Deputy Regional Director of Partnerships (Kenya)

Position Overview

Educate!, a fast-growing and award-winning social enterprise, is seeking an enthusiastic and self-driven Deputy Regional Director of Partnerships to join our Kenya Team. 

The Deputy Regional Director of Partnerships will support Educate!’s external-facing work in Kenya, Tanzania and any other country as need arises. This role will manage key partnerships through directly representing the organization to key decision-makers at the Ministry of Education and its affiliated agencies across the region. The Deputy Regional Director of Partnerships will work hand-in-hand with the Group Strategist-Policy and Partnerships on the advocacy agenda as it relates to product strategy in order to successfully deliver on that agenda. The Deputy Regional Director of Partnerships reports to the Regional Director of Partnerships.  

Additionally, the Deputy Regional Director of Partnerships in collaboration with the Regional Director of Partnerships will play a meaningful role in setting long-term strategies for how Educate! drives system-level solutions across all countries of operation and finally, this role will strengthen the organization’s overall brand by working with the Director of Communications on communication strategy, as well as represent the organization to partners and at conferences. 

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

Early markets (Kenya or Tanzania) Policy & Partnership Strategy & Culture (40%) 

• In partnership with the Regional Director of Partnerships oversee strategic planning for early markets (currently Kenya or Tanzania) against 3-year strategy 
• As a senior leader of the team, collaborate with other team leaders to communicate and promote organizational culture and values
• Proactively communicate advocacy successes and challenges, and communicate progress against OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) across the organization through leadership calls, retreats, and other forums as needed. 
• Work with the Regional Policy & Partnerships senior leadership to ensure strategic alignment between country product, advocacy and market growth strategies
• Overseeing and progressing partnership and advocacy goals, including creation of co-design materials and use of Educate!’s government sales process (the “DQ process”) to manage complex sales.

Regional Team Capacity Building 20%

• Coach and train other E! (Educate!) staff on E!’s  government engagement strategy (our DQ and complex sales approach) and design activities and structures to promote our team’s understanding of government policies
• Provide local insights to ensure teams in Kenya and Tanzania have effective DQ processes and progress through each step.
• Coach and manage ESS (Education System Solution) regional advocacy team members, as directed by the Regional Director of Partnerships
• Liaising with Group Strategist Policy & Partnerships to set standards and protocols for advocacy and partnerships work
• Work with the Regional Director of Partnerships to lead the development of documentation and systems to track partnership engagements, to enable high performing remote team collaboration for strategic relationship management

Expansion Strategy 20%

• Strategy: In collaboration with the Regional Director of Partnerships set a roadmap for expansion into new countries and deploy team and resources towards key milestones.
• Networks: Source leads and open up networks. Lead scoping initiatives and partnership building within countries of operation

Regional Stakeholder and Policy Mapping – 20%

• Stakeholder Mapping: Support ESS leadership teams map influencers and create plans to build champions and coalitions across ESS countries.
• External Representation: Represent the organization as and when required at conferences, events, and other network building opportunities. 
• Policy Analysis: Analyze education policies from a variety of contexts to find opportunities to align product strategy with government interests.
• Funding opportunities: Engage with in-country payers around funding opportunities
• Pitch Materials: Help create Educate! partnership proposal materials in line with government priorities and E!’s technical standards and co-design approaches (pitch decks, concept notes, etc.) 

Qualifications

• Proven track record engaging and influencing high-profile networks. National and county government partnerships are preferred.
• Experience creating partnership strategy.
• Preference for experience working in multiple countries.
• Strong leadership skills, executive disposition, and ability to take a cooperative and problem-solving approach.
• Fits our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here

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.