Manager, Right-Fit Evidence at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)

IPA Ghana and IPA’s Right Fit Evidence Unit are seeking a Manager to support IPA Ghana’s provision of evidence- and data-driven technical assistance to policy and implementation partners, with primary focus on the education sector. For the foreseeable future, the RFE manager is expected to lead (i) IPA’s technical assistance for the implementation of the Ministry of Education’s recently approved 2021 Early Childhood Education Policy in Ghana, and (ii) the MEL components of IPA’s technical assistance to the scale-up of Differentiated Learning Pedagogy in Primary Schools in 10,000 schools under the Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project. The RFE Manager will also support other MEL and research capacity building activities for policy and implementation partners, and may also develop and lead new evidence advisory projects as the RFE team grows in Ghana.

The RFE Manager will report primarily to the Head of Policy Ghana and will receive additional support and oversight from senior managers from the RFE and Policy teams at the global level, as well as a Ghana-based Senior Policy Manager. The RFE Manager will manage 1-2 RFE Advisors based in Ghana, and provide support to one Ghana Sr. Research Associate on IPA Ghana’s Policy & RFE team.

We encourage those with the following profiles to apply as these skills and interests are a particularly strong fit:

• Management consultants with some international development experience who would be excited in a career shift to an entrepreneurial and impact-focused environment leveraging their skillset
• Education/early childhood development project managers with a strong analytical leaning, who have experience managing large scale education programs in developing countries and are interested in a role that emphasizes government support on data and evidence use
• M&E practitioners who are interested in broadening their scope and impact on the field by advising organizations on state-of-the-art M&E practices
• Research professionals in international development who enjoy working closely with practitioners and are interested in broadening their scope to all the types of data and evidence that can inform decisions

Irrespective of their background, RFE staff tend to learn through their work, and this position is a great fit for anyone with a growth-oriented mindset.

The role is also open to both Ghanaian and international applicants. IPA Ghana will sponsor work permits/visas for international applicants, if hired.

Responsibilities
Project/Team Management

• Project management: lead small teams of RFE/Policy unit staff to develop tailor-made solutions for the learning needs of partners, and support their implementation. Contribute to project financial management.
• Stakeholder Management: manage IPA Ghana’s relationship with a wide range of education sector partners, maintaining strong communication and partnerships
• Business development: Be the main interface for the Right-Fit Evidence Unit for a set of active or potential funders and occasionally represent the Unit in conferences or other similar events
• People Management: Directly oversee 1-2 Advisors based on Ghana, and support their professional development
• Design and Execute High Impact Strategic Advisory, Training, Field Experiment, and Field Piloting Activities
• Refining and testing the implementation of ECE and DL MEL tools with government and implementing agencies: Provide technical Monitoring and Evaluation expertise to develop and refine monitoring tools that inform local and national decision-makers on key aspects of the ECE policy implementation and DL program implementation.
• Designing and executing workshops: Liaise with key policymakers, ECE implementers, and academics to plan, moderate, and execute various kinds of external workshops related to data, evidence and learning. Those workshop can be aimed collaboratively designing evidence generation strategies, MEL capacity building, etc.
• Producing professional deliverables: Own the preparation and presentation of various types of advisory and analytical deliverables, maintaining the highest quality standards

Qualifications
Education and Experience:

• A Bachelor’s or Master´s degree in economics, public policy, education, early childhood development, international development, or related fields and;
• 4-10 years of relevant work experience, including experience in M&E (public sector), education policy or program management (public/non-profit/private sectors), organizational performance/R&D/operational research (private sector), or experience in management consulting/other professional services.

Technical Skills:

• Significant exposure to the design and management of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning systems (or similar area of work that may be called differently in other sectors)
• Experience designing and supervising quantitative and qualitative data collection
• Demonstrated ability to coach and train others on MEL methodologies data analysis or statistics
• Familiarity with statistics and data analysis (including strong command of Excel)

Stakeholder Management Skills:

• Demonstrated ability to manage relationships with external partners
• Strong client-facing and presentation skills. Ability to present information in a structured and insightful way, both in writing and orally, to a variety of audiences

Project Management Skills:

• Project/budget management skills; attention to detail; preparing narratives for donor/external stakeholders
• Ability to manage and organize various workstreams efficiently
• Self-starter, entrepreneurial mindset, versatility, and ability to learn at a fast pace.

Other:

• Willingness to travel, primarily within Ghana;
• Passion for making data-driven decisions a reality in the international development sector

Preferred additional qualifications

• Master’s degree in education, economics, public policy, social science, or a related field
• Experience working with national government partners on large scale programs
• Experience living and working in developing countries, particularly Ghana
• Familiarity with key global education indicators and literature, particularly for early childhood development
• Familiarity with the concepts surrounding the Theory of Change and the core tools of M&E (both quantitative and qualitative research methods)
• Familiarity with SurveyCTO, Open Data Kit or similar survey software
• Familiarity with randomized controlled trials

Application Instructions  | Manager, Right-Fit Evidence at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)