Managing Director (Uganda)

Position Overview

Educate!, an award-winning non-profit social enterprise, is seeking a Managing Director to lead operational excellence across our programs and support functions in Uganda. 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). 

You are the right fit for this role if you;

• Are a strategic thinker who can move deftly from vision to execution—perceiving emerging opportunities, building a goal-oriented strategy, aligning internal and external stakeholders around a shared vision, and driving implementation.
• Ability to thrive in dynamic and fast-changing environments, comfortable with uncertainty and change
• Have experience managing teams to execution and helping a team that is scaling or in the early stages of scale.
• Ability to manage goals, guide others through major changes, encourage teamwork, develop team capabilities, and motivate team leads to meet deadlines.
• Professional and interpersonal skills with the energy, vision and drive to succeed in a fast-paced, high-performance culture.
• Must be able to help the team set up systems, identify those needs, using and optimize those systems.  
• Ability to deeply understand a complex strategy, ability to make choices that support that strategy.
• Demonstrated financial acumen, a good understanding of budgeting, and experience drafting proposals.

Sound like you or someone you know? Read below, visit our careers page to learn more about Educate!, 

About Educate! 

Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined. 

At Educate! we’re obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent. 

Educate! prepares youth in Africa learn, earn and thrive in today’s economy by: 

1) introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary, and 

2) delivering livelihood bootcamps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.

To date, more than 250,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 250 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows. 

We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy,  #startsmall, Generation Unlimited, CIFF and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by the World Bank’s S4YE’s Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.

Educate!’s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. By 2025, we aim to scale our annual reach by 4x and measurably impact over 400,000 new youth. 

Performance Objectives

Strategic planning and Execution- 25%

• Collaborate with the Deputy Chief Operating Officer to create the Country Operations quarterly OKRS and Priorities in line with the Organisation goals and priorities.
• Build alignment around strategic plan and impact unit priorities so that teams speak the same language and manage towards the same priorities, challenges, successes, and long term vision.
• Collaborate with functional directors and strategists to ensure alignment between functional strategies(M&E, finance, Tech and talent) and country execution.
• Regularly communicate messages to teams that reinforce the organization’s mission and impact goals. Set and communicate annual targets to them.
• Communicate in-country challenges and successes to Deputy Chief Operating Officer through bi-weekly leadership calls. Identifying challenges that are best solved through systems development and improvements.
• Oversee strategic management of key risks facing the organization.

 Operations Oversight  – 30%

• Oversee the operations team, including HR, finance, procurement, and administrative duties. Manage employment benefits and legalities( contracts, payroll, tax, health.)
• Manage department according to functional strategy management systems e.g. Quarterly Budget Versus Actual, management accounts, Risk Register, etc. Work with the team to ensure that all operations reports are submitted and reviewed in a timely fashion, with system improvements being made accordingly, and collaborate with the Chief Finance Officer to revise Uganda’s finance strategy as necessary.
• Financial constraints: Manage financial constraints strategically to optimize impact against cost  and position Educate! to continue to accelerate growth year over year.
•  Support department managers and directors launch new management systems with growth and program roll-out.
•  Ensure relationships with banks, tax authority, government regulators, financial service vendors, auditors and other external players are strong and positive
• Oversee country recruitment efforts and ensure processes are followed to recruit and retain top talent that aligns to Educate’s culture and compensation philosophy.
• Ensure effectiveness of supply chain systems that support Educate! programs and enhance client (Programs) satisfaction, with the goals of high operational and programs collaboration and motivation, ease of and compliance with office and field systems and innovation for superior office to field delivery chains.

Program Strategy Implementation & Field Operations Oversight – 25%

• Manage the Director of Program Implementation, Head of Program Implementation and Director of Field Operations to their stage objectives 
• Set and approve quarterly goals for Program Management, Field Operations and Country Operations teams. Approve Stage Objectives for  Field Operations.
• Collaborate with strategists, Head of Program Implementation, Director of Program  to ensure proposed program design is aligned to product stage, organization goals, informed by scale constraints and developed through experimentation. 
•  Work with the Director of Program Implementation and Director of Operations to prepare for programmatic growth to ensure programs are delivered as designed.
• on cost-effectiveness in relation to impact. Work to ensure that cost-saving strategies are constantly being created and implemented.

Team Leadership & Culture & Performance Management (20%)

• Create a culture of high performance through ensuring standards are set, communicated and reinforced across all teams. Ensure promotions, feedback, and firing is fair. conduct performance management of the team at all levels and fair and accurate performance reviews for the team.
• Maintain a pulse on team dynamics through formal and informal checks about team dynamics, areas of conflict, areas of team flow, and motivation levels. Involve official and non-official team leaders to build a healthy, high performing team.
• Models five cultural tenets and ensures rewards and promotions are earned and awarded to high performers who live Educate!’s culture.
• Lead workforce planning by creating a country org-chart, defining functions of roles, and approving JDs and proposing solutions for capacity gaps. 
• Drive succession planning to ensure a strong pipeline of critical roles for the country’s operational health

Qualifications

• Dynamic experience highly preferred, with demonstrated ability to operate well in complex and fast-changing environments 
• 8+ years of work experience, with 5+ years of management and/or leadership experience 
• Experience managing medium to large-size teams and balancing multiple priorities 
• Financial integrity and budget management experience 
• 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 

Terms 

•  Compensation will be competitive and commensurate with experience 
•  Benefits include medical insurance 
• This position will be based in Uganda

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 of their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

• We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed – We never forget that Educate! exists to impact youth. We are purpose-driven. We obsess over impact daily and if it doesn’t lead to impact, we want nothing to do with it. We prioritize interacting with and listening to youth. We design and manage the organization to ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences that youth value. 
• We Exceed Expectations – We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results. When we know what needs to be done, we do it. We don’t wait to be asked and we don’t stop at what is asked of us. We look for solutions as much as we identify problems.
• We Are Always Learning – We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded. We know there is always another way and we are excited to learn about it. We continuously look for resources of all kinds from multiple disciplines. We try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.
• We are One Team, Many Views – We say what we think while treating each other well. We believe that all people have the same inherent value and that diverse ideas and open dialogue fuel excellence. We constantly strive to create an environment where everyone can and does express themselves freely. We support and respect each other as people and colleagues. We act as one team: We prioritize the organization’s mission and goals over team or individual goals.
• We have the Startup Mindset – We will always keep innovating to grow our impact. We aspire to be game-changing. We never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.” We question the status quo in our industry. We move fast and embrace change to move towards our long-term vision. We’re not afraid of failure. We interrogate anything that slows us down. 

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. 

Child Safeguarding: Educate! is committed to child-safe/youth-safe recruitment, selection and screening. Our recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to the safety and protection of children in our programs. The successful candidate will be required to provide a satisfactory Certificate of Good Conduct as a condition of employment. We reserve the right to decline to offer employment to an individual or terminate an employment contract with an employee that may pose a risk to children and youth.