Coordinator, Embedded Lab at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)

IPA Ghana is seeking an Embedded Lab Coordinator to collaborate closely with the Ministry of Education (MoE) in Ghana to strengthen its capacity to use evidence to improve its programs and policies. IPA is working with MoE to set up an “Ed Lab” to enable government partners at both the national and district levels to use data and rigorous research to design, test, and scale evidence-based programs and policies to improve learning for students.

The Embedded Lab Coordinator will be embedded within MoE to directly coordinate the Ed Lab’s activities in close connection with MoE counterparts. The Coordinator will focus specifically on evidence-to-policy flows and on designing the Ed Lab to influence national-level policy processes; work with education sector counterparts to build buy-in for a culture of evidence generation and use; and integrate existing education sector policy and practice-driven evidence projects into the Ed Lab design and implementation. The Embedded Lab Coordinator will have a strong policy background, and ideally experience working with partners to use evidence to inform policy and programming. We particularly encourage Ghanaian nationals to apply. The Coordinator will report to the IPA Ghana Embedded Lab Sr. Manager with dotted line oversight from the Global Policy team.

The Coordinator will perform a variety of tasks related to leveraging existing data and developing new research projects to drive greater use of evidence within the Ministry and the broader education sector. For example, the Coordinator may conduct activities including but not limited to:

• Cultivating relationships with key local top-level decision-makers in the education sector and ensure the project has their buy-in and input
• Producing policy briefs on key policy questions that can be answered using the Ministry’s own data
• Supporting the development of a policy-driven research agenda for the lab and facilitating the development of research projects to respond to the agenda
• Supporting the development of relationships with local and international academics to provide input into the lab’s policy-driven research agenda
• Sharing existing evidence to inform MoE program design and delivery
• Working together with the Country Office and global policy and communications teams to coordinate and participate in strategic events for policy purposes, including but not limited to summits, conferences, workshops, technical working groups, and round tables. Supporting researchers and country management to participate
• Developing opportunities to leverage administrative data for research; connecting local and international researchers to pursue these openings
• Supporting work planning and project management to ensure effective and timely implementation of our work

• Master’s degree in international public policy, education, social science, or related fields and 2-5 years of relevant work experience. Exceptions may be made for excellent candidates who do not meet this criterion;
• Hands-on experience supporting Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning systems
• Experience working in the education sector of a developing country, ideally in close interaction with government stakeholders
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, including the ability to clearly present information in a structured, non-technical, and insightful way.
• Excellent project management and organizational skills, attention to detail, entrepreneurial mindset, versatility, and strong multi-tasking skills
• Superior analytical, quantitative, and conceptual thinking skills
• Willingness to be a team player and identify connections between work streams
• Cultural and political sensitivity and demonstrated ability to work successfully with diverse constituencies
• Passion for making data-driven decision-making a reality in the development sector

Preferred additional qualifications

• Demonstrated ability to coach and train others in statistics, data analysis or MEL methodologies
• Background in development programs relating to education
• Experience working with government
• Familiarity with the concepts surrounding the Theory of Change and the core tools of MEL (both quantitative and qualitative research methods)