! won the 2015 WISE Awards, and was featured by Forbes 30 under 30, Clinton Global Initiative and The Brookings Institution.

Performance Objectives

Lead country-wide operations to drive world-class team performance

Working with executive and in-country leadership teams, set strategy to maximize success towards Educate!’s vision of measurably millions of students across Africa

Collaborate with management team to implement global functional initiatives to ensure successful completion of top organization-wide objectives

Oversee the operations’ teams staffing structures and annual and termly goals

Ensure tight financial management in line with Educate! culture

Exemplify clear and consistent communication to all levels of the organization

Oversee strategic management of key risks facing the organization

Consistently utilize strong project management skills, and coach team in the same

Program Implementation Oversight

Ensure the Educate! Exchange team performs in alignment with set work-plans and strategic objectives

Ensure the consistent use of key management tools such as the monthly calendar, program scorecard, and training schedules

Collaborate with the Country Director to develop staffing strategy, including job descriptions and role differentiation

Oversee budget planning and reallocation, and verify that resources are available to the team and relevant stakeholders

Support the team in adjusting execution plans to meet targets, based on monitoring data

Performance Management

Clearly articulate Educate! Rwanda’s vision internally and manage changes in country activities to maintain strong team alignment and engagement

Build, lead and coach a highly results oriented team to deliver our goals

Quickly address employee performance issues with a caring approach and an eye towards their improvement, while being comfortable exiting non-performers to drive highest quality team performance and growth

Create team recruitment and training strategies to ensure high-quality deliverance and scalable cost model.

Conduct performance management of direct reports and fair and accurate performance reviews for team.

Lead culture building through

Open minded and flexible management

Performance management towards excellence

Encouraging personal and professional development among staff and investing in staff skill building

Driving the team towards youth-facing solutions and cost effectiveness

Identifying challenges that are best solved through systems development and improvement

Creating opportunities for staff bonding and retreats and creating a fun and collaborative work environment.

Financial oversight

Provide financial leadership to maintain a stringent environment of financial management and integrity

Manage financial constraints strategically to optimize impact against cost and position Educate! to continue to accelerate growth year over year

Support the Finance Coordinator in the growth and development of the finance function

Ensure all regulatory compliance requirements are met, including but not exclusive to annual audits, and necessary tax payments

Support Country Director in ensuring timely financial reporting, and managing to a monthly budget variance of 5% or less.

Drive forward the creation and review of staff policies & procedures (finance manuals, common cost sheet, etc.)

Approve expenditures as necessary

Provide training and coaching to staff on new financial procedures

Qualifications and Profile

Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field

At least seven years of professional experience (or 5 years + a master’s degree), including experience managing operations in a fast-paced, high-performance environment and at least three years managing people & coordinating teams

Proven experience establishing, implementing, and executing operational processes

Critical thinker with a creative and customer-centric approach to operations

Organized, influential, and fluent in using technology, including Excel

Financial integrity

Passion for Educate!’s mission is a must, but past work in education or youth development is not required. We value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from people with a variety of backgrounds.

Fits our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here

Rwandan candidates strongly preferred. Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply

Terms

Compensation will be commensurate with experience.

Benefits include medical insurance.

This position will be based in Kigali.

Why You Will Brag About Working At Educate!

We’ve got the impact.

Educate! is designed for scale. We quadrupled operations in 2014, going from 54 to more than 200 schools served. We carefully measure our outcomes, and — here’s the best part — we are maintaining quality at four times the size.

We believe in local leadership — 96% of our staff is African.

Our model goes national. In 2012 Educate! partnered with Uganda’s government to integrate curriculum and a student business club structure into Uganda’s entrepreneurship course nationally, in 2015 we served as a technical advisor to Rwanda on its secondary education reform, and in 2016 we began serving as a technical advisor to Kenya on its national curriculum reform.

Educate is a well-oiled learning machine. We built our model by methodically testing hundreds of assumptions and we are constantly experimenting, evaluating, and improving.

We’re honored that luminaries and leaders like Oliver Wonekha, the Ugandan Ambassador to the US, and Ann Veneman, a former US Secretary of Agriculture and head of UNICEF, believe in us enough to have joined our advisory board.

What Is Educate! About?

We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

We Put Youth First – The youth we serve come first. Always. In everything. That means we wake up thinking of ways we can serve youth even better and get the highest impact out of every dollar that we spend. It means Educate! doesn’t own a single vehicle, because we’d rather take the bus if it means one more student can participate. It means making every decision like the future depends on it — because if we get our way, it does.

We Are Always Learning – When you work at Educate!, educating yourself is part of your job too. We encourage every employee to find the best book on management; share the latest article on graphic design; bring in your favorite college mentor; or meet the researcher pushing the edge of the field. We are always thirsty for knowledge and love to share.

We Only Solve a Problem Once – We are allergic to band-aids so we love the person who brings the new system to solve the problem for good, even problems we haven’t recognized yet.

We Are Flexible – We thrive on change — we’re driving it. We are growing every day, so we have to adapt quickly to meet new challenges, and our team keeps up.

We Exceed Expectations – We assume we can achieve the impossible because we already have, year after year. We want our staff to create your own challenges, ask the toughest questions, and dream scary big!

Every person at Educate! — from interns to the executive director — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do.

Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community. In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team.

Application deadline will be rolling, with the goal to fill position ASAP.

Submit your CV and Application on Company Website : Click Here

Closing Date : 25th April, 2020.